Lhorke never saw who fired the first shot. In the decades to come, the World Eaters claimed it came from the Wolves’ lines, and the Wolves claimed the same of the XII Legion. He had his suspicions, but what was hindsight in the face of catastrophe? Without either primarch giving an order, two Legions fought.
The Night of the Wolf, they’d called it in the years since. Imperial archives referred to it as the Ghenna Scouring, omitting the moment the World Eaters and Space Wolves drew blood. A source of pride for both Legions, and a source of secret shame. Both claimed victory. Both feared they’d actually lost.
Lhorke had been forced to slumber increasingly often in the following decades, easing the pressure on his caged brain and withered form, but his awakenings were frequent enough to perceive Angron’s deterioration through the years. Slow and subtle as the alterations were, the primarch still couldn’t hide them. In truth, he may not have even been trying.
Each time Lhorke rose to walk the Conqueror’s decks and join his brothers in their Great Crusade, he could see the primarch suffering the bite of those hateful implants. The Nails’ afflictions struck harder, more frequently, and their pain lingered longer.
Worse, it was spreading across the Legion. The legionaries’ brains were almost human compared to the primarch’s transcendent physiology, and the erosion of their self-control was accordingly quicker. Lhorke watched it with a curious mix of detachment and guilty compassion, noting another notch on their descent each time he awoke. Concentration seemed a chore for them, over long periods of time. They laughed less and relied increasingly on Legion serfs to maintain their armour. Attention spans shortened, wandered, forever looking to the next war.
Still, the brotherhood remained strong at the Legion’s heart, and there was the test that truly mattered. World Eaters were still chained together in the fighting pits and duelled to the cheers of their brothers. They entered without armour, naked but for loincloths to show they feared no wound, and to prove every warrior would fight on equal ground.
For especially deserving legionaries, the XII even opened its pits to those born of other bloodlines. Sigismund of the VII paired with Delvarus of the Triarii, and the two of them won every fight they entered – always to first blood, never lasting more than half a minute. No one could keep up with them. No one even came close.
Amit of the Blood Angels paired with Kargos, and few ever wished to come up against the Flesh Tearer and the Bloodspitter. They were known for always fighting past first blood, third blood and into sanguis extremis. No dirty trick seemed beyond them, and every one of their matches was a death bout.
And then there was Argel Tal. Lhorke had first seen the Word Bearer in the pits, paired with Khârn. From the very first moment they were chained together and stepped into the chamber, ringed by howling gladiators looking on, Lhorke knew the two of them would lose more than they ever won. Khârn was an indifferent competitor and found few World Eaters willing to stand with him. Lhorke could tell right away that in Argel Tal, he’d found a kindred spirit, silently laughing at the same joke.
Regardless of the lethal grace they so plainly shared, and the effortless brotherhood that bonded them, neither took sparring seriously. They saw no honour in the pits; merely distraction and amusement. When they fell in defeat – which they did almost every time – it was always without rancour, despite the fiercely competitive nature of the duelling taking place in the Conqueror’s iron bowels.
Sigismund once knocked Khârn to the deck in seven short seconds; the same moment Delvarus scored first blood on Argel Tal’s bare chest. Enduring the jeers and laughter of their comrades, the World Eater and Word Bearer had crashed their manacled wrists together in a Legiones Astartes battle-sign of mutual respect, and did the same with their opponents. The traditional salute of a good fight, fairly won.
‘You’re useless,’ Delvarus had said, a smile on his mouth but not in his eyes.
‘I am,’ Argel Tal admitted, ‘when my life isn’t on the line.’ He spoke in Nagrakali, the World Eaters’ bastardised tongue. When a Legion was born of three dozen worlds, they needed a new language to share. Argel Tal spoke it with a curious softness, almost scholarly in his tones.
Delvarus had grinned. ‘That’s Khârn’s excuse, as well.’
‘True enough. But Khârn is your primarch’s equerry and his name is known throughout the Legions. Delvarus is a name shouted here and here alone.’
‘Are you implying something, Word Bearer?’
Argel Tal’s dark eyes shone in the murk. ‘I thought I was directly stating it, but yes, you could say “implying” if you prefer.’
Delvarus was one of the few World Eaters not to shave his head. The discomfort of hair in his helm was irrelevant; he’d never cut his long black locks. In the pits, he wore it loose, and as he re-tied it in the wake of Argel Tal’s words, he looked between the Word Bearer and Khârn.
‘A death bout, then. Sanguis extremis.’
Both Khârn and Sigismund objected. The Black Knight refused on issues of honour, for the sin of slaying a cousin from another Legion, while Khârn had shaken his head, running his fingers along the edge of his toothless duelling axe.
‘It would be wrong to deprive the Triarii of their captain. Best take your anger elsewhere, Delvarus.’
Lhorke’s concerns had been eased by the display, as they always were when he saw the pit-fights still forming the core of the Legion’s bonds. But on the battlefield, the World Eaters were a changed force. Russ’s warning went unheeded. More and more, Angron would stalk from tactical briefings before any decisions were made, never citing the pains in his head but never needing to. His sons weren’t blind. Besides, they felt the same pain, forever growing like a cancer in their skulls. From a Legion once as concerned with logistics as any other, the XII was soon hurling men at enemy strongholds without thought of civilian casualties, let alone their own lives. They advanced ahead of their marked resupply points, outpacing their heavy armour, and caring nothing for how bitterly expensive each victory became, so long as the blood flowed.
‘Legion Master.’
His former title dragged him back from futile reverie. Lhorke had to crouch to make it through the corridor arch into the next chamber where the lesser Dreadnoughts waited. Neras had vox-blurted his name.
‘Do you hear that?’ Neras boomed from his ironform’s vocalisers. A squat, proud model ironform, rather than bearing its coffin on the front, Neras’s frontal armour was formed into an ornate helm with a T-shaped visor. Either side, murals of his victories were acid-etched into his sloping armour plating.
‘I hear it,’ Lhorke replied. Bootsteps, in the hallway ahead. Too heavy to be human.
He looked briefly at his massive metal fists, as if he were still alive and carried a bolter to reload. The huge gauntlets were bloodstained, with silvery grey metal showing beneath the remaining flecks of paint. He’d never killed an Ultramarine before this evening. Now he’d killed four himself, while the other wounded amassed their own tallies.
They powered up with a thought, marred only by the slightest time delay between his desire and their activation. Wreathed in shimmering, humming energy fields, the blood smears flash-fried to his weaponised hands bubbled and dissolved away.
‘Get to the bridge,’ he declared. ‘I will deal with these dregs and make my way to the primary engineering deck. Hold the strategium until my arrival. Now go, in the name of the Emp–’
Neras’s chassis gave a grinding gear-slip of a sound. Laughter, of a kind. ‘Old habits,’ the Dreadnought growled.
‘Go.’ Lhorke demanded.
The dead men separated at last, walking through corridors as familiar to Lhorke as anything in life. This ship – back in the age it bore the name Adamant Resolve – had been his to command.
‘They’re safe.’
The draconic shadow appeared by Khârn’s side again, its golden blade bu
rning the air in wide, buzzing arcs. Wherever the sword cut, the air held the sea-salt smell of ozone.
‘Where?’ the World Eater asked. Above them, the avian shriek of singleman Gyrfalcon fighters split the sky. Around them, the World Eaters and Ultramarines still killed each other, trading exhausted blows. Sweat painted Khârn’s face, stinging his eyes, and he could feel the clumsy ache in his leaden limbs. The ground was lousy with the dead and the dying, making all footwork treacherous. Every warrior kept sliding on the blood-slick ceramite of the corpses beneath their boots.
‘They’re safe, damn you. I got them to my Fellblade.’ Argel Tal pulled his wings close with a crack like cloth sails catching wind. Khârn caught a split-second glance of them snapping tight to the Word Bearer’s back, both of the daemonic limbs ragged and bloody.
‘Khârn!’ he heard his name cried out above the chaos.
Endure. Survive. Fight. He lashed out with his weapons, thrusting into unprotected joints, battering other blades aside if that was what it took.
‘Khârn!’ the voice shouted again. ‘Face me, coward!’
Argel Tal laughed. ‘Someone knows you’re here.’
‘More fighting, less jesting.’ The World Eater backhanded one of his opponents away, but he staggered as his boot came down on a dead World Eater’s sloping pauldron. Unbalanced, he was easy prey – a sloppy parry snapped his chainsword halfway along its length, tracked teeth scattering like gambler’s dice. His opponent shield-bashed him back against Argel Tal, stumbling both of them.
The Word Bearer beat his wings to turn in a blur, his relic blade catching the blow meant to end Khârn’s life. Ultramarine and Gal Vorbak pushed against each other, energised blades grinding, raining sparks in an incandescent spray. The deadlock lasted a moment, no more, before Argel Tal’s greater strength started pushing the Evocatus back. His boots squealed over the stone as he tried to stand his ground.
Argel Tal’s eye lenses flared an unhealthy, crystal blue. Sick heat throbbed from his armour, emanating a plague victim’s final fever, and he spoke three words in a tongue that spilled into Khârn’s ears and scraped letters of fire behind his eyes.
‘Eshek’ra mughkal krikathaa.’
The Ultramarine’s fists opened, letting his sword fall. Before the warrior could offer any reaction or emotion at all, his helmeted head tumbled clear. Argel Tal booted the headless corpse in the chest, sending it to the ground with its brothers where it belonged.
Khârn felt blood trickling from his nose. ‘What was that language?’
‘I told him to drop his sword.’
‘That isn’t what I asked, brother.’
Argel Tal risked leaving himself defenceless, offering his hand to help Khârn rise. The World Eater fired from the ground, plasma blasting a hole through another Ultramarine’s chest. As the warrior fell, the axe he’d been raising to strike Argel Tal from behind clattered to the floor.
‘A child’s error,’ Khârn chided his brother, scrambling to his feet without taking the hand. His breath was sawing in and out of his body. ‘Focus.’
‘Khârn!’ came the shout again.
The centurion swore in Nagrakali. ‘Who is shouting that?’ he added in Gothic.
It was Argel Tal who answered. He aimed his golden blade deeper into the melee, where a cloaked and crested Ultramarines officer was carving his way towards them. He didn’t need his warriors to part the sea of enemies. He came in an unpretentious stride, crested helm bowed, a power sword in one hand, a gladius in the other. Khârn watched him disembowel one of Skane’s Destroyers with a sweep of his sword, while ramming the gladius home in another World Eater’s throat. Both blades slashed back from the dying warriors’ bodies in perfect order, only to catch an incoming axe strike, deflecting it rather than block it. The World Eater pulled back for another swing, only to be parried a second time. He jerked back as the captain’s gladius sheathed itself in his belly, struggling free just in time for the sword to ram through his chest.
Even amidst the storm, Khârn breathed in slow awe. Perfect grace. Perfect fluidity. Perfect economy of movement and balance and application of strength.
He had to kill him. What a trophy that helm would make.
‘He’s mine,’ Khârn said. ‘He is mine.’
The captain couldn’t have heard, but he levelled his stabbing sword at Khârn all the same, marking his foe. ‘Khârn!’ he shouted again, vox-amplified by the muzzled Mark IV helm.
‘I think you might be his.’ Argel Tal was grinning, teeth white in his dusky face.
‘You take his honour guards,’ said Khârn.
The Word Bearer looked at the spearmen flanking their captain. Each of them bore a helm crested with a white horsehair tail. ‘There are four of them.’
‘There are indeed.’ Khârn kicked up a fallen chainsword from the ground, stealing the bloodstained blade from one of his dead brothers. ‘So I wish you luck.’
He heard Argel Tal’s wings spread with another cloth-sail crack, but he was already sprinting ahead. Ultramarines parted before him, weapons raised in defence as they backed away, funnelling his charge towards the Evocati captain. By contrast, World Eaters still hurled themselves at the swordsman, only to be cut down and kicked aside with shameful ease. As he ran, Khârn imagined the officer’s contempt etched clear across his face beneath the blue helmet.
The Nails gave a pleased pulse as his adrenaline flowed fresh, the feeling as soothing as ice on a burn.
‘Khârn.’ A hazy pict-feed flared into life at the edge of his retinal display. ‘Khârn, the Conqueror is back in orbit, but we’re still–’
‘Not now, Lotara.’
‘But–’
An irritated thought was all it took to kill her image and lock the signal out. There were other Legion officers, damn her. Officers not up to their throats in enemy heroes. She could harass them instead.
He knew that was the Nails talking. He didn’t care.
The Evocatus threw back his dust-darkened white cloak, casting it to the ground. His honour guards intercepted the World Eaters still seeking to reach their captain, cleaving them apart with blows from their halberds. Petty envy burned within Khârn that moment. Their unity of movement, their disciplined teamwork – when the World Eaters charged, they fell into barely bound packs, relying on ferocity and individual strength over any tactical cohesion. This was like looking at what might have been – and what once was – without the Nails.
Argel Tal landed at the heart of the honour guard quartet, wielding both spear and blade in fists that should have only been able to hold one or the other. No human could move as he moved; no legionary could, either. He melted away from every cut and chop and thrust that should have ended his life, reality itself rippling around him as he moved faster than mortal muscles could follow. The fluidity went past grace and into something almost boneless.
Khârn could hear his brother’s blended voices mocking the warriors, but couldn’t make out the words. It didn’t sound like the harsh, alien tongue he’d used before, for which Khârn was bemusedly grateful. That was his last thought before he reached the officer.
They met blade to blade, long enough for him to see the faint impression of eyes behind the captain’s coloured lenses.
‘Orfeo,’ the Ultramarine breathed. ‘Legatus of Armatura. Now you know the name of the warrior who will end your pathetic legend.’
‘Horus,’ Khârn replied. ‘Warmaster of the Imperium. Now you know the name of the next Emperor.’
They disengaged, throwing their weight against their joined blades to come apart cleanly. Both warriors were exhausted from hours of battle, and aware the eyes of their nearby kindred were beginning to fall upon their every movement. Breathless and aching, they brought their weapons up once more, no longer part of the wider battle at all.
The former Legion Master crouched beneath the archway as h
e entered the bridge. His walk had fallen into a halting limp, dragging the seized burden of one locked limb. Bolters still thudded, which boded ill, and everywhere he looked the deck was brutalised by scattered corpses and the aftermath of fragmentation grenades. If they lived through this – and he was no longer certain they would – the ship would need drydocking for overhaul.
Familiar figures were visible through the gunfight. Krydal was a one-armed wreck, gored by massed bolter fire and slumped at the base of Lotara Sarrin’s raised throne. Neras was down and twice as dead, the entire left side of his ironform melted to waxy slag by a vicious shot from a vape-gun.
Lotara herself was defying the protective wishes of her personal guard, crouched behind the tertiary weapons console and firing back at the Ultramarines holding the rear of the chamber. Her armsmen guards wore full suits of matt-red carapace armour with rebreathers and rangefinder goggles, and they crouched with her, ringing her with the fiercest loyalty. Lhorke saw her elbow one of them away when he sought to pull her back into cover. She didn’t even stop firing.
Of the several hundred crew that populated the strategium, at least three-quarters were dead or close enough not to matter. Lhorke knew it upon first glance, even without his scrolling auspex-scan feed telling him Deceased… Deceased… Deceased… with tracking flickers on every corpse in the room.
The Ultramarines turned away from the abundance of easy prey, sighting Lhorke down their gun barrels as he entered the chamber. Four of them remained, holding the balcony at the strategium’s rear, and of these last four, two were down and crippled, firing from where they lay. Even prone, they used their bodies as shields for their brothers crouching behind them.
The body of one other, already slain by massed shotgun and las-fire, lay by the command throne, risen above the charnel house of mortal corpses. Lhorke suspected he’d died inflicting casualties of a hundred to one in this nest of easy murder; butchery to do any legionary proud.
He ignored the cheers from the surviving bridge crew as he started his leaning, limping run. The bridge itself shook beneath his tread, ceiling spotlights shattering to rain glass shards on his etched armour plating. Lotara’s cheer was harder to ignore – he heard her swearing in gutter Nagrakali: ‘Get these dog-screwing whoresons off my ship!’
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