The First Heretic

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘He just left?’ Cyrene asked. Her nose wrinkled, either in confusion or distaste, Argel Tal wasn’t sure which.

  ‘He had no choice,’ the captain replied.

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘And then... the primarch looked out over the Legion. He watched us for what felt like an age. And at last, just before speaking, he smiled.’

  ‘What did he speak of?’

  ‘Two things.’ Argel Tal looked away from her. ‘Firstly, an ancient belief called the Pilgrimage, to seek a place where gods and mortals meet. And then, he spoke of Colchis.’

  ‘Your home world?’ there was wonder in her voice. Colchis. The cradle of angels.

  ‘Yes,’ Argel Tal replied, seeing the reverence in her features. ‘We’re going home.’

  NINE

  Crimson King

  The City of Grey Flowers

  Blessed Lady

  Colchis is a thirsty world.

  Depending on the speaker, those words were voiced with a smile or a curse. But they remained true: the continents were raw with thirst, and the world itself was marked by memories.

  At three times the size of Terra, with a fraction of the population, it took almost five standard years to turn once around its merciless sun. And it turned with great patience: a day lasting a Terran week, a week lasting a Terran month.

  From orbit, its skin was a visage of unforgiving mountain ranges and auburn desert plains, veined by threading rivers. It was in dry lands like these that that humanity’s ancestors – the very first men and women on the world no longer called Earth – rose in lands that would become known as the cradle of civilisation.

  Colchis was aboriginal in the same way. Mankind had been born in lands kin to those blanketing its surface, making Colchis an Earth that might have been, rather than the Terra that was.

  Over the generations, civilisation had spread itself thin across the arid continents, with most cities clinging to the coasts. Each city-state maintained links to the others though sky trade and ocean freight, on a world where roads across the desert plains would be little more than folly.

  Unlike much of the emergent Imperium, Colchis was unprotected by vast orbital weapon platforms. More tellingly, it also had little in the way of the industrious space stations responsible for feeding and refuelling parasitic expeditionary fleets in their crusades through the galaxy.

  Colchis still bore scars of long-forgotten greatness – an age of wonders, ended in fire. In that sense, it was a future echo of what Khur had so recently become. The world’s surface was bruised dark by the bones of dead cities, fallen in unrecorded ages, never resettled. New cities rose elsewhere with the genesis of a simpler, quieter culture. The ancient ruins suggested a machine-driven empire once ruled Colchis, though little evidence ever came to light regarding its destruction. The lost kingdom’s legacy was evident even in orbit, where drifting, dead hulks – locked in orbits that would still take millennia to completely decay – marked the graves of interstellar shipyards.

  Few Imperial fleets ventured near Colchis, and not merely because of its lack of resupply capacity. Rumours circulated, citing unreliable shipping lanes, and the disappearance of the 2,188th Expeditionary Fleet in a nearby region, added fuel to that particular fire. Colchis seemed a world focused upon looking inwards, even backwards, refusing to clear its skies of wreckage from the Dark Age of Technology, and resisting all Imperial edicts to establish new orbital bases. The planet’s one concession was to allow the Mechanicum of Mars access to those serene hulks, letting the tech-priests plunder whatever they desired.

  And they’d done just that, with great enthusiasm, for great profit.

  The region was not haunted. No Imperial commander would ever give voice to a laughable superstition, when such words were holdovers from a more indecorous age. Yet still Colchis saw scarce traffic, and its resistance to supplying the Great Crusade remained inviolate.

  It was said this defiance could only have come from Lorgar, the Emperor’s Seventeenth Son, for no other authority would allow a planet to remain so curiously provincial. In the capital city, Vharadesh, a golden plaque was fixed to the immense doors leading into the Spire Temple of the Covenant. This tablet marked the primarch’s supposed words – words he’d never admitted, yet never denied, speaking to his father.

  ‘Take me from my home, and I will sail to the stars of your empire. I will serve as a son must serve. But let Colchis stand as I have shaped it: a planet of peace and prosperity.’

  It was also said, by the few that witnessed such rare moments, that the primarch smiled each time he passed those words, and reached out to stroke his golden fingertips across the etched lettering.

  Colchis was hardly devoid of technology. It enjoyed the benefits of Imperial life and culture, despite its master’s hesitance to supply materiel for the Emperor’s war. Auspices in the sky-traffic towers of Vharadesh tracked the activity in orbit, with scanner consoles lighting up at the sudden pulse of so many signals.

  It had been many years since the Urizen returned home.

  This time, there was someone waiting for him.

  The ship bore a proud title, named in honour of a legendary city in the murky tides of Prospero’s complicated mythology. The Sekhemra was the only live vessel in the heavens above Colchis, and it rested in its geocentric orbit, weapons unpowered, shields inactive. The humble strike cruiser seemed content to wait in silence, bathing its red hull in the fierce illumination offered by the system’s sun.

  Reality opened in an uneven rent, and the Word Bearers fleet streaked across the void, great engines also streaming light into the darkness as they powered towards their home world.

  On the strategium of the Fidelitas Lex, the Lord of the Legion watched the red ship’s resolving image on the occulus. He smiled, and closed his eyes as emotion threatened to overtake him.

  ‘Incoming hail,’ a bridge officer called.

  ‘Open channel,’ Lorgar replied. The smile didn’t leave his face when he opened his eyes, and the occulus projected a grainy image from the opposing vessel’s command deck.

  The pict revealed a giant in unprepossessing black-stained mail armour, surrounded by his own bridge crew. His skin had a dark, coppery hue, as if he spent many long days under alien suns, and his helm bore a scarlet plume of cresting hair. One eye was sealed, puckered shut from an old wound. The other glinted with a colour that couldn’t be made out through the image’s distortion.

  ‘A trifle melodramatic, brother,’ said the giant in an amused baritone. ‘That many ships, when I only brought one.’

  ‘You came,’ Lorgar said through his smile.

  ‘Of course I came. But you owe me some answers, dragging me across half the Imperium like this.’

  ‘You’ll have them, I promise you. It lifts my heart to see you.’

  ‘And mine, to see you. It has been too long. But... brother,’ the giant hesitated. ‘There was talk of Monarchia. Is it true?’

  The smile faded. ‘Not now,’ Lorgar said. ‘Not here.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Magnus the Red. ‘I’ll meet you in the City of Grey Flowers.’

  Life always struggles in the desert.

  On Colchis, as on many of the Imperium’s dryest worlds, the indigenous life coped with the climate however it could. For the human population, it was a matter of coastal cities, immense water filtration facilities, irrigation farming, and dealing with the seasonal floods from the rushing rivers that acted as blood vessels for the arid plains.

  Vharadesh, the Holy City, was the nexus of such industrious efforts. Swathes of irrigated farmland reached out from the city walls, a triumph of ingenuity over nature. Colchis was a thirsty world, but the perfection of the human form showed in all things.

  For other forms of life, lacking the capacity to affect their own environment, adaptation and evolution went hand in hand. Many plants in the drought-wracked scrubland had leaves with a layer of fine hairs to catch and hold more moisture from the infrequent
rainfall, and as a defence against the wind’s drying touch. Colchis demanded much from its native life.

  These forms of plant life had been catalogued by Imperial scholars over the years, and promptly ignored. All except for one wildflower growing in the alluvial deserts – a flower that couldn’t be dismissed so readily when it meant so much to the Colchisian people.

  The moon lily bloomed with leaves of silver, white and grey – all to reflect more of the sun’s harsh light, stunting its own photosynthesis in the name of survival. Fragile, beautiful, the moon lily was a gift between lovers, a decoration at weddings and festivals, and those trained in its breeding and care were as respected as teachers and priests among the populace.

  Across balconies throughout the city, especially on the spires claimed by the Covenant, great hanging gardens of white and silver blooms contrasted against the tan stone walls. Vharadesh was the Imperial designative name for the capital, and in the ruling caste’s religious sermons, it was referred to with passion and pride as the Holy City.

  But to the people of Colchis, Vharadesh would always be the City of Grey Flowers.

  Its wide streets were filled with cheering crowds as the Legion returned home, and when the first Stormbird – a vulture of gold – roared in for a landing by the Spire Temple, the people flocked to see their messiah return, and the pilgrims he brought with him.

  Argel Tal was approaching this carefully. He wasn’t sure how she would react.

  ‘You will have to be careful on the surface,’ he said.

  It had taken four months to reach Colchis from the ruin of Forty-Seven Sixteen. Four months of flight through stable warp conditions, four months of training and prayer, four months of listening to Xaphen debate about the Old Faith, and what hidden truths might be contained within the legend of the Pilgrimage. Argel Tal wasn’t sure what he believed, and the alien presence of doubt left him cold. He’d spent much of his time with Cyrene, as well as drilling the Seventh Company to battle readiness, and duelling Aquillon in the practice cages. The Custodian was a nightmare of an opponent, and both warriors enjoyed the challenge offered by the other. They weren’t even close to being friends, but grudging admiration was a fine foundation for meeting each other in the duelling ring.

  With the four months of travel to Colchis added to the rest, Argel Tal and the Chapter of the Serrated Sun had been absent from their own expeditionary fleet for well over half a year. From what little word reached him, apparently the 1,301st Expedition was sending repeated pleas for the Serrated Sun to return, for they were locked in a vicious compliance that required Astartes aid to break the enemy. Already one of the smaller fleets, they were apparently grinding to a halt without their Legion contingent.

  One of the messages had been addressed to him personally, as Chapter subcommander. It came directly from Fleetmaster Baloc Torvus – a veteran of void war, but self-confessed at lacking insight into planetary engagements.

  ‘We’re hurling men at one of their mountain strongholds, but they hold every advantage of terrain, and our armour divisions are ground down by ambushes in the foothills. Would that you were here, subcommander. The blades of the Seventh would make brutally short work of this place.’

  Argel Tal had saved it in the data-slate’s memory archive as a form of penance. He sometimes brought it back up to read over, masochistic in his frustration.

  Soon, though. They would return to the Great Crusade once breaking orbit from Colchis. The primarch had business here, and in truth, it was a blessing to be able to return to the home world. Argel Tal hadn’t been back himself in three decades.

  ‘I said, you will need to be careful on the surface,’ he repeated.

  Cyrene had changed. Gone was the emaciated wraith who wept as she left the ashen remnants of the perfect city.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. Her sightless eyes were closed – a habit she’d unconsciously been forming in the past few months. As she spoke, she was arranging her hair in a fashion that seemed needlessly complicated to Argel Tal. Her hands moved slowly, carefully, sensing by touch what her eyes couldn’t see. He enjoyed watching her; it was something of a guilty pleasure. While nothing of attraction existed between them, he often found himself captivated by her fragile, gentle movements, as if she was forever careful about affecting the world around her. She seemed to want to leave no mark, no imprint, on anything she touched. There was no fear in her grace, no hesitation. Simply respect. Care.

  The captain stood in full armour but for his helm, leaving his head bare, so the voice she heard was his own, not his helm’s. Cyrene was slowly learning to differentiate his voice from Xaphen’s, mostly through their accents. Argel Tal had a rough, almost impolite edge to his guttural intonation, whereas Xaphen – born in the Urals on Terra – had a clipped tendency to turn S’s into Z’s. The Chaplain spoke like a foreign diplomat. The captain like a ganger, or a boy living on the streets.

  ‘What don’t you understand?’ he asked her.

  She toyed with a lock of hair as it lay against her cheek. ‘I don’t understand why I have to be careful.’

  This was a difficult subject. Word from the Legion fleet was constantly cycled back to Colchis, for the people of the home world took great interest, and great pride, in the conquests of their chosen champions. Mothers and fathers listened in the hope some chronicle would detail the glory of a son taken from them in childhood and reshaped as one of the Astartes. Covenant clergy listened for inspiration to preach of the primarch’s righteousness.

  This network was maintained by astropaths, sending short psychic pulses of information back to their counterparts on the home world. Several times a week, broadcast from speaker towers across the Holy City, updates of the Legion’s progress drew flocks of listeners. City-wide celebrations were declared by the Covenant each time a Legion expedition reached compliance.

  Everyone – everyone – had listened to the reports of Monarchia. The Legion’s humiliation. The Word Bearers kneeling. The Emperor destroying the Imperial Creed forever.

  The fleet’s return had an uncomfortable gravity about it, for despite the population’s joy, the whole thing reeked of so much more than a simple homecoming.

  And then there was the matter of Monarchia’s survivors. The Legion had encountered few living souls in the ruined city, and Cyrene was one of only seven people taken from the devastation. Word of these holy refugees flashed through Colchisian society. Here were living martyrs, drawn from the ashes of the Legion’s shame. The Covenant sent entreaties to the Legion fleet, pleading with the primarch to allow the refugees to set foot on Colchis, perhaps even to be inducted into the holy order itself.

  The seven names were already being spoken with all the reverence of saints’ titles, added into daily prayers. It was difficult to explain this, because Argel Tal had only learned the extent of the refugees’ fame an hour before. The Chapter of the Osseous Throne made planetfall shortly after the primarch, and the four refugees with them were mobbed by adoring crowds. Their every word was recorded, their names were chanted in the streets, while people sought to touch their skin in the hope of gaining some of their divine fortune.

  Vox-reports immediately stabbed back to the ships in orbit, warning the other Chapters harbouring refugees that the City of Grey Flowers was as eager to see the Monarchians as it was to welcome the primarch home.

  ‘You have to be careful because there may be some people on the surface who seek your blessing, and approach you without warning. It might be disorienting.’

  Her serf’s robe was a simple affair, but she smoothed it carefully against her returning figure. ‘I still don’t understand. Why would they want to see us?’

  ‘You are an icon,’ he said. ‘A living icon, a martyr in life rather than death. You paid the price for Colchisian ignorance, and in doing so, earned great respect from us all. I’m told they are saying the seven of you are tied to the Legion’s destiny. A reflection of failure, a hope for the future. Your life is a lesson, and one we
must all learn.’

  She faced him, without seeing him. ‘That’s very poetic for you, captain.’

  ‘It is the best way I can describe it.’

  ‘I’m an icon to them?’

  He donned his helm, staining his sight blue and adding a layer of targeting information to his vision. His voice emerged as vox-growl.

  ‘Not just to them.’

  The journey down to Colchis lasted twenty minutes.

  In the Thunderhawk’s cockpit, Argel Tal stood behind Malnor, the pilot. They came in low over the parched earth, approaching the mud-brick city walls as the desert sliced past beneath. The city’s skyline showed a breathtaking view of tan buildings, brick spires as far as the eye could see. To the south, the great River Phranes flowed past – a wide road of sapphire glinting in the sunlight. River barges and bulk freight carriers crossed on the wide waters.

  ‘Legion gunship Rising Sun, this is western district control. Please respond.’

  Argel Tal scowled behind his faceplate. This didn’t bode well.

  ‘They’re keen,’ said Malnor, and reached to activate the console’s voxsponder. ‘This is the Rising Sun, inbound.’

  ‘Rising Sun, please confirm you have the Blessed Lady aboard.’

  ‘The what?’ He deactivated the channel and looked over his shoulder. ‘Captain?’

  Argel Tal swore in breathless Colchisian. ‘I think they mean–’

  ‘This must be a joke,’ Malnor muttered.

  ‘My blood’s running cold,’ said Argel Tal. ‘This is no joke.’

  ‘This is the Rising Sun,’ Malnor voxed again. ‘Repeat, please.’

  ‘Rising Sun, this is western district control. Please confirm you have the Blessed Lady aboard.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the sergeant grumbled. ‘That depends on what you’re talking about.’

  The voice on the other end of the vox-channel explained, and assigned landing coordinates accordingly.

  ‘This,’ Malnor said to Argel Tal, ‘is getting out of hand.’

  The captain nodded. ‘Be ready. You’ve just volunteered to join the escort detail.’