by Marc
Ferag made a magical sign, causing a shimmering oval surface to appear in the air, looking like a vertical pool of water or maybe quicksilver. With his forefinger he traced runes in the Dark Tongue, which could only be spoken in the warp. The runes spelled out his Chaos name, so recently bestowed upon him by his greater daemon patron.
With another gesture he dissolved the writing screen.
And now to welcome Quillilil!
Ferag strode from the lofty-ceilinged chamber and on to the spacious balcony overlooking the extensive palace, looking around him and, as always, taking immense satisfaction in his accomplishments. He was ruler of an entire planetary system within the Imperium of Chaos, called by outsiders the Eye of Terror. Five of the system’s eight planets were inhabited. Several billion beings all lived in dread, in obedience, in utmost respect and adoration, of Ferag Lion-Wolf.
Ferag had designed his palace to resemble what he imagined the heavenly palaces of Tzeentch and his Feathered Lords to be like. Tier upon tier of terraces rose to the cloud layer, sparkling and glowing in iridescent colours. Towers and minarets and convoluted galleries twisted and twined like snakes. But none of it, of course, was restricted by gravity. The towers and galleries jutted out at crazy angles, as if they had been constructed in space or – as was the impression Ferag had striven to create – the vast unknowable reaches of the warp.
His aides and guards gathered around him. It was time for Quillilil’s chariot to arrive. A magnifier had been set up on the balcony. Through it, events in the upper atmosphere became visible as though they were only a short distance away. So they were able to watch as the chariot from the neighbouring planetary system, an elaborate, burnished affair decorated with gold and silver curlicues, appeared in the lemon-yellow sky and swooped through the upper air. Diving for the cloud layer, it descended towards the palace.
Ferag and his aides carefully watched the surrounding countryside, dotted with towns and villages whose privilege it was to share a landscape with their mighty ruler. Yes, there it was! The plot was afoot! Shark-like craft were hurtling over the horizon, three altogether, coming from different directions. In addition, from hidden places nearer at hand, a dozen wild-looking figures mounted on flying discs were soaring upwards, long hair flying behind them, waving weapons.
There was magic at work, or those discs would not have been able to fly here. They were K’echi’tsonae, steeds of Tzeentch, and their proper medium was the warp. Peering closely at the magnifier, Ferag could see the rows of teeth around their rims.
Both shark-craft and riders were converging on the interstellar chariot. Ferag had a consummate sense of timing. He raised a hand, staying his aides who were ready to release a barrage and destroy the raiders. Instead, he allowed the raiders to get closer to their prey.
‘Let me deal with this,’ Ferag murmured in his melodious baritone voice.
When it seemed there could be no help for the descending foreign vessel on its state visit, he pointed with all five fingers of his right hand. The air became charged with power. It crackled. All present felt the waves of prickling sensations over their entire bodies. And from the fingers of master magician Ferag Lion-Wolf there issued streams of raw magic, crossing the intervening miles instantaneously, sizzling, swaying, touching all three shark-craft and the dozen disc raiders.
For a brief moment the great stream of energy flickered around them, and then, in that same moment, they shivered and were gone.
Ferag Lion-Wolf smiled knowingly. Lord Quillilil’s chariot settled itself onto a marbled landing bay further down the terrace. Ferag and his party had already made their way there when the ornate door of the chariot swung open. Flamboyantly clad guards emerged and took up station on either side, glancing nervously around them.
Lord-Commander Quillilil stepped down from the threshold. Unlike Ferag, he had never been a Space Marine, and so was much shorter in stature than the hulking Lion-Wolf. He wore a cloak of brilliant blue. His hands were small, with a shrivelled, talon-like look. In place of a mouth, he had a compact, curved beak, turquoise in colour. A straw-coloured plume sprouted from the top of his otherwise bald pate. His eyes were round and unblinking, and seemed unable to stare in any direction but straight ahead, so that he looked about him continually with sudden nervous movements.
‘My Lord-Commander Quillilil!’ Ferag greeted breezily, spreading arm and tentacle in welcome.
‘My Lord-Commander Ferag!’
Quillilil’s voice was high and chirping. He allowed Ferag to embrace him briefly, then stepped back to gaze at the palace around him. He was clearly impressed.
‘I am happy to have been able to protect you, my lord Quillilil,’ Ferag said. ‘It appears some of your enemies have gathered here.’
Twittering laughter rose from Quillilil’s throat. His eyes glittered. ‘Yes! Subversives from my own planet who fled here some time ago. I knew my visit would flush them out! Why do you think I came here? You should be flattered, my lord Ferag, at the trust I have placed in you. My chariot is unarmed!’
‘I, too, have used the occasion to my benefit,’ Ferag told him. ‘Your renegades could not have acted without help from some of my own subjects. They are now paying the penalty for their disloyalty.’ He glanced at the surrounding countryside, taking pleasure in knowing of the death and torture being inflicted there.
‘I have prepared a banquet for tonight.’ he continued to tell his guest. ‘You are particularly partial to human flesh, I believe?’
Quillilil clacked his beak rapidly, in eager affirmation.
‘Skinned specimens have been marinading in spices for the past week. Tonight they will be roasted for your delectation. Tomorrow we will discuss a treaty between us. For the present, though, allow me to show you round my palace. But first—’
Ferag raised arm and tentacle and swept them through the air, making magical passes. There came an immense rumbling sound. The huge edifice all around them was coming apart. Towers, terraces, galleries, halls, all separated and began gyrating in the air, performing a gigantic dance. The landing bay on which they stood also took part in the display, whirling lazily through a cloud and back again.
Then, with meticulous precision, everything came together again. Stone block met stone block in silent harmony, mortared together as before. In seconds the palace had reassembled itself.
Quillilil trilled in feigned pleasure. ‘Most impressive, my lord Ferag! And if you will allow me in return…’
He too made an elaborate sign with his hand. Further along the terrace, a jutting arcade detached itself, floated a short distance away into the ether and then began spinning at speed.
Quillilil made delicate pulling motions with his fingers. The minaret ceased spinning and returned to its place with a deep grinding of stone upon stone. There was a gentle murmur of approval from the assembled aides and retainers.
It was common for Tzeentchian magicians to show off to one another on first meeting. But for all his chirpiness, the visitor could not hide the fact that he had been bettered by his host.
Surreptitiously, Ferag cast his guest a passing glance with his upper pair of eyes, not wanting Quillilil to see the dark flash that would show he was looking into his mind. It was as he had expected. Quillilil was not happy at being ruler of a mere one-planet system. He envied Ferag his domains.
The visit was but the first step in an elaborate, convoluted plan to take his place, stretching far into the future. Quillilil’s brain was a maze of plot and counter-plot, intricate to the point of madness.
Which was as it should be in a champion of Tzeentch, the Great Conspirator and Master of Fortune. Quillilil would not, however, see his plans come to fruition. Ferag had laid a strategy to add his guest’s planet to his own dominion. As for Quillilil himself, he would be disposed of as easily as one of the feeble humans he was about to feast upon.
Ushering his visitor from the landing bay, Ferag began conducting him through the great vaulted halls of the palace, pointing o
ut feature after feature. But his mind was not on the task of being a tour guide. The promise made to him by his greater daemon patron recently – given to him at the same time as his Chaos name – had left Ferag in a state of pure exultation. It was not long, therefore, before he began talking instead of himself.
‘Know, my friend, that I have lived a most eventful life, even for one of our kind,’ he said seriously to Quillilil as they strode. ‘Have you wondered at my name? Its meaning can tell you much about me. I was born on a primitive planet in the Imperium, outside of our Chaos realm. Life there was dangerous. What few human beings there were knew only how to make tools and weapons of stone, and they had it hard. Among my people one did not receive a permanent name at birth. One had to earn it as one grew to manhood. Now the lion-wolf is the most fierce animal on that planet. Standing twice the height of a human, with jaws that can crush a horse, able to outpace the fastest runner – it would take twenty armed warriors to defeat it! When I was eight years old, one of these beasts killed my father…’
THE REMINISCENCE TOOK his mind back. He was a naked boy, standing on the dusty scrubland of the world of his birth. In the sky was the looming globe of its smouldering red sun.
And barely ten paces away, the lifeless body of his father was being tossed back and form in the jaws of a lion-wolf! When the beast had come loping across the landscape towards them, they had both run for the protection of a rocky tor. But when he heard his father’s stout timber spear clattering to the ground behind him, he had turned to witness the dreadful sight.
The boy hesitated. While the beast devoured its prey he could, perhaps, gain the summit of the tor and the fearsome animal might forget him.
But it had killed his father!
A screaming rage gripped him. He ran back and laid his hands on the spear. It was almost too heavy for him to lift, but he raised its fire-hardened point and yelled at the fearsome lion-wolf for all he was worth.
‘You killed my father!’
The creature dropped the torn, mauled body and turned its massive face towards him, sniffing the air. He could smell its shaggy coat as it came towards him to investigate. He made jabbing motions with the spear, yelling and retreating. He was at the bottom of the tor now.
The lion-wolf gathered itself together and leaped!
The boy stood his ground, determined to gain revenge for the death of his father. He jammed the butt of the spear in a crevice in the rock and aimed the spearpoint at the gaping jaws of the lion-wolf as it sprang.
The lion-wolf had intended to bite off his head with one snap of its great teeth. Instead, the spear rammed itself down the beast’s throat and bore the full impact of that huge body’s momentum. Sprawled on the scrubland, the lion-wolf straggled to extract the offending shaft, coughing up great gouts of blood. The boy gave it no chance to do so. On he came, pushing with all his might – pushing the spear down and down, until he came within reach of those deadly claws! But by then it was too late for the animal. The spear had entered its heart.
Even so, the end was long coming. The lion-wolf did not die easily. It writhed and thrashed as its lifeblood poured from its mouth, watched by the fascinated, exultant, grieving eight-year-old…
‘SO THEN THE tribe gave me my permanent name,’ Lord-Commander Ferag said to his guest. ‘In my native tongue “Ferag” means “killer”, so I was known as “Killer of the Lion-Wolf”. I have retained the first word out of respect for my original people.
‘No other warrior had ever borne such a name, for no one else had killed a lion-wolf single-handed, and probably has not even now.’
‘A stirring tale!’ Lord Quillilil chirruped. ‘When did you become inducted into the Adeptus Astartes?’
‘No more than forty days later, a squad of Purple Stars Space Marines landed near our village. They were told of my courage with the lion-wolf. They tested me in every way, then took me back with them to their monastery.
‘I served the Purple Stars for the next twenty years, learning all their ways, going on their campaigns as a scout, as a messenger and in countless other roles. At the end of that time I was judged fit to be transformed into a Space Marine. I was given the extra organs, the progenoid glands, the sacred gene-seed. For two hundred years I served with the Purple Stars, and saw more action than I could hope to relate, eventually rising to the rank of company commander. I particularly distinguished myself in a raid on a tyranid hive ship…’
ONCE AGAIN FERAG Lion-Wolf found his mind regressing to the far past. A squad of Purple Stars Space Marines was cutting a way through the shell of a vast, snail-like form, its motive power crippled by laser fire so that it had become separated from the hive fleet. None of them knew what to expect on the inside, and what they did find was nothing they could have expected.
They were in a round tunnel which pulsed and throbbed like a living organ, branching at irregular intervals. A huge thumping sound was all around them, like the beating of a gigantic heart. The light was dim, blood-red, and seemed to seep from out of the very walls themselves.
Then, scrabbling down the tunnels which were scarcely large enough to contain them, came the tyranid warriors, huge bossed beasts, six-limbed, worse than the worst nightmare, each head a mass of razor-sharp teeth, each front pair of limbs whirling twin swords that could cut straight through a Space Marine’s armour!
With horror Ferag saw his bolter shots bounce off the tyranids’ armour while his men were butchered around him. There was no chance of retreating to the assault craft.
Then his mind flashed to the time he had fought the lion-wolf as a boy, and he took heart at the memory. He drew his chain sword in his left gauntlet. Sparks flew as he parried the tyranid boneswords, as he later came to know them. This enabled him to get close in – and the muzzle of his bolter went straight between the tyranid’s massed teeth!
The monster jumped then slumped as the bolt exploded inside its body. Ferag let out a roar of laughter. He barked into his communicator.
‘That’s the way to do it, men! That’s the way to do it!’
THE HEROIC DEED faded as Ferag brought his mind back to the present. ‘The tactics I developed on that day became standard for fighting the foul tyranids at close quarters,’ he finished.
He paused for a moment. ‘Most warriors would be satisfied with such a life, I dare say, but I was not. The Imperium began to seem too confined for me – I wanted something grander, something to give scope to my abilities! In secret I began to study the ways of magic. I knew, of course, that there had once been a great heretical war, when fully half the original Space Marine legions took refuge in our Imperium of Chaos. I became attracted to the study of Tzeentch. And eventually I did the unthinkable. I deserted my Chapter, and made my way here to devote myself to his service.’ He grinned.
‘And now I am his champion! Commander of five worlds! It has been a glorious time! I could not begin to regale you with my adventures, or say how long I have lived. In the Eye of Terror a day is a thousand years, a thousand years is but a day, and time means nothing, until death comes.’
‘Your fame spreads far and wide, my dear lord commander.’ his guest cooed.
‘And so it should!’ Ferag made a face. ‘Do you know, my lord Quillilil, with what contempt I was treated at first? I am a Space Marine of the Second Founding, raised after the Horus war. The Chaos Legionaries are all of the First Founding. They thought themselves harder, and me as soft and weak. Well, they soon learned their mistake.’
Ferag’s hand slashed through the air. ‘I have killed thirty-five Traitor Marines in hand-to-hand combat! Twenty of them followers of Khorne, the berserker Blood God! And a dozen of those World Eaters, the most feared of all! There is no greater warrior than Ferag Lion-Wolf!’
His voice dropped and became more conciliatory. ‘Forgive my boasting, my lord, but I only speak the truth.’
Quillilil twittered flattering laughter. ‘It is no boasting at all, my fellow champion. Why, you are too modest. You almost deprecat
e yourself. Everyone knows of your great victory on the bowl planet.’
‘Yessss.’ Ferag grinned. It was one of his most beloved memories, perhaps his greatest exploit since coming to the Eye of Terror.
A great army had been assembled, an unholy alliance between the forces of Khorne, the Blood God, and Nurgle, the Great Lord of Disease and Decay, also Tzeentch’s most implacable enemy! The battle had been fought in a planet shaped like nothing so much as a shallow bowl, governed by its own special physical laws. It was, in fact, possible to fall off the rim of this bowl and into some inescapable hell.
Ferag had commanded a much smaller Tzeentch force. At first sight the twin hordes looked invincible. The Khorne core of Chaos Space Marines had drenched themselves in blood before the battle even began, butchering their own massed soldiery and driving them towards the enemy. As for the Nurgle horde… a vast, filthy Chaos daemon, a great unclean one, had been at its head, and he had come up with a special tactic. The millions-strong army had been rotted with amoeba plague. Its soldiery were no longer separate individuals, but combined into one sticky, putrid mass which came rolling on, engulfing everything in its path.
Against all this, Ferag had only the special strengths of Tzeentch: strategy and sorcery! It had been a battle of titanic proportions. The bowl world had glowed and seethed with magical forces for months. But in the end it was Ferag’s tactical genius that had won the day. The vile hordes of Khorne and Nurgle had been driven over the planet’s rim to go toppling into an eternal hell-world.