‘Lies.’ Khârn barked a nasty laugh. ‘Lies and slander.’
They regarded each other a moment, before Argel Tal cracked the ghost of a smile. ‘Thousands of the Legion detested the Ultramarines. Lorgar ordered many of us to gather when we were already en route to Calth. I, and the others who would become commanders and apostles among the Vakrah Jal. He wanted our counsel on what to do with those among the Legion he no longer trusted. Our Legion culled its ranks in a trickle down the decades, but nothing like the Isstvan Atrocity that Angron is so proud of. Lorgar knew loyalty within the Word Bearers was never in doubt. Competence was a different matter.’
Even Khârn was ignoring the struggling Ultramarine now. He was silent as Argel Tal continued.
‘Lord Aurelian asked what we should do with the warriors he felt were no longer reliable. Those whose hatred burned brighter than their sense. Tens of thousands of them, Khârn. Whole companies. Whole Chapters. Their rage was no longer pure.’
‘You killed them?’
‘Not directly. We gave them the mission they craved. They sailed with Erebus and Kor Phaeron, to martyr themselves in glory.’
‘You can’t be serious,’ said Khârn.
‘As serious as the wasteland this world has become. Your Legion was purged on Isstvan III, brother. Mine was purged at Calth.’
‘But we’ve had word from Calth. The Seventeenth won. You won.’
‘Victory is a matter of perspective.’ He scowled at Khârn’s expression. ‘I don’t understand why treachery is so unpalatable to you. You have no sense of honour to offend. You took part in the annihilation of a quarter of your own Legion-brothers, now you act affronted we allow ours to kill themselves in a sacred crusade.’
The Word Bearer looked down at the Ultramarine he was pinning to the churned earth. ‘I don’t hate the Thirteenth Legion, Khârn. The Emperor forced us to our knees, not Guilliman. Here and now, their suffering is symbolic and serves a higher purpose. Nothing more, nothing less.’
Khârn watched the fallen Space Marine scratching at Argel Tal’s greaves. ‘This torture is childish. What will one man’s pain add to the song?’
‘Everything,’ Argel Tal sounded distant, staring down at the cobalt-clad warrior. ‘Each moment of agony is a note in the melody.’
‘Enough preaching, brother. Save the mysticism for those in your Legion’s red. Just kill the poor wretch.’
He expected a weary sigh and a grudging refusal. Instead, Argel Tal drew his spear. The Word Bearer’s grip on its haft was enough to quicken the blade, generating the aura of killing lightning. With a simple downward thrust, he planted the halberd through the Ultramarine’s chest.
The warrior quivered and fell still, giving one last jerk when his killer wrenched the spear free.
‘Mercy suits you,’ Khârn told Argel Tal. ‘Slaughter is one thing, torture is another. Leave that to your Chaplains.’
‘Mercy is for the weak,’ the Word Bearer replied.
‘Then what does it make you, when I’ve witnessed you being merciful?’
Argel Tal scratched at the dark skin of his cheek. Stubble was growing there in a faint black shadow. He looked ever more like the desertborn boy-turned-warrior.
‘I have never pretended to be anything but weak, Khârn. I don’t enjoy war, yet I fight. I don’t relish torture, yet I inflict it. I don’t revere the gods, yet I serve their holy purpose. Humanity’s weakest souls will always cling to the words “I was just following orders”. They cower behind those words, making a virtue of their own weakness, lionising brutality over nobility. I know that when I die, I’ll have lived my whole life shrouded by that same excuse.’
Khârn swallowed. ‘So will I. So will any Space Marine.’
Argel Tal looked at him, as if that proved his point.
They moved on, eyes raking the ground in casual discontent. Neither relished this task, but both refused to leave it solely to their men. Neither officer would give orders they weren’t prepared to carry out themselves.
As they walked and murdered with mercy, Khârn watched the Word Bearers at work. Historically, the Legions rarely indulged in taking prisoners, but here was another excess of the new age. In contrast to their ascetic reputation, the Word Bearers now embraced every opportunity to herd the wounded into their cargo holds. A prisoner had a thousand uses beyond mere servitude in the slave decks.
Warriors of the XVII wrote parchment transcriptions of the Book of Lorgar in the blood of captured enemies. They decorated their armour with trinkets of scrimshawed bone and flayed skin. Cloaks of human leather were commonplace, many of which also served as fine tableaus for illuminated scripture. Horns of brass, bronze and ivory rose from the legionaries’ helms, cutting stark shadows against the candlelit walls aboard their voidships.
As Khârn drew breath to speak again, Orfeo’s distant screams reached a crescendo. He saw Argel Tal cringe.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Your primarch is insane,’ replied the Word Bearer. ‘Worse, he’s dying.’
Khârn stopped walking. ‘What?’
Several legionaries turned to watch their officers. Argel Tal kept walking, knowing Khârn would follow. Sure enough, he was right.
‘Angron is killing that captain so horrifically because a mechanical parasite is stunting the function of his brain. My Legion inflicts suffering because pain serves a metaphysical purpose. It pleases the Pantheon. It shows devotion and invites their favour. Suffering is sacred to them. Pain is prayer.’
Khârn listened, eyes narrowed at the irrelevancy. ‘Angron is not dying,’ he said.
‘You don’t need me to tell you that he is. You’ve said yourself, he’s getting worse. What, pray tell, is the logical conclusion at the end of that degeneration?’
‘Has Lorgar told you this?’
‘Lorgar tells me almost nothing anymore. He’s distracted by the great song. He hears it more clearly than he hears any of our voices, even when we stand next to him.’
The World Eater narrowed his eyes again. ‘Do you hear it?’
‘The warp’s tune? No. I hear Cyrene when I sleep. She dies every night in my dreams, but I never hear the holy hymn. That gift is my primarch’s alone. He shared it with me once, letting me sense a fragment of what he hears. The music underlying reality. The sound made by every soul that is now and that ever was.’
For once, Khârn felt no inclination to draw back from such superstitious talk. ‘And what was it like?’
Argel Tal took a slow breath. ‘Like Orfeo sounds now. Only worse.’
Khârn didn’t look back the way they’d come. Orfeo’s screams still echoed over the battlefield.
The Word Bearer spoke on, his voice more sibilant than deep; more daemon than man. Liquid silver began to bubble in the sockets where his eyes had been.
‘The warp around this world is boiling, Khârn. The amount of suffering taking place across its cities is enough to draw the Four gods’ eyes. And how many other worlds in Ultramar share this fate? How many more, before we call our crusade complete? This isn’t conjecture, nor is it blind faith. Soon we will push the surviving population into skinning pits and then heap them onto funeral pyres while they still breathe. The true Pantheon will watch, and smile, and bless us for our devotion. All that suffering, Khârn. All that pain.’
Khârn halted to ram his gladius through the neck of a crawling Ultramarine. ‘So you keep saying, but the heavens aren’t burning in a warp storm.’
‘Not yet.’ Argel Tal’s eyes still shimmered, mercury-wet.
‘I am weary of your Legion claiming sadism as a holy virtue.’
Something in Khârn’s voice made Argel Tal glance over at him. The silver dried, hardened, and flaked away. His own eyes looked back at Khârn.
‘Don’t mock me,’ the Word Bearer said. ‘I didn’t ask for this to be the underlying
Truth to existence. I take no pleasure in offering agony in worship to gods that cannot be ignored and yet do not deserve to exist. But life isn’t what we wish it to be. Or do you actually want that neural implant squatting like a spider upon the cobwebbing blood vessels of your brain?’
They stared at one another for a long moment, until both broke into low chuckles. The tension dissipated, as simple as that. It had always been this way between them, since they’d found themselves knocked onto the deck within seconds of their first pit-fight. Their Legions couldn’t be more different, but they shared a bleak amusement at being carried along by the storm.
Argel Tal gently kicked a downed Ultramarine and moved on when the body remained a corpse.
‘Sometimes I ask myself how we reached this point,’ he said. ‘Fighting ignorance and slavery with genocide. We can either live in delusion and darkness, or become something we hate. My nights are haunted by the shrieking of a blind girl I failed to save, and a warrior with a mechanical parasite in his skull and the daemon wrapped around my soul are my closest brothers.’ He smiled wearily. ‘We’re definitely on the wrong side, Khârn.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘Because both sides are wrong.’
Captain Sarrin met them on the deck. They’d wanted to come up with Syrgalah, riding in the salvage ship with her wounded form rather than coming ahead on a personnel shuttle. But a summons was a summons.
Lotara intercepted them as they disembarked, practically running to the gang-ramp. Servitors and cowled Mechanicum adepts moved aside for her, recognising her from her uniform, or the Blood Hand on her chest. World Eaters were spilling from their gunships elsewhere in a stomping tide of filthy ceramite. The hangar smelled of fyceline and the chalky scent of urban ruin.
‘Keeda,’ she said. ‘Tell me the reports are wrong.’
Keeda still wore her crew overalls, with her visored helmet clipped to the side of her belt. She supported Toth, whose head was bandaged in clean linen.
‘Captain.’ Toth gave an awkward salute. The brash manufactory sounds of the Conqueror’s hangar were already playing havoc with his sore skull. The heatwashes from engines powering down didn’t help, either.
‘Just tell me,’ Lotara said.
‘He’s dead,’ admitted Keeda. ‘Syrgalah is down. The old man died with her.’
Lotara covered her mouth with both hands. Not given to dramatic displays of emotion, she still needed a moment to catch her breath.
‘Moderati Bly,’ said a voice from behind her. ‘Moderati Kol. I’ll take your report at once.’
The three of them turned to the speaker. He was short, rounded by sloth, with a widow’s peak of dark hair thinning above two bionic eyes. His machine eyes clicked and whirred as they refocused, looking between the two crew members. He favoured Lotara with a slightly more respectful ‘Captain’, followed by a crisp salute.
‘Princeps Penultima,’ Lotara greeted him in return.
‘Penultima no longer. Remember to update your archives, captain. With the passing of Venric Solostine, I am Princeps Ultima of Legio Audax.’
‘What you are, Audun, is an officious little shit grabbing for the old man’s rank pins before his bones are even cold.’
The portly Titan officer stood straighter. ‘We all mourn the loss of Princeps Solostine, flag-captain. I will let your emotional outburst pass unrecorded, but please address me with the respect due my rank in the future.’
Lotara was already ignoring him, her eyes on Keeda and Toth. ‘I’m glad you made it off that bloody rock. Will Syrgalah walk again?’
‘I think so,’ said Keeda.
‘She’s in a bad way,’ Toth confessed.
‘So are you.’ Lotara forced a smile. ‘Good luck with the Ember Queen. I’ll make sure she’s brought up with all honours, and granted priority docking.’
Audun Lyrac cleared his throat. ‘Whether she walks again or not depends on salvageability.’
Keeda went pale. Toth grunted something obscene. Lotara rounded on the new lord of the Legio Audax, but her words were drowned out by the howling engines of an incoming Stormcrow gunship. Its forward-swept wings cast a vulture’s shadow on the deck.
‘…my ship,’ Lotara finished over the quieting engines. ‘Is that clear?’
‘Uh, perfectly, ma’am.’ Audun drummed his thick fingers on his uniformed belly. He’d heard maybe one word in ten, but it didn’t pay to push the flag-captain’s temper.
Lotara looked pointedly at the two Titan crew members. ‘I want complete copies of your reports. If I don’t get them, I’ll know why.’
Toth nodded, and Keeda smiled. ‘Aye, ma’am.’
‘Good. Now go to the apothecarion and get Toth patched up.’ She stepped back, making way for them. Just as she turned to begin the long journey back to the bridge, she noticed just who was leaving the Stormcrow. The warrior’s crested helm marked him out above his brethren, but she’d have known him purely from the bronze versions of the XII Legion symbol on both of his shoulder guards.
She watched him as he descended the gang-ramp into the hangar, his walk assured, his grace undeniable, his arrogance unbounded. He spoke to his companions, ignoring the human serfs and hangar crew going about their business around him.
Very calmly, Lotara Sarrin drew her laspistol, took aim, and shot a World Eaters captain in the face.
His head snapped back from the las-beam’s impact, and she had a momentary flush of pleasure at scoring a truly wicked shot, before the World Eaters circled their captain and raised their bolters, aiming across the crowded hangar deck.
There was, very distinctly, just long enough for Lotara to think they won’t shoot, before they shot. She saw the flare of muzzle flashes as their guns kicked in their fists. Time didn’t slow down as she’d been led to believe by the war-sagas. She barely had time to blink before the bolts detonated in the air not six metres from her face, spraying her with burning, stinging shrapnel.
Serfs and thralls were scattering with the same haste as cockroaches fleeing a sudden light. She stood dumbstruck for one of the first times in her life, unsure why she was still alive, yet more annoyed they’d dared to shoot her aboard her own ship.
Another World Eater moved to stand by her side, his hand raised to ward off further attack from the captain’s bodyguards. He spoke a single word, soft and low.
‘Enough.’
The others weren’t listening, and the captain wasn’t dead. He came to his feet, storming towards her at the head of nine of his brothers. A meteor hammer rattled loose on its chain, hanging from his right fist.
‘You puling little whore,’ he snarled down at her. ‘How dare you?’ He pulled the weapon back, activating its spiked head, meaning to wipe her from the face of the deck. Lotara spat at his boots, but the World Eater at her side took another step forwards, preventing the two of them from coming to blows.
‘I said enough.’ He kept his hand raised, warning them back. ‘Stand down, Delvarus.’
The Triarii captain turned his grim-faced helm towards the Codicier, eye lenses gleaming. ‘You have no authority over me, Esca. The bitch shot me. Get out of my way.’
‘That,’ Esca replied patiently, ‘will not be happening. Move away.’
The other Triarii pulled steel, as another three World Eaters came to stand by Lotara. She looked up at them, each of them a full head and a half taller than her. All three wore Destroyers’ black.
‘Problem, captain?’ said the sergeant, in a voice laced by vox-corruption.
Delvarus pointed at the mortal woman in the middle of the towering pack of legionaries. ‘She–’
‘I wasn’t asking you, Captain Delvarus. I was asking Captain Sarrin.’ He looked down at her, his empty grenade bandolier clanking against his chestplate.
‘Nothing I can’t handle, Skane. But you’re welcome to stay anyway.’
More Triarii were arriving to swell the ranks of those around Delvarus. The captain’s cloak was ruined from the surface war, but he imperiously cast its ragged remnants over one shoulder.
‘This doesn’t concern either of you,’ he said. ‘Sergeant, Codicier, you’re dismissed.’
They ignored him. Lotara spat on his boots again. ‘You abandoned the ship, Delvarus. That’s dereliction of duty. Every life we lost in that boarding action is blood on your hands.’
He laughed down at her. ‘You were boarded? When I left the ship, the fight was a foregone conclusion. How did you manage to get boarded, Lotara?’
She smiled, the sweetest knife of a smile. ‘Would you prefer I took this to the primarch?’
‘Aye, perhaps I would. You think he’ll even care? He barely knows who he is, any more. Dereliction of duty may be a grave threat to an Ultramarine, but we’re a little more grounded in the realities of war. Now get out of my face, girl. I’ll let this insult pass once. Try it again, and I’ll give your skull to my artificers as a pot for night soil.’
More legionaries gathered on both sides. ‘This looks entertaining,’ said Kargos, moving next to Skane. ‘Have we missed something?’
‘She shot me,’ Delvarus said.
Kargos snorted, sounding suspiciously like a snigger. There was a similar bark of vox-chuckling from Skane’s augmetic throat.
‘Well, I’m sure you deserved it,’ the Apothecary said.
‘You aren’t funny, Kargos.’
Kargos was still grinning, iron teeth on show. ‘Maybe not, but you are. Getting shot on your own hangar deck? I only wish we still had remembrancers around to record that in your archives of personal heroism.’
Delvarus gave a snort of derision and turned away. ‘I’m done with this idiocy.’
‘Stand your ground, soldier.’
The Triarii captain halted, and turned with a feline and somehow amused slowness, to regard the woman who’d addressed him.
‘What is it, Lotara?’
‘You will address me as Captain Sarrin. And you are confined to your arming chamber until I say otherwise. Discipline exists even if you consider yourself above it, Delvarus.’
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