‘You’re suggesting an impossible—’
‘No, I’m not. You, of all people, know I’m not. If it can happen to one, it can happen to others. You’re all so drilled and perfect and identical. You march to the same beat and do whatever is asked of you. Loken, do you know of any Astartes who would break step? Would you?’
‘I…’
‘Would you? If you saw the rot, a hint of corruption, would you step out of your regimented life and stand against it? For the greater good of mankind, I mean?’
‘It’s not going to happen,’ Loken said. ‘That would never happen. You’re suggesting civil disunity. Civil war. That is against every fibre of the Imperium as the Emperor has created it. With Horus as Warmaster, as our guiding light, such a possibility is beyond countenance. The Imperium is firm and strong, and of one purpose. There are inconsistencies, Euphrati, just like there are wars and plagues and famines. They hurt us, but they do not kill us. We rise above them and move onwards.’
‘It rather depends,’ she remarked, ‘where those inconsistencies occur.’
Loken’s vox-cuff suddenly began to bleat. Loken raised his wrist, and thumbed the call stud. ‘I’m on my way,’ he said. He looked back at her.
‘Let’s talk again, Euphrati,’ he said.
She nodded. He leant forwards and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Be well. Be better. Look to your friends.’
‘Are you my friend?’ she asked.
‘Know it,’ he said. He got up and retrieved his robe from the floor.
‘Garviel,’ she called from the cot.
‘Yes?’
‘Delete those images, please. For me. They don’t need to exist.’
He nodded, opened the shutter, and stepped out into the chill of the hall.
Once the shutter had closed, Keeler got up off the cot and let the sheet fall from her. Naked, she padded over to a cupboard, knelt and opened its doors. From inside, she took out two candles and a small figurine of the Emperor. She placed them on the top of the cupboard, and lit the candles with an igniter. Then she rummaged in the cupboard and pulled out the dog-eared pamphlet that Leef had given her. It was a cheap, crude thing, badly pressed from a mechanical bulk-printer. There were ink soils along its edges, and rather a lot of spelling mistakes in the text.
Keeler didn’t care. She opened the first page and, bowed before the makeshift shrine, she began to read.
‘The Emperor of Mankind is the Light and the Way, and all his actions are for the benefit of mankind, which is his people. The Emperor is God and God is the Emperor, so it is taught in the Lectio Divinitatus, and above all things, the Emperor will protect…’
LOKEN RAN DOWN the companionways of the remembrancers’ billet wing, his cloak billowing out behind him. Sirens were sounding. Men and women peered out of doorways to look at him as he passed by.
He raised his cuff to his mouth. ‘Nero. Report! Is it Tarik? Has something happened?’
The vox crackled and Vipus’s voice issued tinnily from the cuff speaker. ‘Something’s happened all right, Garvi. Get back here.’
‘What? What’s happened?’
‘A ship, that’s what. A barge has just translated in-system behind us. It’s Sanguinius. Sanguinius himself has come.’
SEVEN
Lord of the Angels
Brotherhood in Spiderland
Interdiction
JUST A WEEK or so earlier, during one of their regular, private interviews, Loken had finally told Mersadie Oliton about the Great Triumph after Ullanor.
‘You cannot imagine it,’ he said.
‘I can try.’
Loken smiled. ‘The Mechanicum had planed smooth an entire continent as a stage for the event.’
‘Planed smooth? What?’
‘With industrial meltas and geoformer engines. Mountains were erased and their matter used to infill valleys. The surface was left smooth and endless, a vast table of dry, polished rock chippings. It took months to accomplish.’
‘It ought to have taken centuries!’
‘You underestimate the industry of the Mechanicum. They sent four labour fleets to undertake the work. They made a stage worthy of an Emperor, so broad it could know midnight at one end and midday at the other.’
‘You exaggerate!’ she cried, with a delighted snort.
‘Maybe I do. Have you known me do that before?’
Oliton shook her head.
‘You have to understand, this was a singular event. It was a Triumph to mark the turn of an era, and the Emperor, beloved of all, knew it. He knew it had to be remembered. It was the end of the Ullanor campaign, the end of the crusade, the coronation of the Warmaster. It was a chance for the Astartes to say farewell to the Emperor before his departure to Terra, after two centuries of personal leadership. We wept as he announced his retirement from the field. Can you picture that, Mersadie? A hundred thousand warriors, weeping?’
She nodded. ‘I think it was a shame no remembrancers were there to witness it. It was a moment that comes only once every epoch.’
‘It was a private affair.’
She laughed again. ‘A hundred thousand present, a continent levelled for the event, and it was a private affair?’
Loken looked at her. ‘Even now, you don’t understand us, do you? You still think on a very human scale.’
‘I stand corrected,’ she replied.
‘I meant no offence,’ he said, noticing her expression, ‘but it was a private affair. A ceremony. A hundred thousand Astartes. Eight million army regulars. Legions of Titan war machines, like forests of steel. Armour units by the hundred, formations of tanks, thousands upon thousands. Warships filling the low orbit, eclipsed by the squadrons of aircraft flying over in unending echelons. Banners and standards, so many banners and standards.’
He fell silent for a moment, remembering. ‘The Mechanicum had made a roadway. Half a kilometre wide, and five hundred kilometres long, a straight line across the stage they had levelled. On each side of this road, every five metres, was an iron post topped with the skull of a greenskin, trophies of the Ullanor war. Beyond the roadway, to either hand, promethium fires burned in rockcrete basins. For five hundred kilometres. The heat was intense. We marched along the roadway in review, passing below the dais on which the Emperor stood, beneath a steel-scale canopy. The dais was the only raised structure the Mechanicum had left, the root of an old mountain. We marched in review, and then assembled on the wide plain below the dais.’
‘Who marched?’
‘All of us. Fourteen Legions were represented, either in total or by a company. The others were engaged in wars too remote to allow them to attend. The Luna Wolves were there en mass, of course. Nine primarchs were there, Mersadie. Nine. Horus, Dorn, Angron, Fulgrim, Lorgar, Mortarion, Sanguinius, Magnus, the Kahn. The rest had sent ambassadors. Such a spectacle. You cannot imagine.’
‘I’m still trying.’
Loken shook his head. ‘I’m still trying to believe I was there.’
‘What were they like?’
‘You think I met them? I was just another brother-warrior marching in the file. In my life, lady, I have seen almost all of the primarchs at one time or another, but mostly from a distance. I’ve personally spoken to two of them. Until my election to the Mournival, I didn’t move in such elevated circles. I know the primarchs as distant figures. At the Triumph, I could barely believe so many were present.’
‘But still, you had impressions?’
‘Indelible impressions. Each one, so mighty, so huge and so proud. They seemed to embody human characteristics. Angron, red and angry; Dorn solid and implacable; Magnus, veiled in mystery, and Sanguinius, of course. So perfect. So charismatic.’
‘I’ve heard this of him.’
‘Then you’ve heard the truth.’
HIS LONG BLACK hair was pressed down by the weight of the shawl of gold chain he wore across his head. The edges of it framed his solemn features. He had marked his cheeks with grey ash in mourning.
/>
An attendant stood by with ink pot and brush to paint the ritual tears of grief on his cheeks, but Primarch Sanguinius shook his head, making the chain shawl clink. ‘I have real tears,’ he said.
He turned, not to his brother Horus, but to Torgaddon.
‘Show me, Tarik,’ he said.
Torgaddon nodded. The wind moaned around the still figures assembled on the lonely hillside, and rain pattered off their armour plate. Torgaddon gestured, and Tarvitz, Bulle and Lucius stepped forwards, holding out the dirty relics.
‘These men, my lord,’ Torgaddon said, his voice unusually shaky, ‘these Children of the Emperor, recovered these remains selflessly, and it is fit they offer them to you themselves.’
‘You did this honour?’ Sanguinius asked Tarvitz.
‘I did, my lord.’
Sanguinius took the battered Astartes helm from Tarvitz’s hands and studied it. He towered over the captain, his golden plate badged with rubies and bright jewels, and marked, like the armour of the Warmaster, with the unblinking eye of terra. Sanguinius’s vast wings, like the pinions of a giant eagle, were furled against his back, and hung with silver bands and loops of pearls.
Sanguinius turned the helm over in his hands, and regarded the armourer’s mark inside the rim.
‘Eight knight leopard,’ he said.
At his side, Chapter Master Raldoron began to inspect the manifest.
‘Don’t trouble yourself, Ral,’ Sanguinius told him. ‘I know the mark. Captain Thoros. He will be missed.’
Sanguinius handed the helm to Raldoron and nodded to Tarvitz. ‘Thank you for this kindness, captain,’ he said. He looked across at Eidolon. ‘And to you, sir, my gratitude that you came to Frome’s help so urgently.’
Eidolon bowed, and seemed to ignore the dark glare the Warmaster was casting in his direction.
Sanguinius turned to Torgaddon. ‘And to you, Tarik, most of all. For breaking this nightmare open.’
‘I do only what my Warmaster instructs me,’ Torgaddon replied.
Sanguinius looked over at Horus. ‘Is that right?’
‘Tarik had some latitude,’ Horus smiled. He stepped forwards and embraced Sanguinius to his breast. No two primarchs were as close as the Warmaster and the Angel. They had barely been out of each other’s company since Sanguinius’s arrival.
The majestic Lord of the Blood Angels, the IX Legion Astartes, stepped back, and looked out across the forlorn landscape. Around the base of the ragged hill, hundreds of armoured figures waited in silence. The vast majority wore either the hard white of the Luna Wolves or the arterial red of the Angels, save for the remnants of the detachment of Emperor’s Children, a small knot of purple and gold. Behind the Astartes, the war machines waited in the rain, silent and black, ringing the gathering like spectral mourners. Beyond them, the hosts of the Imperial army stood in observance, banners flapping sluggishly in the cold breeze. Their armoured vehicles and troop carriers were drawn up in echelon, and many of the soldiers had clambered up to stand on the hulls to get a better view of the proceedings.
Torgaddon’s speartip had razed a large sector of the landscape, demolishing stone trees wherever they could be found, and thus taming the formidable weather in this part of Murder. The sky had faded to a mottled powder-grey, ran through with thin white bars of cloud, and rain fell softly and persistently, reducing visibility in the distances to a foggy blur. At the Warmaster’s command, the main force of the assembled Imperial ships had made planetfall in the comparative safely of the storm-free zone.
‘In the old philosophies of Terra,’ Sanguinius said, ‘so I have read, vengeance was seen as a weak motive and a flaw of the spirit. It is hard for me to feel so noble today. I would cleanse this rock in the memory of my lost brothers, and their kin who died trying to save them.’
The Angel looked at his primarch brother. ‘But that is not necessary. Vengeance is not necessary. There is xenos here, implacable alien menace that rejects any civilised intercourse with mankind, and has greeted us with murder and murder alone. That suffices. As the Emperor, beloved by all, has taught us, since the start of our crusade, what is anathema to mankind must be dealt with directly to ensure the continued survival of the Imperium. Will you stand with me?’
‘We will murder Murder together,’ Horus replied.
ONCE THOSE WORDS were spoken, the Astartes went to war for six months. Supported by the army and the devices of the Mechanicum, they assaulted the bleak, shivering latitudes of the world called Murder, and laid waste the megarachnid.
It was a glorious war, in many ways, and not an easy one. No matter how many of them were slaughtered, the megarachnid did not cower or turn in retreat. It seemed as if they had no will, nor any spirit, to be broken. They came on and on, issuing forth from cracks and crevasses in the ruddy land, day after day, set for further dispute. At times, it felt as if there was an endless reserve of them, as if unimaginably vast nests of them infested the mantle of the planet, or as if ceaseless subterranean factories manufactured more and yet more of them every day to replace the losses delivered by the Imperial forces. For their own part, no matter how many of them they slaughtered, the warriors of the Imperium did not come to underestimate the megarachnid. They were lethal and tough, and so numerous as to put a man out of countenance. ‘The fiftieth beast I killed,’ Little Horus remarked at one stage, ‘was as hard to overcome as the first.’
Loken, like many of the Luna Wolves present, personally rejoiced in the circumstances of the conflict, for it was the first time since his election as Warmaster that the commander had led them on the field. Early on, in the command habitent one rainy evening, the Mournival had gently tried to dissuade Horus from field operations. Abaddon had attempted, deftly, to portray the Warmaster’s role and importance as a thing of a much higher consequence than martial engagement.
‘Am I not fit for it?’ Horus had scowled, the rain drumming on the canopy overhead.
‘I mean you are too precious for it, lord,’ Abaddon had countered. ‘This is one world, one field of war. The Emperor has charged you with the concerns of all worlds and all fields. Your scope is—’
‘Ezekyle…’ The Warmaster’s tone had betrayed a warning note, and he had switched to Cthonic, a clear sign his mind was on war and nothing else, ‘…do not presume to instruct me on my duties.’
‘Lord, I would not!’ Abaddon exclaimed immediately, with a respectful bow.
‘Precious is the word,’ Aximand had put in quickly, coming to Abaddon’s aid. If you were to be wounded, to fall even, it would—’
Horus rose, glaring. ‘Now you deride my abilities as a warrior, little one? Have you grown soft since my ascendance?’
‘No, my lord, no…’
Only Torgaddon, it seemed, had noticed the glimmer of amusement behind the Warmaster’s pantomime of anger.
‘We’re only afraid you won’t leave any glory for us,’ he said.
Horus began to laugh. Realising he had been playing with them, the members of the Mournival began to laugh too. Horus cuffed Abaddon across the shoulder and pinched Aximand’s cheek.
‘We’ll war this together, my sons,’ he said. ‘That is how I was made. If I had suspected, back at Ullanor, that the rank of Warmaster would require me to relinquish the glories of the field forever, I would not have accepted it. Someone else could have taken the honour. Guilliman or the Lion, perhaps. They ache for it, after all.’
More loud amusement followed. The laughter of Cthonians is dark and hard, but the laughter of Luna Wolves is a harder thing altogether.
Afterwards, Loken wondered if the Warmaster had not been using his sly political skills yet again. He had avoided the central issue entirely, and deflected their concerns with good humour and an appeal to their code as warriors. It was his way of telling them that, for all their good counsel, there were some matters on which his mind would not be swayed. Loken was sure that Sanguinius was the reason. Horus could not bring himself to stand by and watch his dearest br
other go to war. Horus could not resist the temptation of fighting shoulder to shoulder with Sanguinius, as they had done in the old days.
Horus would not let himself be outshone, even by the one he loved most dearly.
To see them together on the battlefield was a heart-stopping thing. Two gods of war, raging at the head of a tide of red and white. Dozens of times, they accomplished victories in partnership on Murder that should, had what followed been any different, become deeds as lauded and immortal as Ullanor or any other great triumph.
Indeed the war as a whole produced many extraordinary feats that posterity ought to have celebrated, especially now the remembrancers were amongst them.
Like all her kind, Mersadie Oliton was not permitted to descend to the surface with the fighting echelons, but she absorbed every detail transmitted back from the surface, the daily ebb and flow of the brutal warfare, the losses and the gains. When, periodically, Loken returned with his company to the flagship to rest, repair and re-arm, she quizzed him furiously, and made him describe all he had seen. Horus and Sanguinius, side by side, was what interested her the most, but she was captivated by all his accounts.
Many battles had been vast, pitched affairs, where thousands of Astartes led tens of thousands of army troopers against endless files of the megarachnid. Loken struggled to find the language to describe it, and sometimes felt himself, foolishly, borrowing lurid turns of phrase he had picked up from The Chronicles of Ursh. He told her of the great things he had witnessed, the particular moments. How Luc Sedirae had led his company against a formation of megarachnid twenty-five deep and one hundred across, and splintered it in under half an hour. How Sacrus Carminus, Captain of the Blood Angels Third Company, had held the line against a buzzing host of winged clades through one long, hideous afternoon. How Iacton Qruze, despite his stubborn, tiresome ways, had broken the back of a surprise megarachnid assault, and proved there was mettle in him still. How Tybalt Marr, ‘the Either’, had taken the low mountains in two days and elevated himself at last into the ranks of the exceptional. How the megarachnid had revealed more, and yet more nightmarish biological variations, including massive clades that strode forwards like armoured war machines, and how the Titans of the Mechanicum, led at the van by the Dies Irae of the Legio Mortis, smote them apart and trampled their blackened wing cases underfoot. How Saul Tarvitz, fighting at Torgaddon’s side rather than in the cohort of his arrogant lord Eidolon, renewed the Luna Wolves’ respect for the Emperor’s Children through several feats of arms.