by Guy Haley
Guilliman leant into the gale, the wind stripping colour from the Armour of Fate and discolouring the rare alloys of its decoration. But he did not stop.
The fading wavefront hit the city. Buildings weakened by the battle collapsed. Fires kindled in flash-dried gardens.
Guilliman walked on.
Through a field of corpses and wounded men the primarch continued. A few miles out from the walls, a cloud of vaporised matter crawled skyward, lit bright beneath by the glow of molten rock. The destruction was immense, but it had no real military purpose.
Guilliman intended it only as a provocation.
‘Mortarion!’ Guilliman shouted. ‘Mortarion! You wanted to fight me, I am here! Mortarion!’
Guilliman was three miles from the city now, a good distance for what he intended. He slowed and drew out his sword. Flame burst into being along its length, and he held it aloft.
‘I have come to Iax as you asked. I stand once more upon the field of battle, and once more I call you out! My fleet stands ready to obliterate your army, as you have seen. Do me the courtesy of bravery, and face me. It is what you want. It is what I want. Let us cease this tedious chase, and settle this brother to brother.’
Smoke and fumes blew away from the primarch, clearing the air a little. He stood with his arms raised in open challenge, and considered the probability he had made an error. He would never do this against one of his more calculating brothers. Perturabo would have seized the opportunity to blast him to pieces from afar. Alpharius would have had some convoluted trick to undo him. Lorgar would have tried to convert him. But Mortarion needed to prove himself. Guilliman was relying on his brother’s insecurities.
He smiled beneath his helm. If he was wrong, it was going to be a very short duel.
Roboute Guilliman was rarely wrong. Smoke stirred beneath the beat of mighty wings. Mortarion descended from above.
Guilliman sent a coded signal. The Concilia Psykana set out in a fleet of transports, circling the ground Guilliman occupied while his armoured columns kept the enemy back.
Huge, armoured feet crunched into the battlefield’s debris. Mortarion shook out his wings and fixed Guilliman with blind, white eyes.
‘Hello, brother,’ he said, his sepulchral voice loud in the burning land. ‘You accepted my invitation.’
‘I never turn from a fight,’ said Guilliman. ‘Do you?’
Mortarion chuckled. ‘And you know this is a trap for you, and I know you have laid a trap for me. Our game goes on.’ Fumes billowed from his respirator. ‘You don’t really have the capability to target my Legion, do you? The storm sees to that. You used a beacon, correct? That was an expensive toy you used there. I doubt you’ve got many of those.’
‘I have you now, right where I want you.’
‘That is amusing, Roboute,’ said Mortarion. ‘I could say exactly the same about you.’
He gripped his scythe and gave it a couple of experimental passes. Silence hissed with anticipation through the air. Toxic smokes trailed his strokes.
‘Shall we?’ he said.
Guilliman got into a guard position, sword up, feet apart.
‘I hope you are not going to run away from me again,’ said Guilliman. ‘I would hate to see your cowardice proven twice over.’
‘Oh, definitely not,’ said Mortarion. ‘Fulgrim’s already killed you once. It’s my turn now. I intend to do a better job.’
‘Halt!’
Felix’s Impulsor came to a stop. All around the ground where Mortarion and Guilliman met other vehicles drew up. Twenty in total, each one carrying Space Marine Librarians.
The crash and roar of combat still echoed over the land between the razor-edged mountains. Space Marines and daemons fought everywhere, but the nature of the fight had altered, broken up by the sally and the magma bomb into smaller battles. Data streamed in from every quarter, and although it was corrupt with scrapcode and stymied by vox-disruption, Felix had enough of a clear picture to feel concerned.
‘We do not have much time,’ he said to Donas Maxim and Illiyanne Natasé. ‘Mortarion’s forces will regroup. As soon as they realise what we are going to do, they will target our positions.’
‘The skein is set,’ said Natasé. ‘We have done all that we can to prepare the most favourable conditions for victory.’
‘This has all been your doing from the start,’ said Felix. ‘Allowing the spy to see our briefing, locating the artefact.’
‘Your mind is not so dull as you imply,’ said the aeldari. ‘You knew these things. You have known what my role was in all this, tetrarch. Trap against trap. In these subtleties we aeldari excel where a human would blunder to his doom.’
‘Then I know who to blame should my father fall.’
‘I have told Lord Guilliman what the futures hold, but the plan is his. I swear to you. You must trust to him to save himself now. I have done what I can. You do not trust me, but know that his death is not my intention.’
‘Still we must win,’ said Felix.
‘Yes,’ said Natasé. ‘Your Space Marines must find the artefact and destroy it. Guilliman must weather Mortarion’s plague. Many other things could go awry. Victory is far from certain.’
Felix had his eye-lens magnification up to maximum. Through shimmering air, he watched Mortarion approach his brother. Guilliman was so small compared to his twisted sibling. It was impossible to imagine they had once been the same, had fought side by side, spoken as equals.
‘We could lose. We could lose him.’
‘We could,’ admitted Natasé. ‘The future is not your friend, nor mine. All we can do is align ourselves with the best course that fate has to offer. Do not fear, Decimus Felix. My people have long practice in this art.’
‘We shall try our utmost, tetrarch,’ said Maxim.
‘Then proceed,’ said Felix. ‘Waste not one more second.’
Natasé laid out a cloth of shining black patterned with the geometric sigils of his kind. He sat cross-legged, and pulled rune after rune out of a cloth bag at his side. These floated about him, giving out a wan, blue light. Natasé settled into meditation.
‘You may begin, Donas Maxim. Lend me your power.’
Maxim nodded. He gave the signal to his brothers of many Chapters, and held out his hands. Bright power collected there.
Mortarion passed his scythe through the air. Guilliman gripped his father’s sword. How can he beat that? thought Felix, and wished he was at the regent’s side.
Mortarion saluted his sibling as he had on Parmenio, scythe haft pressed against his forehead.
‘Hurry, they are about to begin their duel,’ said Felix.
‘All will be as it will be,’ murmured Natasé, and a cold luminescence crawled across the sky. ‘We can do no more. The fate of Ultramar is in Roboute Guilliman’s hands, as it always has been.’
The aeldari’s runes glowed with a brilliant light. The dome of force enclosed the duelling ground.
The primarchs charged.
Chapter Thirty-Three
EXTERMINATUS
The brothers moved together.
There was a split moment when they locked eyes. A pressure joined them, heavy enough to compress time. When they attacked, they did so without thinking. Abilities woven into their gene-code at the dawn of the Imperium saw to that.
Mortarion had the greater reach and struck first. Silence swept around in a reaping cut. Guilliman halted its seemingly unstoppable swing upon the quillions of the Emperor’s Sword. Thunder crackled from the blow. Fire mingled with noxious smoke, burning poisons away. The daemon spirit of Silence gibbered in fear as the flames licked its brazen cage.
Mortarion cocked his head. Guilliman nodded in acknowledgement. Mortarion stepped back, and round, disengaging his weapon’s head from Guilliman’s block and turning in a circle, using his height advanta
ge to stay clear of the burning blade. Silence whistled round through the air, built up to blurring speed. Guilliman stepped away, hewed one-handed at the weapon, jarring it hard. Flames roared up from the Emperor’s Sword again. Mortarion jabbed with Silence’s wicked back hook, and this too was diverted with a ringing of unearthly steels. Mortarion turned his weapon slightly, and yanked back hard, seeking to trip his brother. Guilliman jumped over the head, the buzzing chain tip passing an inch beneath his feet. He struck out, catching the cage of bones around Silence’s top, breaking them.
The daemon screamed. Mortarion hissed. Smoke boiled up over Guilliman from the censer built into Silence’s head. It ate into his softseals, penetrated his breathing grille. He coughed, tasted blood in his exhalations. A heaviness afflicted him.
He staggered back. The Armour of Fate’s machinery whined into a higher activity, purging his body, and the weakness receded.
Guilliman swung the Emperor’s Sword about in a figure of eight. Fire roared.
‘You rely too much on unclean gifts, Mortarion. You never were much of a swordsman.’
‘You were always bad at boasting,’ he said. ‘Such a tedious little paragon.’ He yanked out the Lantern from its holster, aimed and fired in a single movement. But Guilliman reacted fast, a hail of bolts from the Hand of Dominion exploding around the weapon and Mortarion’s wrist, knocking it from his hand. The energy beam carved a trench of glass into the ground.
‘Let us keep this blade to blade, shall we?’ said Guilliman.
The regent leapt forward, his Emperor-given strength working in tandem with Cawl’s miraculous armour to launch him at his brother. Fire blazed as he brought the Emperor’s Sword down, cleaving through the links of a chain holding one of the many censers Mortarion wore on his armour. The fallen primarch jumped back, wings spread, and took to the air. Guilliman landed; the point of the sword angled down, missing its target, and blasted a glowing crater into the earth.
‘Temper, temper, Roboute,’ said Mortarion. He looked overhead, where the fine skin of energy put out by the Concilia Psykana was glaring in his warp sight. ‘I see your witches are at work. So let me show you my power in return.’
He threw out his hand. A bolt of yellow leapt from the palm. Guilliman swung up the blade to intercept it. The bolt slammed into the weapon, where it was absorbed. Mortarion pushed forward, still venting the might of the warp from his hand, but Guilliman stood firm, though he shook with the effort and the flames on the sword dimmed. He shouted, and pushed back. The energy stream curved in on itself, and exploded, and Mortarion was pushed away.
‘Where is the warrior who stood before the assembly at Nikaea and denounced all use of the warp?’ said Guilliman. ‘You are everything you purported to despise.’
‘I opened my eyes, brother,’ said Mortarion, circling Guilliman in the air. ‘I saw the lies our father spouted for what they were. I found a better master, and I became stronger than you.’
‘You are a slave.’
‘So are you.’
Mortarion folded his wings and dropped suddenly, slashing with Silence. Guilliman turned to the side, bending under the whistling blade. Silence caught the decorative halo mounted on Guilliman’s power plant, wrenching it free. Guilliman staggered, and Mortarion pressed his advantage, bringing the bottom of Silence’s haft up in an underhand blow. Iron-hard wood smashed into the Armour of Fate’s chestplate, scoring it with ugly marks that wept poison. Guilliman was spun around.
‘Fool,’ Mortarion gloated. ‘Look at me. Look at how much power I have. I am far more than you could ever be, I am–’
Guilliman raised the Hand of Dominion and fired straight into Mortarion’s face. Bolt-rounds exploded all over his front. He raised his hand to shield his eyes and turned away with a metallic cry of pain. Guilliman leapt forward and attacked with the Emperor’s Sword.
Mortarion blinked to clear his rheumy eyes, still managing to block Guilliman’s blows.
‘I thought you wished to keep this to blades, brother? I see you abandon your sense of honour when it suits you.’
‘There can be little honour in a battle between us, Mortarion.’
‘Very true,’ said the daemon primarch. He aimed a blow at Guilliman that was easily evaded, but then Mortarion turned his motion into a kick. His heel connected with Guilliman and sent him several yards back through the air. He landed heavily on his back. Sparks spat from a severed power line.
‘This is wearisome, my brother. You are no challenge at all.’ He threw out his hand, and a gale of poisonous mist engulfed Guilliman. The sword flared and burned it away. ‘Even with our father’s weapon you cannot beat me. I am the best of both material and immaterial worlds. A master in either medium. You are a leftover. The rusted tool of a dying god.’ Another flaring bolt of psychic power arced from his palm, striking Guilliman in his chest as he tried to rise, knocking him back down to the ground. ‘A dead man, brought back by means you would otherwise decry, had they not saved your miserable soul. Xenos magic, and wicked science. You carry it around with you. It is in your blood, and you have the gall to tell me I am corrupt?’
Guilliman rolled onto his side, reaching out with the gauntlet to fire again, but Mortarion whispered words of power, and ammo feeds corroded. The metal of its guns dulled. In Guilliman’s helm alarm runes flashed.
‘You are nothing, my brother,’ Mortarion hissed. ‘The last shreds of our father’s dream, clung on to against the face of reality as they break into nothing. You are not even a memory, but a relic falsehood.’
‘You betrayed us,’ said Guilliman. ‘You and the others.’
‘I did not,’ said Mortarion, coming to stand over his sibling. ‘For how can one betray a lie?’
‘It need not have been this way,’ said Guilliman. He tried to stand again, but Mortarion pinned him to the ground with a massive foot. Guilliman punched at it with the Hand of Dominion, but it did no good, and Mortarion leaned his weight upon him.
‘It always has been this way, brother, for it could not have been any other.’
Guilliman struggled, but could not shift his brother’s massive weight from bearing down on him. Mortarion bent down and pulled off Guilliman’s helm. The loyal primarch’s nose and throat burned with the gases coming from his brother’s wargear, and the stench of his body made his stomach lurch.
‘You were disappointingly easy to beat,’ Mortarion said. ‘For all your scheming and your plans, when it came down to it, you were no match for me. Not any longer.’
Mortarion reached up and took hold of one of his many pendants, a small, dirty phial, and yanked it free.
‘I have a gift for you, a gift from Nurgle. Take it willingly, and see his glory.’
‘You will never turn me.’
‘Then that is your loss.’
Mortarion pressed the dirty tube into a greening brass syringe. Careful to keep it well clear of himself, he bent low and jabbed the needle into his brother’s neck with a deep sigh of satisfaction, just above the scar Fulgrim had given Guilliman.
Immediately, Guilliman gasped. He spluttered. Veins turned black and his eyes went red as a tide of filth washed through his veins.
‘That’s right, brother,’ said Mortarion, laughing, stepping back and casting aside the syringe. ‘Take your medicine.’
Toxins boiled into streamers of gas that raced out from the primarch’s mouth. Where they touched the dead upon the field, they collapsed into revolting clots of matter. Their wargear corroded instantly to unidentifiable remnants that looked as if they had been excavated from a thousand-year interment.
The nurglings around Mortarion coughed and squealed, dropping and dying on the ground, where their bodies bloated, sank inward and decayed in an instant. The daemon primarch was careful to remain untouched by the wisps of toxin, turning them aside with his psychic might. Nevertheless, he took several more steps back from
his afflicted brother while the Godblight did its work.
‘Ku’Gath told me this disease would be deadly to both of us,’ said Mortarion, and his voice betrayed his struggle keeping the plague at bay. ‘I can well believe it, my brother, looking at what it is doing to you.’
Guilliman’s skin had turned black. In places it deliquesced, running from his skull, exposing bone that gleamed before going a rotten brown.
‘Don’t struggle,’ Mortarion said. ‘This is only the beginning of your suffering. I’d save your strength if I were you, or how else will you savour it?’
Felix watched helplessly as Mortarion beat the primarch to the ground and stepped on him, holding him in place. He stood in total indecision, then made to go to his side.
‘No, tetrarch!’ said Maxim through teeth gritted with effort. ‘You must let events follow their course.’
Gas of a hideous hue raced out from the two primarchs, occluding Felix’s view. The psychic shield flared over the battlefield when the gas hit, rolling up, doubling back on itself in a wave of screaming, insubstantial faces. Maxim grunted. Natasé’s runes were shining so brightly Felix could not look upon them.
Felix took a step forward. He stared into the fog, looking for his gene-father. The vapours swirled and gathered like live things seeking escape from a cage. When they cleared enough for him to see to the centre for a moment, he clenched his fists. The two primarchs were flickering in and out of sight, as if they only partially occupied realspace.
‘What is happening?’ he asked.
‘The disease is a thing of the othersea,’ said Natasé. ‘Should it succeed in killing your lord, it will pull his soul into the realm of Nurgle, and thus be the trigger that drags all of Ultramar into the warp. It is time for the second phase. If you would save your men, begin your withdrawal.’
Alarms whooped across the bridge of the Macragge’s Honour, and the cry went up.
‘The primarch has fallen!’
The news raced round the command deck.
‘Hold,’ Colquan commanded. ‘Hold your nerve!’ He swept his gaze about, silencing all. ‘Is this true?’