by Various
John was an ultra-function psyker. This was a telepresent meeting.
‘Onto us?’ asked Oll.
‘Onto you. The others don’t matter. I’m not sure why you brought them along.’
‘Company,’ said Oll. He knew that John Grammaticus would have little patience for the rationale because I didn’t want them to die.
‘You’re so sentimental, Oll. You should ditch them. You can’t take them all the way to Terra anyway. Especially not the girl. She’s live.’
‘Touched by the warp, I know.’
‘And untrained, which is worse. Come on, you know the only reason you have to go to Terra instead of me is that you’re not psi-active. A psyker can’t get in undetected. It has to be you.’
‘Okay, okay, let me worry about the girl,’ said Oll. ‘Explain about the Cabal, and how I came to be stuck here.’
‘You’re not stuck. You’re hiding. I hid you here. They’ve worked out what you’re up to and they’ve sent hunters to stop you. That last cut you made…’
‘From Ulbanuc to here?’
‘Yes. I had to steer you. If you’d made the obvious cut, it would have led you through to early colonial Cadia, and the Cabal had a kill team waiting for you there.’
Oll remembered Ulbanuc, the last stop before Andrioch. A plague cemetery world from the Age of Strife. The compass and pendulum had behaved oddly there. He’d been about to make a cut, but the needle had moved and he’d made a different cut instead. ‘That was you?’
John nodded. ‘The best I could manage. I nudged the compass so it would bring you here. Cadia was a trap. I brought you here because there is only one way in or out. It’s clear now. Go back to Ulbanuc then cut through to Cadia. You’ll be on your way again.’
‘You told me never to go back.’
‘Well, the rules change, Oll. You have to, this time. This was a hideaway, somewhere they wouldn’t think to look for you.’
‘Because of that?’ Oll asked, gesturing to the chasm that yawned beneath the causeway.
‘Right, because of that. That giant hole of cosmic nothing. Brilliant, eh?’
Oll shrugged. John began to lose his patience.
‘Go back to Ulbanuc, Oll. I’m sorry about the delay here, I really am. Go back, then cut on to Cadia. You’re so close, now.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I swear it, Oll. So close. Go back, cut again. You’ll be on your way.’
Another voice echoed in the gloom. ‘Who is this you’re talking to, Oll?’
Oll and John looked around. Katt was picking her way up the causeway towards them, frowning. Oll realised that he had been gone a while. She’d come looking for him.
‘This is John,’ he began, then stopped. ‘You can see him?’
‘Yes, silly!’
‘Of course she can, Oll,’ said John with a nervous laugh. He tapped his temple with the tip of his index finger. ‘Psyker, remember? Of course she can see me.’
He turned to face the girl.
‘I was just telling Oll the good news,’ he said. ‘It’s time to get moving again.’
Oll went very still. He watched as a handful of pebbles, just tiny flecks of stone, trickled off the causeway and plunged over the edge into the endless drop. They had been dislodged by John’s boots as he’d turned.
But John Grammaticus was just a psi-projection.
He wasn’t really there.
Oll threw his fist into John’s gut. The blow landed solidly. John staggered back, and then came clawing at Oll.
He was strong. Stronger than any human. Stronger than any Perpetual. His blow knocked Oll backwards. Sprawling, Oll landed at Katt’s feet, so dazed that he couldn’t clear his head.
‘I’ll just have to do this here, then,’ said John in a voice that wasn’t John Grammaticus’.
There was a bright flash. John was hit in the chest and knocked onto his back.
A double-pulse from a laspistol. Katt stood with the weapon braced in her hands. She didn’t like guns, but she had learned how to use them.
‘He isn’t your friend, is he?’ she asked.
Oll didn’t answer. He lunged for John in desperation. Despite the las-bolts to his chest, He was picking himself up, so Oll buried the blade of his athame dagger in John’s neck. The man spasmed wildly, then fell, his feet twitching.
Oll made sure he was dead. It wasn’t John. The corpse was too bulky. The falsehood cloak that had been woven around it was failing. Oll and Katt saw what was underneath.
‘What is it?’ asked Katt. ‘Who was he?’
‘An enemy, hunting for us. Trying to lure us into a trap.’
‘He’s so big,’ the girl murmured, more afraid now. ‘What’s that tattoo on his collarbone there? Is it a spider?’
‘No. A hydra.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means the Alpha Legion is hunting for us,’ Oll replied. But that, like most of his answers, meant nothing to her.
Oll gathered his little band together in the rotting black stone house they had been sharing.
‘Enemies are coming,’ he told them. ‘This place, it’s a snare. A dead-end. They managed to make us turn the wrong way. They’re trying to block us from Terra, which means we must be close.’
‘What do we do, Trooper Persson?’ asked Graft.
‘We have to change course. We have to follow the winds a different way for a while, until we can get back on the right bearing again.’
Rane glanced out of a broken window. ‘But we can’t go back, if it’s a trap...’ he began.
‘We can’t,’ Oll agreed. ‘The hunter had a knife like mine. Well, a little like mine. Cuts the same way. Basically, he was moving the way we move. That’s how he found us. He came from Ulbanuc on our heels, so that’s where they’re waiting for us.’
Zybes shook his head. ‘But there is no other direction. You told us, this is a dead end. The only way out is back the way we came, and killers are waiting for us there.’
Oll took a deep breath.
‘There’s one other way,’ he replied. ‘It’s dangerous. It’s extreme, but I think it could work – if you trust me, and you’re prepared to risk it. It’s the only way, apart from living here for the rest of our lives. And our enemy won’t be expecting it. What do you say?’
Krank nodded, trying to look brave. ‘We trust you.’
‘How dangerous is it?’ asked Zybes.
‘I won’t lie. Very.’ Oll took out his blade. ‘But this will get us through. Only special blades can cut through space. They’re rare. This is rarer still. The most special, special blade of all. Blessed and cursed, both at once. If anything can get us there, it’s this. It can cut more than space.’
‘Why, what else can it cut?’ Rane asked.
‘Gods.’
They packed, and headed out after Oll. He guided them towards the place of departure. He was carrying the knife, but had put away the compass and pendulum for the time being. He wouldn’t need them for this. It wasn’t going to be a subtle crossing.
‘Thank you,’ he said to Katt as they walked up through the city.
‘For what?’ she asked.
‘You saved us. I’m getting old. I nearly missed the trick that was being played on me. So, thank you. And thank you for reminding me why it was a good idea to bring you all along on this journey.’
‘Why was it?’
‘Because nobody could do this alone.’
They reached the edge of the causeway. Below them, the cliff fell away into the hole that had been bitten through the world, and through time and space as well.
‘What now, Trooper Persson?’ said Graft, halting at the precipice.
Oll smiled. ‘We jump.’
Afterword
The Horus Heresy, both as a story and as part of the hi
story of the Warhammer 40,000 setting, is a war that explores the concept of loyalty, above all else. What is loyalty? What does it mean to be truly loyal? Do we choose the loyalties we hold? Are we less loyal if we can still be convinced that we have chosen wrongly? Or, indeed, can someone hold multiple loyalties at once, with any real conviction?
These are all questions that have been hanging over the series since the very first novels, the opening trilogy of Horus Rising, False Gods and Galaxy in Flames. Garviel Loken and his legionary kinsmen were forced to examine their own consciences, and declare their loyalties accordingly: Ezekyle Abaddon, carrying out his primarch’s orders with cruel relish; Saul Tarvitz, slain ignominiously amid the ruins of Isstvan III for his stubborn and ongoing defiance; Iacton Qruze, overlooked and disregarded, but always prepared to defend those who could not defend themselves; Lucius, all too ready to change sides if it gave him a better prospect of survival; ‘Little Horus’ Aximand, a proud and moral leader with a fierce martial code; Nathaniel Garro, maimed in battle and removed from the front lines, and yet finding new strength in his duty to the Imperium. The list goes on.
And we, the readers, know that history will revere or condemn them for their deeds, once the outcome of the war is known.
Our former colleague Alan Bligh always urged that the Heresy’s root was not in daemonic machinations and magic swords, but in the choices made by key individuals, at specific moments in time. Horus drew a line in the sand, and his followers were forced to choose whether their loyalties lay with him, or the Emperor.
The Horus Heresy was always a civil conflict first, and a struggle for the soul of mankind second. Chaos has a predilection for hijacking humanity’s unique failings, to its own unknowable ends…
The stories in this anthology dig down into many of the fundamental conflicts and crises of loyalty that have been part of the series since the early days, or even those that apparently predate the time of the Heresy itself. Pragmatism and a logical mind are not things we would associate with great heroes of myth and legend, and yet many aspects of a galaxy-wide war must, by necessity, be governed by them.
The aftermath of the fall of Mars and the Mechanicum’s so-called ‘Death of Innocence’ is one of the most notable, since before now relatively little was known about how this affected interactions between the priesthood and the rest of the Imperium, as the war grinds on. In the novella ‘Cybernetica’, Rob Sanders gives us a detailed look at the complex balance of power between Terra and the Red Planet – how do the Legiones Astartes, enforcers of the Emperor’s secular vision, reconcile their need for Martian technology with the tech-priests’ misplaced worship of an Omnissiah? Moreover, do all followers of the machine-cult adhere to the creed to the same outward degree, and does this represent yet another possible competing interest on the notion of their loyalty to the Throne? While Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s short story ‘Into Exile’ suggests that the defenders of Terra are willing to employ extreme measures to secure their interests against renegade forces, ‘The Binary Succession’ highlights the danger of assuming too much about one’s allies. As real-world politics seem dominated by endless declarations of absolutes and a distinct lack of nuance, David Annandale’s examination of the schism on Mars and the governmental turmoil that ensues seems all too familiar and believable…
The Space Wolves, on the other hand, are apparently an open book. Their Fenrisian culture values unflinching devotion, unquestioning loyalty, and Leman Russ himself has always held this as a point of pride over his primarch brothers and their own Legions. Revisiting Wolf Lord Bulveye and his ill-fated company in ‘The Thirteenth Wolf’, Gav Thorpe gives us further examples of veteran warriors who were already sworn to Russ before the coming of the Imperium, enough that the primarch allowed them to bend the supposedly sacrosanct rules on transhuman augmentation, that they might follow him on his Crusade to the stars. Like all warriors of the VI Legion, they would never be told to lie down and die.
Which, of course, becomes a great concern to many in the novella ‘Wolf King’. Never have a Legion been so concerned about the way others perceive them, and what a retreat from overwhelming odds might suggest about their loyalty to the Throne – even to the point that they are willing to martyr themselves rather than be seen to flee. Chris Wraight’s tale should be cautionary, and yet we know from Corax that, sadly, Leman Russ himself does not learn the lesson Alaxxes should have taught him. Might the outcome of the entire war have been different, if he hadn’t allowed his Legion’s teeth to be blunted again at Yarant III?
But even in the face of death, Space Marines must know no fear, a truth spoken often in Warhammer 40,000. I could write a whole new afterword on the questions of loyalty raised by Roboute Guilliman’s establishment of Imperium Secundus, but I settled instead on a couple of the less obvious ones in ‘The Heart of the Pharos’. Something that has always interested me is the transition from human to transhuman, and just how much of the neophyte’s original personality might remain afterwards. Can the loyalty of a Scout, all alone in the dark and confronting an almost primal level of otherworldly terror, be questioned when he loses his ability to control his mortal instincts? The Lion’s decision to keep secrets from Guilliman and Sanguinius, however, is later seen as an unquestionably disloyal act, even though it was born out of the desire to fulfill his duty as Lord Protector, no matter the cost.
Matters of ethics and morality aside, it has been argued that the most pure expression of loyalty is being willing to lay down one’s life in the name of another, or the cause they uphold. Martyrdom. Self-sacrifice. Both are common aspects of life for the Legiones Astartes, and a fundamental part of the Horus Heresy narrative.
Interestingly, in ‘Ordo Sinister’ by John French, we witness a sacrifice far greater than that expected of any legionary, which ties back indirectly to the Imperium’s accord with Mars. The incredible scarcity of Psi-Titans means that the loss of one, to achieve even the most noble of goals, is a hefty price to pay, and by such singular losses does hope of any victory on Terra dwindle. Pariahs, psykers, outsiders, secret orders within the Imperial hierarchy – these have been decried as the bringers of all heresy, and yet also they may prove its undoing.
Dan Abnett often looks back to find the route forwards in his storytelling, whether that turns out to be earlier in the series, or an different epoch altogether. Another outsider of an entirely different sort, Ollanius Persson circles gradually through space and time towards Terra, and the destiny that he is beginning to realise awaits him there. He was never one to kneel before the thing that now calls itself ‘the Emperor’, and so this nonetheless pious man would hesitate to describe himself as a loyalist.
And yet, the tantalisingly brief tale ‘Perpetual’ suggests that martyrdom may be something he is willing to consider anyway.
Laurie Goulding
May 2017
About the Authors
Dan Abnett is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Horus Rising, Legion, The Unremembered Empire, Know No Fear and Prospero Burns, the last two of which were both New York Times bestsellers. He has written almost fifty novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, and the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies, and I am Slaughter, the first book in The Beast Arises series. He scripted Macragge’s Honour, the first Horus Heresy graphic novel, as well as numerous audio dramas and short stories set in the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer universes. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent.
David Annandale is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novel Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar. He has also written Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, several stories involving the Grey Knights, including Warden of the Blade, and The Last Wall, The Hunt for Vulkan and Watchers in Death for The Beast Arises. For Space Marine Battles he has written The Death of Antagonis and Overfiend. He is a prolific writer of short fiction set in The Horus Heresy, Warhammer 40,000 and A
ge of Sigmar universes. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The Master of Mankind, Betrayer and The First Heretic, as well as the novella Aurelian and the audio drama Butcher’s Nails, for the same series. He has also written the popular Night Lords series, the Space Marine Battles book Helsreach, the Black Legion novels The Talon of Horus and Black Legion, the Grey Knights novel The Emperor’s Gift and numerous short stories. He lives and works in Northern Ireland.
John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novels Praetorian of Dorn and Tallarn and the novella The Crimson Fist, and has scripted the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster as well as Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies. He is the author of The Horusian Wars: Resurrection, as well as the Ahriman series, which includes the novels Ahriman: Exile, Ahriman: Sorcerer and Ahriman: Unchanged, plus a number of related short stories collected in Ahriman: Exodus. Additionally, for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written the Space Marine Battles novella Fateweaver, plus many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.
L J Goulding is the author of the Horus Heresy audio drama The Heart of the Pharos, while for Space Marine Battles he has written the novel Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin and the audio drama Mortarion’s Heart. His other Warhammer fiction includes ‘The Great Maw’ and ‘Kaldor Draigo: Knight of Titan’, and he has continued to explore the dark legacy of Sotha in ‘The Aegidan Oath’ and Scythes of the Emperor: Daedalus. He lives and works in the US.
Rob Sanders is the author of the Horus Heresy novellas Cybernetica and The Serpent Beneath, the latter of which appeared in the New York Times bestselling anthology The Primarchs. His other Black Library credits include the novels Predator, Prey and Shadow of Ullanor for The Beast Arises, the Warhammer 40,000 titles Adeptus Mechanicus: Skitarius, Tech-Priest, Legion of the Damned, Atlas Infernal and Redemption Corps, and the audio drama The Path Forsaken. He has also written the Warhammer Archaon duology, Everchosen and Lord of Chaos along with many short stories for The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in the city of Lincoln, UK.