‘Khârn’s report speaks ill of our Legion.’
‘Of course it does, we failed to reinforce our allies. My report will speak ill of the World Eaters for pushing ahead without us. We are hardly going to praise each other for a perfect crusade.’ Argel Tal finally turned to Erebus, his dusky features showing a slight smile. ‘What happened at Calth, master? How did you fail so catastrophically?’
Erebus turned to look at the statue of a Word Bearers captain, fallen at Isstvan V. ‘We gave birth to the warp storm that will sever Ultramar from the entire Imperium. A feat of such aetheric significance that we had to murder a sun to ignite the ritual. How is that failure?’
The daemon in Argel Tal’s body crept its way through his bloodstream, making his veins burn.
He knows he failed. Shame bleeds from him, the way warm skin steams in cold air.
‘Guilliman lives,’ Argel Tal replied to Erebus. ‘You abandoned how many thousands on Calth? And your fleet was scattered. You can forgive Lord Aurelian for seeing both sides of the coin.’
Erebus, ever solemn, walked around Cyrene’s statue. ‘In almost every future, you die at Terra.’
To that, Argel Tal only grinned. ‘I know. And there will be no grander place to be on the last day.’
Erebus raised a thin eyebrow. ‘You accept that fate?’
‘The primarch has seen it in the warp’s tides. He claims it’s merely one possible outcome, but it matches what Raum tells me. I’m destined to die in the shadow of great wings.’
It’s true, brother. We die in the shadow of great wings.
I know. I believe you.
Argel Tal gestured to the statue. ‘Why did you come? To see the Confessor?’
‘To see you, my boy.’ Erebus wore his monkish robes rather than his battle armour. The red silks fell in a long, regal flow, like a cardinal’s attire from one of Ancient Terra’s many eras of false faith.
‘Enough of the “my boy”, master. Those days are done.’
‘You wear armour,’ Erebus pointed out. ‘Even here.’
The lord of the Gal Vorbak nodded. ‘I can no longer remove it. It’s part of me, like scales or hide.’
He sensed rather than saw Erebus’s smile. ‘Fascinating,’ the Chaplain said.
‘It happened after Armatura. I don’t know why.’
‘Fascinating,’ Erebus repeated.
We should kill him, breathed Raum.
How sad that it’s actually tempting.
A bronze chain secured a great skinbound tome to Argel Tal’s waist. ‘You should read this.’ Argel Tal unhooked the book, offering it to his former mentor.
‘The Book of Lorgar.’ Erebus made no move to take it. ‘I’ve read it. I transcribed many of its pages myself.’
‘No.’ Argel Tal kept holding it out. ‘This is the version he shared with the other primarchs. This is his writing, his philosophy down in ink. Not yours, not Kor Phaeron’s, not the mere dictations of the gods. The true Book of Lorgar, the scripture that will inform the Legion for millennia to come. He calls it the Testamentum Veritas.’
Erebus took the book in both hands, but didn’t open it. ‘You have such faith in him.’
‘You speak as though you don’t.’
‘I have less faith in the Emperor’s sons each time I cross paths with them. For all their claims of being perfection incarnate, they are also humanity’s flaws writ large. Look at Horus. The galaxy burns from his ambition, not because I arranged to have him cut by an envenomed blade. The latter merely hastened the former. And look at Russ. The purity and savagery of a wolf, yet he begs at the Emperor’s boots, crying out for an alpha to lead him.’
Argel Tal had no patience for an argument over the merits and flaws of the Eighteen Sires, especially not in this sacred place. He let silence voice his disapproval for him.
‘Very well,’ Erebus conceded. ‘I wanted to speak with you because I need your help.’
Argel Tal didn’t take his eyes from the statue. ‘Then speak.’
‘As I said before Lorgar, I’ve walked the Ten Thousand Futures. In many of them, if events play out along those paths, we will lose at Terra. Horus falls and his loyal Legions are broken upon the Imperial anvil. We are not merely exiled, Argel Tal. We are torn whole from the annals of the Imperium. Our names become legend, then myth, then forgotten in full.’
The Gal Vorbak listened, as did the daemon inside him. Erebus spoke on, his scholar’s eyes looking over Cyrene’s clean marble likeness. ‘From the beginning, we’ve guided Lorgar, Mortarion, Fulgrim, Horus and the others. A coven of articulate, intelligent souls within the Legions, at the primarchs’ sides, guiding their movements and decisions. Calas Typhon stands for the Death Guard, even without their Librarius. Fabius’s vision of perfection ensnared Fulgrim’s imagination and caught the Emperor’s Children. We’ve played to their pride, as well as their fears. But now, when we should be pulling together, Lorgar is slipping loose.’
Argel Tal shook his head. ‘And you want me to steer him back? The primarch is his own man, Erebus. He’s stronger since Isstvan. End your craven need to control him and simply be proud he’s become who he was born to be.’
Erebus sensed his former pupil’s reticence, and reshaped his argument.
‘Nothing so crude,’ the Chaplain said. ‘But we must… guide him. That’s all. In all the futures where we lose, Lorgar was allowed to manipulate events to his own desires. That is why we must bring Sanguinius to his knees at Signus Prime, no matter what our father believes. We lose the war in many of the futures where the Angel reaches Terra.’
For the first time he could ever recall, Argel Tal was brutally, utterly honest with the man who’d trained him for so many years.
‘I don’t care. I am no schemer, and I trust Lorgar’s vision far above yours.’
‘But we have to forge events in accordance with–’
‘We said we don’t care.’ Argel Tal’s eyes burned molten silver. Raum’s eyes. ‘We came here to pray, Deceiver. You are fouling the sanctity of this place with your forked tongue.’
‘Deceiver?’
The silver faded. ‘It is what Raum calls you,’ Argel Tal admitted.
‘I see. Then I shall trouble you no further, my boy.’ Erebus made to leave, but hesitated at the last moment. He dared to touch Argel Tal’s shoulder; the warrior and the daemon within the officer allowed it. ‘I will do what I must to engineer events as I see fit, for I will not lose the war for humanity’s soul because others are too blind to see the light. I only wished you at my side, Argel Tal.’
Argel Tal’s eye lenses – the blue of Colchisian skies – met his former master’s. ‘It’s always death, with you. Who needs to die this time? Whose death will set fate along the path you choose?’
‘Many lives will have to end before we raise Horus’s flag over the battlements of Terra. Almost all of them fight for the other side.’
‘Almost. Not all.’
Erebus took a breath, as if unwilling to burden his Legion-brother with an unwelcome truth. ‘Not all, no.’
Argel Tal’s lip curled. ‘It’s Khârn.’ The words weren’t a question. ‘That’s why you came to me. Khârn will foul your plans somewhere down the pathways of fate, and you want him dead.’
Erebus didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself.
The silence was broken by the creaking squeals of protesting ceramite and the wet crunches of bone scraping through flesh. Gnarled, overly-knuckled fingers lengthened, unsheathing long black talons as they did. Argel Tal’s faceplate distorted into the canine maw his men had come to know as Raum’s face, before melting into Argel Tal’s own silver deathmask, hearkening back to the entombed Faero-kings from the myths of the oldest empires.
Erebus carried himself as one of the most composed, calm souls in all the Eighteen Legions. He knew secrets that he believed were
known to no others, and had presided over the enlightenment of genetic demigods. Yet even he backed away from Argel Tal’s possessed form. Dark mist, cinnamon-sweet with the reek of decaying flesh, rose from the warrior’s black-veined gargoyle wings.
‘Argel Tal,’ Erebus began.
‘Be silent! Your prophecies are poison. We are sick of others whispering about the future. At least Lorgar doesn’t demand we dance to fate’s tune.’
‘But I bring a warning.’
‘You bring lies and schemes and treachery!’
Argel Tal roared, lashing out with his claw. Erebus barely managed to parry with his crozius, moving back as he deflected the blow. The daemon-thing’s talons crashed into another Word Bearer’s statue and wrenched it from its pedestal to crash across the stone floor.
Erebus clutched his crozius tighter. ‘Boy,’ he said. ‘Enough of this.’
‘Do we look like we have any wish to betray Khârn? He is the last flesh-and-blood brother we trust. He is the last to never fail us, and the last we have never failed. Xaphen lies dead; you are a viper; Aquillon fell to murder. Only Khârn still stands. With us, he holds the two Legions together. With us, he keeps the primarchs from killing one another.’
The thing that had been Argel Tal took a step closer. ‘Go from us. We hunger, and there is no finer wine on the tongue than Legion-blood; no finer taste than the salt-meat of Legion-flesh.’
Erebus took another step back, but no fear played across his features. There was only awe.
‘You have become a walking monument to the Pantheon’s divinity. How far you’ve come from the day I took you from your family.’
‘We have become the Truth. We warned you to go. Now go.’
Erebus didn’t lift his crozius again, he merely held up a hand to warn the daemon-thing from coming closer. ‘I would not ask you to shed Khârn’s blood. I know you never would, you’ve been brothers for too long, over too many compliances. That’s not why I came.’
Argel Tal stood where he was, his armoured shoulders rising and falling in rhythm to his heavy, inhuman breathing.
‘We are listening.’
‘Khârn will fall before the war’s ending. I have foreseen it many times. It will be down to you, Argel Tal, to fight at his side. You are the only one who can keep him alive.’
The monstrous figure grunted, barking a wad of ichor-saliva onto the floor. ‘Nothing can kill Khârn.’
‘There speaks a brother’s loyalty.’ Erebus risked harnessing his crozius on his back, moving slowly so as not to draw the creature’s ire. ‘I am telling you the truth, son.’
The silver deathmask warped into an expression of rippling mercury torment. ‘We are no longer your son.’
‘No. Forgive me, an old habit come to the fore.’ Erebus lifted a hand again. ‘I am telling you how to save your brother. Have I ever done you wrong? Where does this anger come from?’
It came from within, and from without. It came from the daemon in his heart, sending spite through his bloodstream. It came from rage at the way Kor Phaeron and Erebus treated the primarch. It came from irritation at the way both of them smirked knowingly and claimed to know everything about everything.
Argel Tal bit back his rage, swallowing it hard and whole. Raum scratched pain along his bones, wanting to kill, kill, kill, but that was nothing new. The daemon loathed the First Chaplain on some instinctive, unearthly level. Erebus had always revolted him, the way nocturnal creatures despised the sun.
‘The anger is Raum’s,’ Argel Tal said, though it was his as well. ‘Say what you wish to say.’
‘You can save Khârn. The vision is difficult to interpret, for the future stretches out not like a path, but a cobweb, every decision threading out to a million other possibilities. But I can tell you this for certain: Khârn dies at sunrise on a world of grey skies. In every future I have seen, he dies as dawn lightens the heavens. And he dies with a blade in his back.’
‘Who wields it?’
‘Someone that hates him. All I sense is the murderer’s emotion, not his face.’
Argel Tal settled, gently prising Raum’s grip from control over the body they shared. It was the mental equivalent of flexing one’s muscles after waking from a long slumber. Already bored and sensing no prey to toy with, the daemon allowed it with only ill-tempered muttering.
This is the offer your godling father warned you of?
So it would seem. Everything he gives comes with a cost.
You should have let me kill him.
Argel Tal smiled. Probably.
‘What amuses you?’ Erebus asked. ‘I hear that soft laugh of yours.’
‘Everything amuses me, of late. I will bear your warning in mind, master. Thank you.’
‘You still call me Master. Those days are as long gone as the others, surely.’
‘A bad habit, no different from yours.’ With the burning in his veins beginning to ease, Argel Tal turned back to Cyrene’s statue. He picked up his sword from the ground, unsure when it had slipped from his grip. During the Change, most likely.
‘Let me tell you of Calth,’ Erebus said. ‘Hear my words, and judge for yourself whether I failed or not.’
Argel Tal listened in silence as Erebus told the whole tale. The ambush at the fleetyards. Burning ships raining wreckage down onto the world below. The poisoning of Calth’s sun. The birth of the kaleidoscopic Ruinstorm, a cancer just waiting to spread across healthy space.
Argel Tal waited until the very end, though in truth he heard very little after the first half. His mind was afire with one grave possibility that he didn’t dare call hope. Erebus trailed off at last, his explanation done.
‘Did we fail?’ he asked. The confidence in his voice suggested he considered his case made to perfection.
‘Torgaddon,’ Argel Tal replied. ‘You used his flesh in that ritual. You summoned a dead man’s soul.’
Erebus nodded. ‘Kor Phaeron first learned of the rite, through his own prayers. We–’
‘It doesn’t matter how.’ Argel Tal’s eye lenses burned with inner light. ‘You brought him back.’
The Chaplain nodded, seeming to know, in his limitless patience, just where this was going.
‘I did.’
He lies, Argel Tal. He lies to us both.
No. Not in this.
You think a mortal spirit can return unscarred from the Sea of Souls?
What matters, Raum, is that they can return at all.
Argel Tal ignored the snarling protests of the beast within. He gestured at the statue with the blade that had killed the girl herself.
‘Bring her back.’
Erebus breathed slowly, not making eye contact. ‘For you, my son. I will.’
FOURTEEN
Reassignment
Unsanctioned
Forge Fires
Keeda wasn’t ashamed for weeping when she first saw Syrgalah’s wreckage. The Warhound had been pulled from its recovery sarcophagus by the ceiling cranes, broken and still smoking from its wounds. One-armed, unable to stand upon her two crippled legs, with every metre of armour plating corroded, Syrgalah’s head hung slack on a neck too ruined to bear the cockpit’s weight.
No, that hadn’t been easy to watch. It was better now, but not by much. At least she was standing.
The Ember Queen was held up by solid gantries either side of her, regaining her stature despite her injuries – all part of the Machine Cult’s belief in restoring the Titan’s warrior-soul by treating it with dignity as much as through technological engineering. So she stood among her sisters, one of ninety surviving Warhounds in the dark colours of the Ember Wolves. Yet she was far, far from whole.
Eight tech-priests worked on her joints, supported by servitor teams flocking in packs behind them. Syrgalah’s metal skin crawled with humans, cyborgs and lobotomised slaves, as well
as a number of drifting servo-skulls scanning whatever mechanism they were told to scan at any given moment.
Toth was with her, his new arm not yet coated by synthetic skin, its iron bones bare from the elbow down. It wasn’t taking well. Angry red veins showed along his bicep, perhaps the first signs of infection. He kept testing it, making his new fingers curl into a fist every few seconds. Clearly it still hurt, if his wincing was anything to go by.
One of the red-robed priests approached them, his features masked entirely by his hood. His spindly secondary arms folded close to his shoulders as he drew near.
‘Moderati Bly. Moderati Kol.’ His voice was a vox-ish drone, devoid of emotion, that could easily have belonged to any tech-priest either of them had met.
‘Ninth?’ Keeda asked.
He responded by pulling his hood back, revealing his shaven head, the nodal implants at his temples, and the visor across his eyes.
‘Affirmative. It is me, the Ninth.’
‘How are the repairs going?’ Toth asked.
The Ninth’s throat-speaker buzzed. ‘They proceed as you see them. No visual deception is occurring.’
Keeda smiled for the first time since they’d been brought down by that damn Reaver and its lucky shooting.
‘What Moderati Kol means, is when will Syrgalah be ready to walk again?’
The Ninth turned his visored eyes to Toth. ‘Then why did he not simply phrase his inquiry using those precise words?’
Toth’s new arm tightened again. He made a fist. ‘Just answer her, Ninth. My head hurts enough as it is.’
‘Very well. L-ADX-cd-MARS-Quintessence-[Necare Modification]-I-XII-002a-2/98: VS/TK/K will be ready to walk in the next engagement, providing fleet rumour holds no incorrectness. The estimated planetfall of twenty-seven days hence allows our technicians significant time to see the repairs completed.’
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