Solomon rolled to avoid a stamping foot that would surely have crushed his skull, and lashed out once more. This time, his blade hacked through the beast’s ankle, and it collapsed in a thrashing pile of limbs. Still it tried to kill him, but Solomon quickly picked himself up and stomped his boot down on the greenskin’s throat, before putting a pair of bolt shells through its skull.
Gaius Caphen struggled with a greenskin a head taller than him, its great, motorised axe slashing for his head with every stroke. Solomon shot it in the face and ducked as yet another greenskin came at him. All shape to the battle was lost as each warrior fought his own private war, all skill reduced to survival and killing.
It couldn’t end this way. A lifetime of glory and honour couldn’t end at the hands of the greenskins. He had fought side by side with some of the Imperium’s greatest heroes, and there was no way he was going to die fighting a foe as inglorious as these brutes.
Unfortunately, he thought wryly, they didn’t seem to know that.
Where in the name of Terra were Julius and Marius?
He saw a pair of his warriors borne to the deck by a pack of howling greenskins, a roaring axe hacking their Mark IV plate to splintered ruins. Another was ripped almost in two by a close range burst from a monstrous rotary cannon that was carried by a greenskin as though it weighed no more than a pistol.
Even as he watched these tragedies play out, a rusted cleaver smote him in the chest and hurled him backwards. His armour split under the impact and he coughed blood, looking up into the snarling, fanged gorge of the greenskin leader. The hissing, wheezing armour enlarged its burly physique, its muscles powered by mighty pistons and roaring bellows.
Solomon rolled aside as the cleaver arced towards him, crying out as splintered ends of bone ground together in his chest. Momentary pain paralysed him, but even as he awaited another attack, he heard the sound of massed bolter fire and the high-pitched whine of a hundred chainswords.
The greenskin before him looked up in response to the sound, and Solomon did not waste his opportunity, unloading his weapon full in its face, pulping its thickly-boned skull in a torrent of explosive shells.
Its metal exo-skeleton kept it on its feet, but suddenly the greenskin force was in disarray as newly arrived Emperor’s Children tore into the battle, delivering point blank shots from bolt pistols, or cutting limbs and heads from bodies with precisely aimed sword blows.
In moments, the fighting was done as the last pockets of greenskin warriors were isolated into smaller and smaller knots of resistance, and were mercilessly gunned down by the new arrivals. Solomon watched the extermination with cold admiration, for the killings were achieved with a perfection he had not seen in some time.
Gaius Caphen, bloodied and battered, but alive, helped him to his feet, and Solomon smiled despite the pain in his cracked ribs.
‘I told you Julius and Marius wouldn’t let us down,’ he said.
Caphen shook his head as the captains who led the relief force marched over towards them. ‘That’s not who came.’
Solomon looked up in confusion as the nearest warrior removed his helm.
‘I heard you could use some help, and thought we’d lend a hand,’ said Saul Tarvitz. Behind Tarvitz, Solomon saw the unmistakable swagger of the swordsman, Lucius.
‘What about the Third and the First?’ he hissed, the fact that his battle-brothers had forsaken the Second more painful than any wound.
Tarvitz shrugged apologetically. ‘I don’t know. We were beginning our push to the main control centre and heard your request for support.’
‘It’s a good thing we did,’ said Lucius, his scarred face twisted in amusement. ‘Looks like you needed the help.’
Solomon felt like punching the arrogant bastard, but held his tongue, for the swordsman was right. Without their aid, he and his warriors would have been slaughtered.
‘I’m grateful, Captain Tarvitz,’ he said, ignoring Lucius.
Tarvitz bowed and said, ‘The honour is mine, Captain Demeter, but I must regretfully take my leave of you. We must move on our primary objective.’
‘Yes,’ said Solomon, waving him away. ‘Go. Do the Legion proud.’
Tarvitz threw him a quick martial salute and turned away, sliding his helmet back on and issuing orders to his warriors. Lucius gave him a mock bow and saluted him with the energised edge of his blade before joining his fellow captain.
Julius and Marius had not come.
‘Where were you?’ he whispered, but no one answered him.
‘MY LORD !’ CRIED Vespasian, marching into Fulgrim’s staterooms without pause or ceremony. The lord commander was arrayed in his battle armour, the smooth plates oiled and polished to a reflective finish. His face was flushed and his stride urgent as he made his way through the mess of broken marble and half-finished canvases, towards where Fulgrim sat in contemplation before a pair of statues carved to represent the captains of two of his battle companies.
Fulgrim looked up as he approached, and Vespasian was struck again by the change that had come over his primarch since they had taken their leave of the 63rd Expedition. The four week journey to the Callinedes system had been one of the strangest times Vespasian could remember, his primarch sullen and withdrawn and the soul of the Legion in turmoil. As more and more of Apothecary Fabius’s chemicals were introduced to the Legion’s blood, only a blind man could fail to see the decline in the Legion’s moral fibre. With Fulgrim’s and Eidolon’s sanction, few of the Legion’s captains were willing to resist the slide into decadent arrogance.
Only a very few of Vespasian’s companies still held to the ideals that had founded the Legion, and he was at a loss as to know how to stop the rot. With the orders coming directly from Fulgrim and Eidolon, the rigid command structure of the Emperor’s Children allowed little, if any, room for leeway in the interpretation of their orders.
Vespasian had requested an audience with Fulgrim all through the journey to the Callinedes system, and though his exalted rank would normally entitle him to such a meeting without question, his requests had been denied. As he had watched the battle hololiths from the Heliopolis, and seen Solomon Demeter’s company abandoned, he had decided to take matters into his own hands.
‘Vespasian?’ said Fulgrim, his pale features energised as he returned his gaze to the statues before him. ‘How goes the battle?’
Vespasian controlled his temper and forced himself to be calm. ‘The battle will be won soon, my lord, but—’
‘Good,’ interrupted Fulgrim. Vespasian now saw that his lord and master had three swords laid out before him. Fireblade lay pointed at a statue of Marius Vairosean, the damnable silver sword of the Laer pointed at one of Julius Kaesoron. A weapon with a glittering grey blade and golden hilt lay in a shattered pile of marble sitting between the two statues, and Vespasian could see from the remains of a carved face that the statue had once been of Solomon Demeter.
‘My lord,’ pressed Vespasian, ‘why were Captains Vairosean and Kaesoron held back from supporting Captain Demeter? But for the intervention of Tarvitz and Lucius, Solomon’s men would be dead.’
‘Tarvitz and Lucius saved Captain Demeter?’ asked Fulgrim, and Vespasian was shocked to see a hint of annoyance surface on Fulgrim’s face. ‘How… courageous of them.’
‘They shouldn’t have needed to,’ said Vespasian. ‘Julius and Marius were supposed to support the Second, but they were held back. Why?’
‘Are you questioning me, Vespasian?’ asked Fulgrim. ‘I am enacting the Warmaster’s will. Do you dare to suggest that you know better than he how we should prosecute this foe?’
Vespasian was stunned at Fulgrim’s pronouncement and said, ‘With all due respect, my lord, the Warmaster is not here. How can he know how best to prosecute the greenskins?’
Fulgrim smiled, and lifting the grey sheened sword from the remains of Solomon’s statue he said, ‘Because he knows that this battle is not about the greenskins.’
‘Then
what is it about, my lord?’ demanded Vespasian. ‘I should dearly wish to know.’
‘It is about righting a monstrous wrong that has been done to us, and purging our ranks of those without the strength to do what must be done. The Warmaster moves on the Isstvan system and on its bloody fields a reckoning will take place.’
‘The Isstvan system?’ asked Vespasian. ‘I don’t understand. Why is the Warmaster moving on the Isstvan system?’
‘Because it is there that we will cross the Rubicon, my dear Vespasian,’ said Fulgrim, his voice choked with emotion. ‘There, we will take the first steps on the new path the Warmaster forges; a path that will lead to the establishment of a new and glorious order of perfection and wonder.’
Vespasian fought to keep up with Fulgrim’s rapid delivery and confused ramblings. His eyes flickered to the sword in the primarch’s hand, feeling a dreadful threat from the blade, as though the weapon itself were a sentient thing and desired his death. He shook off such superstitious nonsense and said, ‘Permission to speak freely, my lord?’
‘Always, Vespasian,’ said Fulgrim. ‘You must always speak freely, for where is the pleasure to be had in our facility for locution if we restrain ourselves from freedom? Tell me, have you heard of a philosopher of Old Earth called Cornelius Blayke?’
‘No, my lord, but—’
‘Oh, you must read him, Vespasian,’ said Fulgrim, guiding him towards a great canvas at the end of the stateroom. ‘Julius introduced me to his works, and I can barely conceive of how I endured this long without them. Evander Tobias thinks highly of him, though an old man such as he is beyond making use of such raptures as may be found locked within the pages of Blayke’s work.’
‘My lord, please!’
Fulgrim held up a hand to silence him as they arrived at the canvas, and the primarch turned him around to face it. ‘Hush, Vespasian, there is something I wish you to see.’
Vespasian’s questions fled from his mind at the horror of the picture before him, the image of his primarch distorted and leering, the flesh pulled tight over protruding bones and the mouth twisted with the anticipation of imminent violence and violation. The figure’s armour was a loathsome parody of the proud, noble form of Mark IV plate, its every surface covered with bizarre symbols that appeared to writhe on the canvas, as though the thick layers of stinking paint had been applied over a host of living worms.
It was in the eyes, however, that Vespasian saw the greatest evil. They burned with the light of secret knowledge, and of things done in the name of experience that it would sear his soul to know but a fraction of. No vileness was beyond this apparition, no depths too low to embrace, and no practice too vile to be indulged in.
As he stared into the lidless eyes of the image, they fixed upon him, and he felt the painting’s leprous visage peel back the layers of his soul as it hunted for the darkness within him that it would bring forth and nurture. The sense of violation was horrific. He dropped to his knees as he fought to avert his gaze from the burning cruelty of the painting, and the terrifying void that existed beyond its eyes. He saw the birth and death of universes in the wheeling stars of its eyes, and the futility of his feeble race in denying their every whim.
The painting’s lips bulged, twisting in a rictus grin.
Give in to me… it seemed to say… Expose your deepest desires to me.
Vespasian felt every corner of his being dredged for darkness and spite, bitterness and bile, but his soul soared as he sensed the growing frustration of the violator as it found nothing to sink its claws into. Its anger grew, and as it did, so too did his strength. He tore his eyes from the painting, feeling its anger at the purity of his desires. He tried to reach for his sword to destroy this creation of evil, but the painting’s monstrous will held his power of action locked in the prison of his flesh.
He harbours nothing, said the horrifying painting in disgust. He is worthless. Kill him.
‘Vespasian,’ said Fulgrim above him, and he had the vivid sensation that the primarch was not talking to him, but was addressing the sword itself.
He fought in vain to turn his head, feeling the sharp prick of the sword point laid against his neck. He tried to cry out, to warn Fulgrim of what he had seen, but his throat felt as though bands of iron had clamped around it, his muscles locked to immobility by the power of the image before him.
‘Energy is an eternal delight,’ whispered Fulgrim, ‘and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. You could have stood at my right hand, Vespasian, but you have shown that you are a pestilence within the ranks of the Emperor’s Children. You must be cut out.’
Vespasian felt the pressure on the back of his neck grow stronger, the tip of the sword breaking skin and warm blood trickling down his neck.
‘Don’t do this,’ he managed to hiss.
Fulgrim paid his words no heed and, with one smooth motion, drove the blade of the anathame downwards through Vespasian’s spine, and into his chest cavity until the golden quillons rested to either side of the nape of his neck.
THE CARGO DECKS of the deep orbital had been cleared of the greenskin dead by the Legion’s menials, for a portion of the Callinedes battle force to assemble and hear the words of their beloved primarch. Fulgrim marched behind a line of heralds, chosen from among the young initiates who were soon to complete their training as Emperor’s Children. The trumpeters fanned out before him, playing a blaring fanfare to announce his arrival, and a thunderous roar of applause swelled from the assembled warriors as they welcomed him.
Arrayed in his battle armour, the Primarch of the Emperor’s Children knew he was a truly magnificent sight. His face was pale and sculpted, framed by the flowing mane of his albino white hair. He wore the golden-hilted sword that he had used to slay Vespasian, belted at his hip, eager to display the bond of brotherhood that existed between him and the Warmaster.
Lord Commander Eidolon, Apothecary Fabius and Chaplain Charmosian, the senior officers of his inner circle, flanked him. They had been instrumental in spreading the clarity of the Warmaster’s vision to the warriors of the Legion. The massive Dreadnought body of Ancient Rylanor, the Emperor’s Children’s Ancient of Rites, also accompanied him, through tradition rather than loyalty to the Legion’s new vision.
Fulgrim waited graciously for the applause to die down before speaking, letting his dark eyes linger upon those he knew would follow him and ignoring those he knew would not.
‘My brothers!’ called Fulgrim, his voice lilting and golden. ‘This day you have shown the accursed greenskin what it means to stand against the Children of the Emperor!’
More applause rolled around the cargo decks, but he spoke over it, his voice easily cutting through the clamour of his warriors.
‘Commander Eidolon has wrought you into a weapon against which the greenskins had no defence. Perfection, strength, resolve: these qualities are the cutting edge of the Legion and you have shown them all here today. This orbital is in Imperial hands once more, as are the others the greenskins had occupied in the futile hope of fending off our invasion.
‘The time has come to press home this attack against the greenskins and liberate the Callinedes system! My brother primarch, Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands, and I, shall see to it that not a single alien stands upon land claimed in the name of the Crusade.’
Fulgrim could taste the expectation in the air and savoured the anticipation of his next words, knowing that they carried death for some and glory for others. The Legion awaited his orders, most of them unaware of the magnitude of what he was to command, or that the fate of the galaxy hung in the balance.
‘Most of you, my brothers, will not be there,’ said Fulgrim. He could feel the crushing weight of disappointment settle upon his warriors, and had to fight to control the wild laughter that threatened to bubble up, as they cried out at what was to be a death sentence for many of them.
‘The Legion will be divided,’ continued Fulgrim, raising his hands to stem the cries of woe and lame
ntation his words provoked. ‘I will lead a small force to join Ferrus Manus and his Iron Hands at Callinedes IV. The rest of the Legion will rendezvous with the Warmaster’s 63rd Expedition at the Isstvan system. These are the orders of the Warmaster and your primarch. Lord Commander Eidolon will lead you to Isstvan, and he will act in my stead until I can join you once more.’
‘Commander, if you please,’ said Fulgrim, gesturing Eidolon to step forwards.
Eidolon nodded and said, ‘The Warmaster has called upon us to aid his Legion in battle once more. He recognises our skills and we welcome this chance to prove our superiority. We are to halt a rebellion in the Isstvan system, but we are not to fight alone. As well as his own Legion, the Warmaster has seen fit to deploy the Death Guard and the World Eaters.’
A muttered gasp spread around the cargo bay at the mention of such brutal Legions.
Eidolon chuckled. ‘I see some of you remember fighting alongside our brother Astartes. We all know what a grim and artless business war becomes in the hands of such men, so I say this is the perfect opportunity to show the Warmaster how the Emperor’s chosen fight!’
The Legion cheered once more, and Fulgrim’s amusement turned instantly to sorrow as he understood that, but for Vespasian’s stubbornness, a great many of these warriors would have made a fine addition to the army of the Warmaster’s new crusade.
With such warriors fighting for the Warmaster, what heights of perfection would have been beyond them? Vespasian’s refusal to allow his men to sample the heady delights of Fabius’s chemical stimulants, or to undergo enhancing surgeries, had condemned the warriors once under his command to death in the Warmaster’s trap of Isstvan III. He realised he should have disposed of Vespasian much sooner, and the mixture of guilt and excitement at the deaths he had set in motion was a potent cocktail of sensations.