Slaves to Darkness

by John French

  Argonis the Unscarred, emissary of the Warmaster, turned towards them. His head was bare, his sharp features clean and unmarked. A crimson cloak hung over the right shoulder of his black-and-green armour. He held his red-plumed helm under his left arm, and his right held an ebony staff topped with the Eye of Horus wrought in gold. The blood-topaz at its centre gleamed like a hot coal. Argonis’ dark eyes met Perturabo’s gaze and held it, unblinking.

  ‘I speak the Warmaster’s will,’ he said, his voice level. ‘This is not a message. I bring a command that you will heed.’

  Perturabo was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was a low rasp of control.

  ‘Speak,’ he said.

  Argonis’ eyes flicked to Volk, then back to the primarch.

  ‘Horus, Saviour and Master of Mankind, commands you, Perturabo, Lord of the Fourth Legion, to seek your brother Angron and by any means bring him, and his Legion, to muster on Ullanor. This to be done with all haste, by his authority, using all methods and abstaining from no cost.’ Argonis clamped his helm to his belt, reached beneath his cloak and removed a black glass scroll-cylinder, its ends capped with silver. He held it out. ‘Accept the writ of Horus’ will from my hand.’

  ‘Master of Mankind…’ said Perturabo, carefully. ‘Warmaster. Lupercal. Brother. Those titles that once were enough. What of the things that drove us to war, emissary? What of the use that we were put to by our faithless father? What of the broken bonds and betrayals?’ Volk held perfectly still. His skin was prickling inside his armour. Perturabo was a statue, every part of his great form motionless and silent, save his shrunken lips moving beneath his black gaze. ‘I read the tides of battle for sector upon sector, and I read of warriors of iron fighting as their weapons fail for want of bullets, of my sons dragged down in the mire of Guilliman’s advance. I look out on the realm we are fighting for, and I see only ashes. And now we are come to this – commands for us to bleed on further, wrapped in full form and formality, given by beggars to lords.’

  ‘Do you refuse this command?’ asked Argonis, still offering the scroll-cylinder.

  ‘Do I refuse?’ said Perturabo, and his voice was a roll of thunder in the bright air. ‘My Legion bleeds. We bleed for our oaths and loyalty. On a hundred worlds we bleed and do not break. Do I refuse? My answer is written in the blood of the dead, in the iron of their veins poured into the mud as we do the will of the Warmaster. Do I refuse? No, emissary, but I feel the weight of the butcher’s bill you hand to me.’

  Perturabo took the scroll case, opened it and read the parchment with a glance.

  ‘Forrix,’ he said softly, his eyes fixed on the words inked on the scroll in his hand. ‘Prepare messages to Kreoger at Jannik, and Toramino on Cassus. Vull Bron is to assume command here. All ­theatres begin the syphon and transport of forces through Beta-Garmon to muster at Ullanor. No sudden withdrawal. They must give no ground. Those who must remain will make Guilliman’s by-blows pay. This order is to be cascaded without flaw. Order the Iron Blood and the Grand Fleet into close orbit, and prepare the First Grand Company for full embarkation and translation out of this system within twenty-four hours under my command.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ said Forrix without pause. ‘The defences here and across all of the theatres, from here to the Sulnarn Gap, will degrade by forty-five per cent at least. We will take heavy casualties, both to hold the line and to run the blockades on the warp nodes. The effective strength that we can transport to Ullanor will be–’

  ‘I know,’ Perturabo said, and he turned his head from the order parchment to look at the First Captain. ‘Give the orders.’

  Forrix moved away. Volk remained still, stunned.

  ‘Speak your question, commander,’ said Perturabo without looking at Volk.

  ‘What you have just ordered will lose worlds that we have fought to take and bled to hold. The Warmaster must know that. He must know that to draw strength from this front will see it fail.’

  ‘That is because it does not matter. Our enemies grow stronger, and we grow weaker. This is a last thrust of the spear by my brother. He is a general who stands before the broken wall of a fortress, with victory within his reach, but at his back he sees horsemen on the hills. He must take the fortress now. If he succeeds, he has victory. Everything else is irrelevant. Is that not so, emissary?’

  Argonis did not answer but turned without bowing and moved to look at the view down the mountainside beneath them. The light played over his armour, haloing him for a second in the crimson of the dawn sun.

  ‘I will accompany you on your mission for the Warmaster,’ he said. ‘It is his will.’

  Perturabo’s guns cycled, but he did not reply.

  ‘Why you, lord?’ asked Volk. ‘Why does this task fall to you?’

  Perturabo turned and walked across the stone mirror of the floor, his footsteps gunshots in the quiet.

  ‘Because he knew I would obey,’ he said.

  Zardu Layak, ‘The Crimson Apostle’, Master of the Unspeaking

  Four

  Maloghurst

  They came for him, as he knew they would. His hands were still wet with blood. The low-burning ritual candles were the only light in the former lodge chamber. The remains of the host for the daemon he had been bargaining with hung from chains bolted to the wall. Smoke coiled from sludge-wrapped bones. The creature’s forked tongue hung below its jawless skull. Maloghurst worked slowly, cutting the words that the daemon had spoken onto the old silver coin. Three more summonings, three more daemons forced to speak secrets, and he would have the totem he needed when he passed beyond.

  He had just finished the inscription on the coin when he heard the chamber doors release. The candle flames billowed. He put the blood-smeared coin down and dipped his bare hands into a bronze bowl of water. Heavy footsteps spread in the darkness behind him.

  ‘What vexes thee, my brothers?’

  Silence answered him. He listened. His senses could sift patterns from the smallest of sounds; it was one of the gene-gifts that his injuries had not stolen. The rhythm of steps, the presence and absence of breath, the purr of servos in armour that were as distinct as the lines of a face, he could hear them all.

  ‘Aximand,’ he said, still not looking up, watching the blood stain the water in the bowl as he washed his hands. ‘This is not like you, brother, to come unheralded and silent.’

  No reply came. The sound of footsteps stopped. The shackled purr of armour thrummed through the air.

  Four, thought Maloghurst, blinking as he tried to tease out the identities of the others. He lifted his hands from the water, shaking the pink drops from his crooked fingers. Power was a labyrinth of mirrors; perception, control and belief were everything. At this moment he should have been concerned, should have been turning to see who had come into these chambers through doors that he had personally sealed, should have been reaching for a weapon to defend himself…

  ‘Kibre,’ he said carefully. ‘I hope that this is not a return of the concerns you have already voiced for the approach I have advocated, but if it is then voice them again, and let me show you that the path I have set is the path that the Warmaster would choose.’

  He picked up the black cloth from beside the bowl and began to dry his hands. The scar tissue over his misshapen knuckles ached.

  ‘Tormageddon. I hear your silence, reborn one. You of all of us must see that this must be done.’ Inside his skull, he called to mind the words of scourging that he had taken from the mouth of a daemon of torment. The daemon-thing Tormageddon was powerful, somehow beyond his ability to bind, an aberration in the pattern of warp entities that he did not understand. He knew he could hurt it, though. If he needed to. ‘Our Warmaster is caught between our realm and yours, between this reality and the immaterium. His ascendancy has begun but is not yet complete. He needs our help to pass through this moment.’

  Ma
loghurst dropped the cloth into the bowl. Water splashed up and onto the floor. He took his gauntlets from the tabletop and snapped them back into place over his hands.

  Four, there were four he was sure, but he could not identify the fourth.

  ‘I understand that you are afraid,’ he said, looking down at the rippling water as he flexed his fingers. ‘And yes, I do mean afraid. Fear has many forms and only a few of the more common types are found on the battlefield. What other response could there be to this crisis, to see our father struck down, to see him unmoving while the wheels of his war turn on without his hand to guide them? What else should you feel but fear?’

  He straightened each digit one at a time. Inside his skull he split his thoughts, holding the words of scourging in parallel with another, more direct and unsubtle formula. The tips of his fingers tingled.

  ‘You see shadows as monsters, and being Sons of Horus you want to face them, to kill them, to hold them close enough that you can feel their last breath before you open their guts and let their life drain onto the floor. But what I do is not to be feared. I am not your enemy unless you are the enemy of the Warmaster, and I know that we are all his most faithful sons.’

  He paused, holding his breath. Why did they not reply? If they intended violence, then why did they not move?

  ‘I am the Twisted One, the master of crooked words and subtle deeds.’

  He reached out and picked up his athame. Blood marked the silver blade.

  ‘But in this moment I ask you only to listen.’

  He held ready. His flesh ached as his twin hearts pounded blood into his muscles.

  ‘Listen, and trust me.’

  He turned around.

  ‘I trust you, Mal,’ said Horus Lupercal.

  The silver athame dropped from crooked fingers.

  Maloghurst opened his mouth to speak.

  The empty shadows of the lodge chamber looked back at him.

  The athame struck the floor. The sound rang in the silence.

  Maloghurst’s hearts were twin hammers in his chest. For a moment he stood frozen, but then he was moving forwards, his own steps echoing as he hobbled to the chamber doors. They were still sealed, though the ritual wardings he had daubed on the metal had burned to ashen smears. He reached for the door release, then paused.

  What had just happened?

  A hallucination?

  An attack?

  A warning?

  ‘The powers of the gods circle you, son of Horus,’ Layak had said while they had talked. ‘The Anointed Warmaster of the Pantheon draws the angels of rage and desire, of lies and dissolution. They whisper into the ears of those that will listen. In the cracks between fear and hope they whisper. Those they whisper to move to the desires of the gods. They pull you apart, and pull your torn remains into their divine embrace.’

  ‘Why?’ Maloghurst asked the Word Bearer.

  ‘Because it is the nature of the divine to be divided.’

  He keyed his vox.

  ‘Where is Captain Aximand?’ he asked. The link clinked and popped with static as the vox-servitor authenticated his voice command.

  ‘Captain Aximand’s location is the strategium. Do you command a direct link?’

  ‘No…’ said Maloghurst slowly. He was looking back at the darkness of the deserted lodge hall.

  ‘I trust you, Mal.’

  ‘There are always enemies, even if they come wearing the smiles of friends.’

  ‘No…’ he said again, and cut the vox-link.

  Layak

  The Vengeful Spirit and its constellation of ships slid into the distance. Behind him the cathedral space of the Trisagion’s bridge shook to the chants of the blessedly condemned. To call it a bridge was a failure of human language; to call it a bridge was to place its size and majesty beside the platform of boards from which primitive shipmasters bellowed orders. This space was of another order. Just as the realm of the gods made the lives of men small, so the power and purpose of this place shrank all other spaces to insignificance.

  The bridge alone was half a kilometre long. Pillar-braced walls of bronze and steel rose to a vaulted roof. Brass censers the size of Titan heads swung from chains beneath painted images of the sacred constellations of the Word Bearers’ home world. Tiers of cages ran down the full length of the space. Within them, the thousand-strong choir sang praise to the gods. They would remain within the cages, their lungs slowly filling with pus and their mouths with blood, until they expired. All of them had failed in their faith and had fought to earn their condemnation to the choir cages. The air shivered around them, popping with colour as their chants rose and fell in rhythm with the ship’s pulse.

  Down the centre of the chamber stood the altars of destruction. Here, the tech-priests of the Dark Mechanicum and the priests of slaughter, death and exultation moved around each other. Blood, ashes and fire stained their robes. When the Trisagion spoke in war it was not by the crude passing of commands; it was by ritual, the devastation it created ordained, not spoken. Layak found its expression of power breathtaking.

  ‘Blessings on this parting,’ said Lorgar from where he stood just in front of Layak. The image of the Warmaster’s command fleet hung before them, a projection layered over the star-dotted dark beyond the bridge’s prow windows.

  ‘Maloghurst proved more accepting than I expected,’ the pri­march remarked.

  ‘He did,’ replied Layak.

  ‘You must have done your work well.’

  ‘Trust and belief are the first sins of the weak.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing of consequence, lord.’

  ‘Good. He always was loyal to my brother. They call him twisted, but his soul is simple.’

  ‘He serves and believes, not in the gods but in Horus and Horus to the last,’ said Layak.

  ‘To the last…’ breathed Lorgar.

  Layak remained silent.

  ‘Horus cannot survive. Even if he rises, he cannot be allowed to lead this war…’

  ‘Is that not heresy?’ said Layak.

  ‘Heresy?’ said Lorgar, his voice low. ‘Horus is a warrior, a leader, but he is not the truth. This war is not about him. It is not about his wounded need to cast down our father, or his dreams of empire. It is about the triumph of truth. The truth. The gods are the only parts of existence that are eternal, that cannot be harmed. They are the only true salvation that mankind can have, that mankind must have. That is what matters, my son. Not pride or glory, or the survival of one soul above others.’

  ‘You think the Warmaster will fail?’

  ‘I think that he is both too weak and too strong, my son. Too strong to submit to the full will of the gods. That is why he sits on his throne, like a corpse at his own court. That is why the wound done to him by Russ bleeds. He is anointed of the gods. They have blessed and exalted him higher than any other, higher than even I, their most devoted servant. They have given him the keys to existence… And yet he does not embrace them. He puts himself above them. And he is strong enough to resist but not strong enough to triumph. The gods have given him power beyond anything they have bestowed on another. Yet he fights it. He resists the gods’ favour even as they lift him up. Who could be strong enough to triumph against the gods? And without submitting he will be torn apart – without submitting he will be too weak to defeat the Emperor. And then we will have failed.’

  ‘He is the Anointed, my lord. The gods have chosen their instrument.’

  Lorgar did not answer at once but closed his eyes. His face was perfectly still. In his sight, Layak saw the primarch’s white corona of power contract.

  ‘And if he is a flawed weapon, what then? Should we stand aside and watch all that we have brought about burn to ashes?’

  ‘If that is the will of the gods.’

  ‘The gods
gift us with power. What we do with that power is for us to decide, to either be exalted or to be broken by it. We are not their slaves. We are their champions, and what we do is either to their glory or to their displeasure.’

  ‘And Horus… Is he not a champion who should rise by his own strength?’

  Lorgar turned to look at him. Layak returned his gaze. The hooks on the inside of his mask-helm bit deep. Blood wept from the mask’s eyes. He could feel the primarch’s mind coiling around his own, searching for a way in.

  ‘Remove your mask,’ said Lorgar softly.

  ‘I cannot, lord,’ replied Layak, dropping his gaze. ‘You know that I cannot. Only the gods may see my face and know my thoughts.’

  ‘Am I not the voice of the divine?’ asked Lorgar. ‘Do you dare defy that voice?’

  ‘You are, lord, and I will obey, and in obeying I will die.’

  Lorgar was silent for a long moment, then shook his head.

  ‘You understand then. The gods must be obeyed,’ he said. The chanting of the condemned rose as the Trisagion began to turn. The image of the Vengeful Spirit was now just a bright star amongst lesser pinpricks of starlight. ‘The gods placed a burden on my soul. Horus is my brother, but what is brotherhood beside the triumph of the primordial truth? Failure cannot be allowed, my son. The gods must triumph, and Horus will not give them victory. Another must take his place, must unite all under the will and majesty of the gods. Do you understand, my son?’

  Layak bowed his head, as though in humility.

  ‘You intend to take his place,’ he said.

  Lorgar held his gaze still on the cold stars.

  ‘Why did it come to this?’ he said. ‘Why does this have to pass to me?’

  The sound of the bridge and the lamentations of the condemned quieted as a gong was struck three times. The ship shivered as the warp engines began to engage.