The Crimson King

  Lucius still sported the perfect likeness of the Phoenician’s face – insult and adoration all in one. He raised a questioning eyebrow, and Hathor Maat gave an imperceptible nod in return. The swordsman’s grin spread even wider, and his fingers laced around the wire-wrapped grip of his sword.

  Lucius sauntered over to where Sanakht tended to his blades.

  He reached down and gripped Sanakht’s wrist.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how sharp you make them, you’ll never be good enough to beat me,’ said Lucius.

  Sanakht’s head snapped up, all lethargy and distraction gone in a heartbeat.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said that I’ll beat you however sharp you make them.’

  ‘Are you really doing this?’ said Sanakht. ‘Here? Now?’

  Lucius shrugged. ‘I’m bored.’

  Sanakht stood, his legs uncoiling to move him from a seated position to standing without apparent effort. His swords, one of black, one of white, flashed to his sides, quivering with motion.

  ‘Then find some other distraction,’ warned Sanakht, turning away from Lucius.

  ‘On this ship?’ said Lucius, following Sanakht as he moved away. ‘There are no other distractions apart from you.’

  ‘We fought at my tower,’ snapped Sanakht. ‘Had the battle been to the death, we would both have perished. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ said Lucius. ‘Maybe I want to see if there’s anyone good enough to put me down. I’d hoped it would be you, but I think I was wrong.’

  Sanakht’s grip tightened on the hilts of his swords.

  ‘Must you do this now?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Lucius, pressing in close to Sanakht, speaking barely an inch from his face. ‘Do you think every battle will be fought at your convenience? Is that the only way you can be sure of winning, by having everything just so?’

  ‘Why are you doing this? Really?’

  ‘Because I have to kill you,’ said Lucius. ‘I can’t bear to look at you knowing you might be better than me. I need to know. Either I kill you and know I’m better, or you slay me and I won’t have to look at your simpering face a moment longer.’

  ‘Meet me in the arming halls in thirty minutes and we will cut to the heart of the matter.’

  ‘Thirty minutes?’ said Lucius, shaking his head. ‘I’m afraid that won’t do. I need to know now.’

  ‘Then prepare for disappointment,’ said Sanakht.

  ‘That’s the one thing I never do,’ said Lucius.

  Sanakht spun and crouched, crossing both swords over his head as Lucius’ blade swung down in an overhand cut. The clash of their blades was deafening in the close confines of the bridge.

  Camille screamed and hugged the pillar of the lectern as the two blademasters fought in a flurry of lightning-swift blows. Sparks flew from their weapons as they surged back and forth across the deck. Hathor Maat watched the dazzling skill on display in awe, their blades moving too fast to follow.

  The sudden burst of activity galvanised the Thousand Sons like a jolt of electricity to the heart. Tolbek leapt to his feet with a roar, sparks guttering at his fingertips where once roaring flames would have seethed.

  Ignis paused in his recitations and focused all of his attention on the combat, assimilating a thousand new variables into his mystic calculations. Aforgomon moved to stand between Hathor Maat and the battling swordsmen.

  Hathor Maat moved swiftly.

  He crossed the deck in three strides and stood before the Book of Magnus. His gloved hand trembled as he lifted it towards his primarch’s book.

  Could he really do this?

  The enormity of what he was attempting struck him like a blow. This was the life’s work of Magnus the Red, the grimoire that contained his every secret, every parable of wisdom.

  Could he really deface his father’s great work?

  The skin beneath his glove rippled and the decision was made. With great effort, he lifted his mind into the fourth enumeration and placed his hand firmly on the open book. He gasped, as if he had just plunged it into a vat of liqnite.

  The power contained within the book’s limitless pages surged through him. Hathor Maat saw a world ocean stretching out before him, a world of infinite memory and wisdom, a place where nothing was ever forgotten and everything could be known.

  Hathor Maat angrily blinked away the far-distant world and forced his mind back to the present. It would not take long for the duel between Sanakht and Lucius to be ended, but he only needed a moment.

  The words in the Book of Magnus had been inscribed by the remembrancer Mahavastu Kallimakus, a mortal scrivener whose hand had been wielded by the primarch to compile his great work. Hathor Maat felt the vanished man’s presence in every etched syllable, formula, incantation and cursive pen stroke.

  The sounds of the fighting swordsmen faded as Hathor Maat poured his Pavoni powers into the book. He felt it resist, for words were stubborn and numbers irrational, but he exerted his will into the ink itself, the pigments of its tallows, its acids and gall.

  The ink writhed under his touch, fighting him with all the power that had been poured into its creation. Hathor Maat pushed himself into the eighth enumeration, enacting thought forms more suited to combat. Every change he forced into the book restored itself moments later, but he widened his attack, utilising every arte of the Pavoni to effect change.

  Powerful wards arose from the heart of the grimoire, deep-buried defences that now recognised the threat Hathor Maat represented. A terrible heat grew beneath Hathor Maat’s hand, and his glove blew away in floating cinders. His eyes burned and he blinked away spots of light and a burning sensation building behind them as a crimson veil fell over his vision.

  He glanced away, but all attention was on the swordsmen. He heard Lucius cry out. Had Sanakht actually landed a blow?

  Beneath him, Camille Shivani looked up, watching what he did. Her face hardened and she gave him a slow nod of approval at his sabotage.

  With the last of his powers, Hathor Maat threw a final surge of biomantic energy into the book’s ink, his power detonating like a frag grenade in the midst of a lengthy treatise on the mechanics of immaterial transmutation.

  He pulled his hand from the book, breathless and all but exhausted. The bones in his fingers curdled with motion, and sweat coated his skin like a layer of oil. The bloody hue still veiled his sight and he wiped his eyes. His hand came away smeared with grit and dust.

  Hathor Maat looked down at the book. One by one the changes he had wrought on the page were being undone. Every letter, every number, every alchymical symbol he had changed within the Book of Magnus was reverting back to its original form.

  All save one.

  An insignificant portion, an addendum really. Formulae sequences scribbled in a margin as an afterthought.

  A passage of no real relevance.

  But Hathor Maat recalled something Amon used to say, and a slow smile spread across his lips. When hammering home the value of attention to detail, the primarch’s equerry had been fond of using the construction of the Pyramid of Photep as a living allegory.

  Small perturbations we miss or ignore, tiny flaws we regard as inconsequential… They have far-reaching consequences.

  ‘As above, so below,’ whispered Hathor Maat.

  Even now, many hours after his death, blood still flowed from Jambik Sosruko’s wounds, as if his mighty heart refused to accept the truth of his death. The migou’s body was covered with a heavy tarpaulin, its form too large to fit in any of the mortuary’s corpse compartments.

  The space was brightly lit, all sterile steel, gleaming porcelain tiles and humming banks of chirurgical machinery. The wall behind Chaiya was lined with polished steel vaults for storing bodies, each one another life ended on the altar of this senseless war.

 
Chaiya placed a hand over the migou’s breast, half expecting his wide chest to rise as breath filled his lungs. The mortal wounds inflicted by two Wolves were too thorough in the harm they had wreaked for even a warrior as mighty as Jambik Sosruko to survive.

  ‘He didn’t deserve this,’ she said, her breath misting in the chill air of the mortuary.

  ‘Few of us get what we truly deserve,’ said Promus, standing across from her with his arms folded. The towering legionary’s armour matched his surroundings, as though he were a harvester of souls for this place of the dead.

  ‘Perhaps we should,’ she said. ‘For good or ill.’

  Yasu Nagasena circled the dead body, reciting something in a singsong tongue she did not understand. He kept one hand on the grip of his sword, the other clasped over his heart.

  ‘What are you doing, Yasu?’ asked Promus.

  ‘He gives the beast a warrior’s sending,’ said Bjarki, from the far end of the chamber. The Rune Priest pressed a heavy, gold-chased pistol into the neck of a kneeling legionary with a heavy spiked collar around his neck. Coiling tattoos on his fettered arms identified the captive as one of the Thousand Sons.

  Menkaura. She’d been told his name was Menkaura.

  ‘It all comes down to death, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘No matter how you dress up what you set out to achieve in the Great Crusade, you cannot change what you are.’

  ‘What do you think we are?’ asked Menkaura.

  Bjarki jerked the chain taut, drawing a grunt of pain from Menkaura and blood from his neck.

  ‘You don’t talk unless I tell you to talk, remember?’ said Bjarki. ‘That was the rule, ja?’

  Menkaura slowly nodded, careful to avoid pricking his neck on the collar. Chaiya answered him anyway.

  ‘You are killers. Enders of lives. Destroyers.’

  ‘We are all only what these dark times have made us, lady,’ said Promus. ‘The Warmaster’s treachery has upset the natural order of the galaxy and none of us are on the paths we chose to walk.’

  Chaiya moved around the slab upon which Jambik Sosruko lay and stood defiantly before Promus. Anger darkened her skin and she felt her fingers curl into fists.

  ‘And what has your war to do with me? Why was I pulled into your fight? What gave you the right to imprison me for years and separate me from the person I love most in the world?’

  ‘This war affects us all,’ said Promus. ‘From the Emperor down to the least of His subjects.’

  ‘Do you even know why the Warmaster rebels against the Emperor?’ shouted Chaiya, slamming her fists against Promus’ chest. ‘Do you? What grievance does he have that necessitates dragging the entire galaxy down into such terrible bloodshed?’

  She hammered her fists against his breastplate until they were bloody. Red handprints smeared the metal, and Chaiya sobbed as Promus let her vent her rage and grief upon him.

  ‘I cannot answer you, lady,’ said Promus. ‘But before this is over, the Emperor will drag that answer from Horus’ heart.’

  Menkaura laughed, the sound mirthless and despairing.

  ‘They can’t answer you, lady,’ he said. ‘They can’t answer you because they don’t know.’

  Bjarki cracked the butt of his pistol against the back of Menkaura’s head. The legionary grunted, but bore the pain stoically. He turned his head and sneered at the Wolf.

  ‘I told you not to talk!’ roared Bjarki.

  ‘No,’ said Chaiya, turning from Promus and cradling her bruised hands. ‘I want to hear what he has to say.’

  Menkaura took a breath to clear his head. He looked up at her and she saw him recognise the shape and form of her bone structure. She folded her arms across her chest, lest he take her Prosperine origins as a sign of favour.

  ‘Bödvar Bjarki can beat me all he wants, but it will not change anything. The Warmaster has aligned himself with the darkest powers of the warp, and a corruption worms its way deeper into his heart with every passing day. None of the Emperor’s sons know why Horus Lupercal has turned, and none of them want to know.’

  Chaiya stood before Menkaura and looked him straight in the eye. Once she had counted his Legion as the protectors of her home world, as warriors to be admired and lauded as much for their wisdom as their skill in warmaking.

  ‘Why would they not want to know?’ she asked.

  ‘Because they fear what they might learn,’ said Menkaura, turning his gaze on Promus. ‘Isn’t that what you are afraid of? What you are really afraid of?’

  Chaiya flinched as Bjarki struck the captive warrior again. Blood and teeth flew from the impact. The Wolf jammed the barrel of the gun under Menkaura’s jaw, his finger a hair’s breadth from applying the pressure required to fire it.

  ‘Understand this, traitor, you live only because Promus has not seen what I have seen. He was not on Prospero to witness the maleficarum you and your primarch unleashed. He does not yet understand how dangerous you are.’

  Menkaura licked a tongue across his bloodied lips.

  ‘You are right,’ said Menkaura, spitting a mouthful of blood to the tiled floor of the mortuary. ‘I am dangerous. More dangerous than you can imagine, and yet I am the least warlike of my brothers. So imagine how dangerous my entire Legion could have been, standing firm against Horus and shoulder to shoulder with yours.’

  Chaiya saw the murderous anger drain from Bjarki. Not entirely, never that, but enough to remove the threat of Menkaura’s imminent death.

  ‘Would that it could have been so, but that was not the wyrd,’ said Bjarki. ‘The wyrd says we are to be enemies, so here you are with my gun in your face.’

  ‘I wonder, could it ever have been different?’ asked Menkaura.

  ‘Some things are not for us to know,’ said Bjarki.

  ‘Everything is for us to know,’ said Menkaura.

  Yasu Nagasena stepped in close as Bjarki’s hackles rose. He placed a hand on the plates of his shoulder guard, looking absurdly small next to the Wolf.

  ‘I do not pretend to understand this wyrd of yours, Bjarki,’ he said, ‘but does not the fact that Menkaura is here, right now, speak to the fact that we need him?’

  Bjarki shrugged. ‘Perhaps. He is here and we will make use of him. That is as much as I know, but wyrd is not that simple. Do not interpret it in a way that fits the facts you want it to fit.’

  Nagasena gave Bjarki a tight bow before turning back to look at Chaiya. His eyes were a warm honey-gold and fixed her with a stare of such intensity that it made her take a backward step.

  ‘The card Lady Veleda held just before she died,’ he said. ‘You saw it, yes?’

  ‘I did,’ said Chaiya.

  ‘Clearly?’

  ‘Only for a second, but yes.’

  ‘Then describe it to him,’ said Nagasena, gesturing towards Menkaura.

  Chaiya nodded and focused her mind, trying to piece together the varied parts of the card, knowing Lady Veleda’s legacy depended upon her. The image of the card floated in her mind, and she used the mental training she had learned on Prospero to sharpen its picture.

  ‘A divine figure bearing a fiery sword in his right hand and an eagle-topped globe in his left,’ said Chaiya. ‘Angels fly above the figure, blowing golden trumpets from which hang silk banners.’

  Menkaura let out a sound that was half sigh and half sob.

  ‘Do you recognise this card?’ asked Nagasena, unable to conceal the edge of desperation in his voice.

  Menkaura nodded, his face downcast. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It is the Judgement card,’ said Menkaura, and Chaiya saw Bjarki and Promus stiffen in response.

  Nagasena saw it too. ‘What does it signify?’ he asked.

  ‘Ask Promus,’ said Menkaura. ‘He was there.’

  ‘Dio?’

  Promus hesita
ted before answering.

  ‘Nikaea.’

  Twenty-One

  Degeneration

  Souls collide

  Dark rebirth

  Amon found his father bathed in blood.

  A storm raged in a lacerated sky, but that was nothing new for the Planet of the Sorcerers in these troubled times. On a world of inconstancy, destructive storms of aether-fire were the only things that now never changed.

  But this was no natural storm, if anything on this benighted world could be counted natural. It rained blood, and flames burned skywards at the heart of a crude city of fallen menhirs, nestled in the cheerless foothills of mountains carved from smoked glass.

  Amon’s Stormbird growled with hostility at the edge of the city, its engines powering down as he made his way through the primitive settlement. A pair of servitors followed him, guiding the golden support throne that had once aided the healing processes of his shattered spine.

  Blood-matted corpses were strewn everywhere, bestial things of hoof and horn that might once have been men. Their bodies lay in shredded chunks, as though they had been fed into a giant threshing machine. Arcing loops of blood had painted the ancient stones, and Amon saw geometric significance in each intersecting line, every cursive spray. The rain was washing them away, and Amon trudged through sucking mud that bubbled red around his boots.

  He followed a path of murder through the city, eventually arriving at a circle of hard-packed earth with a towering idol at its centre – a vaguely avian thing with curling, eye-tipped antlers and wings fashioned from beaten metal and driftwood.

  Where had the beasts acquired driftwood?

  Standing before the great idol and looking up through the rain in confusion was Magnus the Red. At this moment, the primarch’s name was aptly earned, for he was drenched from head to foot in his victims’ blood.

  Hundreds of the slain beasts surrounded him, and his khopesh blade was slathered with gore. Magnus turned towards Amon, his expression hard to read beneath the red rain washing his skin. The primarch stared at him for long seconds, illusory breath heaving in lungs that did not truly exist.