Slaves to Darkness

by John French

  ‘Does He?’ said Horus lightly. ‘I have never known anything to be beyond His grasp.’

  ‘But you are His reach and His grasp, Horus. He accomplishes what He does through those who serve and love Him. Through you.’

  ‘Yet He did not say that when He told me of this duty.’

  ‘No, He left it to me.’

  ‘Working through His instruments…’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Horus nodded, though his expression remained unchanged. Malcador straightened and turned away from the balustrade.

  ‘You know the truth of what I am about to say, but I will say it anyway. Take the lesson of the Emperor to heart. Every blade and warrior in the Crusade will answer to you. Learn their nature, as if for the first time. Use them as you must, and do not fear that they will see you change. You are going to be their leader, but you will need them to make you Warmaster.’

  ‘Warmaster… So you think I will accept it?’

  ‘I think you already have.’ Malcador began to walk away, his staff tapping out the slow rhythm of his steps. In the dark, a pair of Custodians who had remained like statues unfolded with a melody of armour servos and fell in beside the Sigillite. ‘Good night, Horus Lupercal. Until tomorrow.’

  Horus remained, looking out at the view of the Plain of Triumph. The lights of stars and campfires found reflections in his eyes. Then he straightened and walked away with only a single glance behind him.

  Part One

  That the Sons of Gods May Bleed

  One

  Maloghurst

  The Sons of Horus bore their father bleeding to his throne. Ghosts followed them, howling from the shadows as the blood shook from their armour. There were four sons: Kibre, the black of his plate glossed with gore; Horus Aximand, his flayed face pale, eyes fixed on the red maw grinning from his Warmaster’s side, the armour still rent and smoking; Tormageddon, glittering with ghost-light, silent as smoke; and Maloghurst, who followed them gasping into his breath mask, limping with twisted limbs.

  The Justaerin thundered in their wake. Black Terminator armour glinted wetly with blood in the stuttering alarm lights.

  ‘Sire,’ called Aximand, grunting the word through the effort of lifting the Warmaster. ‘Sire, can you hear us?’

  ‘I…’ Horus’ mouth was a crack in the pale mask of his face. The fur and velvet of his cloak dragged on the floor, holed and charred, smearing onto the deck in his wake.

  Maloghurst tasted warm iron, sulphur and honey through his mask. Horus’ head shook. The wound in his side opened wider, the armour crumpling like skin around a sneering mouth.

  ‘Sire!’ called Aximand.

  A human in the red-and-black robes of a senior bonded officer emerged from a junction as they passed. The bronze data-slate in the man’s hands fell to the floor as he knelt, but Maloghurst saw the human’s eyes touch the Warmaster before he pressed his forehead to the floor. Maloghurst turned aside and kicked. Pain lanced through his back as the servos in his armour snapped his leg straight. The human flew backwards, his head a crumpled ruin of meat and shattered bone. Maloghurst let out a grunt of discomfort.

  ‘What…’ began Aximand.

  ‘He saw!’ growled Maloghurst and staggered after the others.

  ‘Justaerin,’ called Kibre, his voice booming over the vox as he moved. ‘Kill order, command deck, passages ninety-five through two hundred. No survivors!’

  The Terminators peeled away. Gunfire echoed down tunnels. Muzzle flare flashed from passage openings as they passed. Screams rose and were silenced.

  ‘The tides shift…’ hissed Tormageddon as he loped with fluid grace beneath the Warmaster’s weight. ‘He is–’

  ‘Silence!’ shouted Maloghurst, the word shaking with rage. The daemon-vessel hissed in reply.

  They reached the throne room. The doors opened at their approach. Starlight and flame diluted the darkness beyond. At the far end, the throne loomed before the open eye of a viewport. They hurried across the dark expanse. Blood scattered to the floor behind them, smoking as it touched air. The bowls of burning oil hanging from the ceiling guttered. Shadows grew in their wake. Ethereal cries rose through the dark as more blood fell to the deck.

  ‘Seal the doors,’ shouted Maloghurst to the two Justaerin who had followed them. ‘No one enters. No one!’

  They set the Warmaster down at the foot of the throne.

  ‘We must get the Apothecaries,’ said Aximand.

  The great chair of basalt and black iron rose above them.

  ‘This is beyond them,’ snarled Maloghurst.

  ‘What is happening to him?’ asked Aximand, looking at the still figure of Tormageddon standing a step back from the others. The daemonhost shook its head once slowly.

  ‘I cannot look at him. The warp is broken edges and crow calls.’

  ‘We must–’ began Kibre.

  ‘My… my throne…’ whispered Horus, and for a second his four sons froze. ‘My… father…’

  None of them moved. A drop of blood slid from the lips of the wound in the Warmaster’s side and struck the floor as a puff of ash. Kibre turned his head and looked at Maloghurst.

  ‘Get him to the throne!’ roared Maloghurst. He could feel it now, itching on the edge of his sight and at the back of his eyes. The warp was flowing around them, twisting tight like threads spinning into rope.

  Their feet rang on the steps to the throne. Beyond the viewport Maloghurst could see the lights of Beta-Garmon’s star burning like a cooling coal as it fell into the distance. Ice was forming on the crystal panes, spidering across the starlight.

  With growls of effort, Horus’ four sons lifted him onto the seat of his throne.

  ‘Step back,’ hissed Maloghurst.

  Blood ran from the Warmaster’s side, pooling and trickling onto the plinth in a black, smoking stream.

  For a second nothing else moved. Horus’ eyes were open, but if they saw anything, they fixed on nothing.

  ‘What–’ began Kibre once more.

  A single metal claw scraped on the right arm of the throne. The four sons were utterly still. The flow of blood from the wound had slowed to a dripping ooze. A breath hissed from Horus’ lips. His hand gripped the arm. Blades dug into black stone. Horus raised his head, eyes closing briefly, pale lips opening. His image was flickering, blurring into shadow and out of being.

  Maloghurst stepped forwards.

  The Warmaster’s eyes opened.

  Maloghurst felt the gaze touch him. A wave of heat rolled over him, and for a second he felt his body freeze, felt his flesh blast apart and scatter to the edge of time, felt his soul become a scream stretched to the edge of existence.

  The image of the Warmaster shimmered then settled.

  ‘It is… all right, Mal,’ said Horus.

  The four Sons of Horus knelt. The buzzing of their active armour throbbed in the quiet. Maloghurst felt his breath wheeze into his mask and allowed a measure of relief into his thoughts.

  Horus took a long, slow breath. The wound in his side had closed. All that remained was a narrow line on his armour, still wet with blood. The low moaning that had itched at the edge of Maloghurst’s awareness quieted.

  ‘Sire,’ said Aximand, ‘you–’

  ‘What is our position and strength?’ said Horus. His face was still pale, but the shadows were flowing into the recesses of his face, hardening its lines.

  ‘The vanguard fleet is with us,’ said Aximand, still watching his primarch unblinkingly. ‘Legion battlefleets Acheron, Styx and Charon remain in-system, along with the vassal groups Bellum, Catullus, Ni-Rho-Delta, Malik, Duterron and Noctis. Engagements continue, but we have dominance. The gate of Beta-Garmon is open.’

  ‘Yet you pulled the vanguard away?’ said Horus.

  ‘Sire, you were…’

  ‘I know,
Little Horus,’ said the Warmaster. His eyelids closed briefly. ‘I know. You did well, my sons.’

  Beta-Garmon had eaten their strength for months, grinding down armour and gorging on bodies and bullets. The forces still loyal to the Emperor had fought with a ferocity and strength that had spilled more blood in that one system than had been shed in the last five years of the Great Crusade. There had been no choice, though, not for the Emperor’s forces and not for the Warmaster. Beta-Garmon was the gate to the Segmentum Solar. Charted warp routes converged and expanded from the system like the threads of a web. Through it, fleets of ships could run into the reaches of stars around Terra. It was not the only gate to the Solar Domain, but it was the only one that mattered.

  At last the deadlock had broken. Horus had taken to the field. With him was a spear tip of the Legion’s finest. Darkness and fire had followed them, as though they were the shadow cast by the Warmaster’s presence. Maloghurst had remained, as he did so often now, with the Vengeful Spirit and the endless balances of power, now both occult and temporal, that allowed the wheels of Horus’ war machine to turn. He had not needed to see his lord walk amongst the slaughter, nor see those who faced him fall.

  And all had happened as had been ordained. Their enemies had fallen, and the battle, so long unresolved, had swung.

  Until Horus, striding through ashes and blood – the god of the empire he would win by war – had fallen.

  Fallen without a blow being taken.

  And his sons had taken him, as they had once before, bleeding from the battlefield.

  Maloghurst was the first to raise his head to look at the enthroned Warmaster. A high, keening pain filled his skull. His eyes tried to focus. He felt blood on his teeth.

  He dropped his gaze. The pain dimmed but did not vanish.

  ‘Sire, what is your will?’

  ‘Time,’ Horus rasped, and Maloghurst felt the pain that it cost his Warmaster to speak. ‘Time has run too far. Send for them. We… we must gather before…’ Horus’ eyes closed, agony radiating from him like heat from a suddenly blazing fire. Maloghurst clamped his teeth shut. Bubbles of migraine colour foamed across his vision. Horus was unmoving on his throne. Shadows flickered across the walls and floor of the throne room, as though light were shining from the Warmaster. But there was no light.

  Maloghurst forced himself to stand. He tried to raise his head but could not. Aximand was already on his feet, backing away. Tormageddon was shimmering, the substance of its body dissolving and reforming like a grainy pict-image. Kibre remained kneeling at the foot of the throne, his fingers digging into the stone to hold himself in place.

  ‘Go…’ said Horus, his voice sounding as though it were carried from far away. ‘Summon them… My brothers…’

  ‘Sire,’ said Maloghurst, his voice shuddering as tidal waves of pain battered through him.

  ‘Ullanor,’ said Horus. ‘Ullanor…’

  And then he was silent. His eyes shut. The shadows stilled, and the Warmaster sat bleeding and pale on his throne.

  Layak

  Screams cloaked the Trisagion as it rode the tides of the warp. Thirty-two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-eight humans hung from nails driven into the outside of its hull. All of them had been alive when the ship had passed from the cold of real space into the embrace of the Realm of Gods. They were still alive now after a fashion, their deaths stretched into an eternal cacophony of suffering. Daemons swarmed over them, clinging to the hull, lapping agony and delirium from the humans as their souls and bodies were torn apart. Seen from above, the Trisagion’s spear-blade hull seemed to wear a shifting skin of chitin and wet flesh. Torch towers burned above it, red flames billowing in slow rhythm with the screams of torment and the cries of the feeding daemons.

  Beauty, whispered the voice in Layak’s skull. Truth…

  He nodded.

  ‘Glory to the Eternal Four, for They are All,’ he said aloud, continuing the litany that he had been speaking without pause since the Trisagion breached the veil into the Sacred Realm. ‘Glory to the Eightfold Truth, for it is Eternal. Glory to the First Circle of servants, for they are most high…’

  He sat at the centre of a black glass floor, before the crystal window of the tower’s viewport. The smoke of burning incense breathed around him from censers swung by eight shrouded figures. Beneath their robes each of the supplicants was a riot of mutated and mortified flesh, but in the presence of the Crimson Apostle they hid their blessings. All of them had sacrificed their sight and hearing to serve him. To attend Zardu Layak, First Chaplain of the Unspeaking, the one who is both revelation and sacrifice, was a blessing beyond imagining. To see his unmasked face and hear his private words would be beyond their souls to bear.

  Further back, beside the single door out of the tower sanctum, stood two hunched figures. Red velvet swathed them from head to foot and spilled onto the floor around them. They did not move, but a candle made of human fat, blood and bone ash hung in the air before each one. Sigils marked the black tallow, weeping clear tears onto the floor beneath the shrouded giants.

  He approaches, he thought, and knew it to be true even as the thought whispered through him.

  He rose from where he sat. He wore no robe or armour. In these moments of contemplation Layak always chose to remember that he was flesh. Smooth muscle flowed as he stood. Branded words covered his skin from neck to toes. Five hundred and twelve languages marked him. All were from cultures that had been dead for thousands of years, some human, some alien. Layak spoke every one.

  He brought his hands up to his face, covering his eyes for a second.

  ‘Ush-na-cathal,’ he said. He felt the call hiss into the Sacred Realm, and heard an answer. Gossamer figures of black smoke congealed around him, indistinct, like sketches painted on parchment with water and ink. The shadows of faces formed in the coiling throng, screaming with silent agony, spitting hate, weeping. Whispers filled his mind.

  Who are you?

  I do not want to die…+

  Who are you?

  Oh, please have mercy…+

  Who are you?

  Betrayer of oaths…+

  Who are you?

  You are defiler of all that once you held sacred…+

  Who are you?

  Why are you doing this?…+

  ‘Us-ka-thed,’ he commanded. The smoke figures reached out with ghostly fingers. Their touch slid over his skin. Ice-cold fire burned through his flesh.

  We know you, Nameless One…+ hissed the voices in his skull.

  We remember…+

  The dead remember…+

  Layak held his mouth shut. The agony was a supernova at the core of his being. It felt like burning, like iron nails being hammered into bone. It felt like rebirth and revelation.

  Armour formed over his skin. The shape of ceramite plates, of pauldrons and gauntlets, wove into existence as the shades wrapped him. Circuitry and fibre bundles came into being and meshed with his nerves. At last he stood clad in grey, the ashen plates of his armour covering all but his head.

  ‘Hess-ne,’ he spoke.

  The shades faded, hissing hate and spite as they slid back out into the infinity of the Sacred Realm. The blessed agony he had endured faded from his flesh, and he bowed his head in thanks for its blessing. Last of all, he turned and stepped to the side of the room where his mask-helm looked down from his weapons rack. Its face snarled at him with frozen rage. Twin rows of three eyes ran down the bronze cheeks, each eye burning like a furnace coal. Its mouth was a wide pit of sharp silver. Two shards of obsidian rose in horns from its brows. It had been a gift from the first of the Gal-Vorbak, and he wore it always except in brief moments of solitary contemplation. Layak reached out and took it, feeling its malice tingle with the taste of blood on his tongue.

  Carefully he settled the mask-helm over his head. The hooks of its inner face bi
t into his cheeks. The breather-pipes connected with his armour of their own accord. Incense-laced smoke filled his next breath. Whirls of Colchisian runes spun in his eyes. Colours and dimensions that mortals could not see repainted the room around him.

  He is here, came the thought. He turned and knelt as the doors into the tower sanctuary opened. The red-swathed figures turned, their shrouds rippling as they knelt. The robed supplicants could neither hear the door opening nor see who stepped through, but the presence of that being was enough to send them falling prostrate.

  Lorgar Aurelian stood upon the threshold for a moment. His skin was dusted with golden powder, his cheeks and scalp painted with vertical lines of cuneiform. Crimson robes hung over his unarmoured flesh. But for his size, he would have looked like a priest from the dust planet that had raised him.

  Presence radiated from him. This was not the rage that had haloed the now-exalted Prince of Blood, or the raw etheric power of Magnus. To stand close to Lorgar Aurelian was to want to hear him speak, to feel deep emotions stir at his smallest gesture, to feel one’s soul both cower and exult.

  Except that Layak felt nothing, just the hooks on the mask he wore cutting his face.

  ‘Your beatitude,’ he said.

  ‘Rise, my son,’ said Lorgar. ‘I ask your forgiveness for disturbing your observance.’

  ‘Where you walk, truth and transcendence follow,’ said Layak. ‘To receive you in this moment is to exchange a holy task for one greater.’

  Lorgar bowed his head in acknowledgement, eyelids closing briefly.

  ‘In two hours, we will emerge at the edge of Beta-Garmon, and there we will find the Warmaster. Messages fly by the lips of the god-made to my other brothers. He calls us together, to stand together one last time, as we once did at the feet of our father.’

  Lorgar paused then walked to the crystal viewport, through which the nausea-light of the warp danced. For a second Layak wondered what the eyes of his primarch saw. The Sacred Realm was a mirror to souls, and what it showed was different to every mind that dared look upon it. Layak only saw the ghosts when he looked at the warp. He had long ago given up wondering why.