‘You heard the message, just as I.’ Argel Tal blink-clicked a runic marker on his visor display, opening a vox-channel to the Gal Vorbak.
‘Confirm network security.’
Another rune twinned with the first, blinking in reassurance.
‘This is Argel Tal,’ he spoke only to his closest brothers now. ‘Aurelian calls us.’
A voice answered without the aid of vox, drifting through his senses with maddening familiarity.
They already know. They sense it.
I know this voice, he thought.
Of course we know it. It is our own voice. We are Argel Tal.
TWENTY-THREE
Traitors
Possession
The Choice
The astropath nodded.
Aquillon was too stunned to even feel rage. ‘Treason,’ he said. ‘How can this be?’
The astropath’s name was Cartik, and at his full height he cut an unimpressively short figure, only made worse by both advancing age and a tendency to hunch his shoulders like an animal about to be attacked. The psyker was pushing seventy years of age with a face cracked by time’s lines, and he’d hardly been spry even in youth. He was old now. It showed in everything he did, and how slowly he did it.
Surprisingly lovely eyes flickered about as they watched from beneath half-hooded lids, sunk into the sallow sockets of an ugly face formed by cruel genes and chubby cheeks. Upon seeing him once, a remembrancer had remarked that Cartik’s mother or father – perhaps even both – were almost definitely rodents.
He’d never been skilled at cutting comebacks. His talents simply didn’t lie in witticism. That was the last time he attempted to make friends among the newly-arrived civilians. He knew loneliness would drive him to try again, but was content to let it wait a while.
His position as personal astropath to the Occuli Imperator had brought his family on Terra a modest measure of wealth, though it had brought nothing but a lonely and boring indentured exile for himself. Such were the sacrifices made in this day and age. He was content enough to do the Emperor’s duty, safe in the knowledge that his family were well provided for.
Once or twice, remembrancers had come to him, seeking to use his position for their own ends, in their quest for stories to record and tales to tell. Cartik read the naked ambition in their eyes, as well as their utter disinterest in him, and made himself unavailable to such visitors. In truth, he’d grown used to the loneliness. He had no desire to be used just to escape it.
‘I confirm it,’ Cartik said. His speech, like his eyes, was deceptively pleasant. Not that anyone would ever know it beyond Cartik himself, but he had a wonderful singing voice, too. ‘Exalted sire, the aether has cleared a great deal in recent days, and the message from Terra was clear. It has come to treason.’
Aquillon looked at the others gathered in Cartik’s isolated chamber. Kalhin, the youngest, with barely nine names in the Emperor’s service. Nirallus, with his breastplate bearing twenty name-etchings, and the best of them all with a guardian spear. Sythran, still keeping his vow of silence sworn atop one of the few remaining mountains of Himalaya, looking up at the walls of the Imperial Palace. He viewed their assignment as penance, and would never speak a word until they returned to Terra in seven more years, at the completion of their five-decade service.
‘Four Legions,’ said Kalhin. ‘Four entire Legions have betrayed the Emperor.’
‘Led by the Warmaster,’ Cartik added to their discussion with awkward softness. ‘The Emperor’s most beloved son.’
Nirallus breathed out something between a snort and a laugh. ‘We are the Emperor’s most beloved sons, little warp-speaker.’
Aquillon ignored the old argument. ‘Argel Tal informs me we will reach Isstvan in thirty-nine days. Upon arrival, the Serrated Sun will rejoin the Legion and deploy alongside the other Word Bearers. No Army, Mechanicum or external forces are to join the assault, including us. This is an Astartes concern, apparently. They wish us to take command of four smaller vessels, to aid in repelling boarders. I have acquiesced to this.’
The others turned to him. Most nodded in acceptance at the honour offered to them, though they were still troubled.
‘Thirty-nine days?’ asked Nirallus.
‘Yes.’
‘That is incredulously quick,’ Kalhin said. ‘We’ve spent years pushing through turgid tides and bringing backwater worlds to compliance, and suddenly the Navigators are reporting clean warp-lanes all the way to where we need to be? A quarter of the way across the galaxy? That journey should take a decade.’
‘The warp has cleared,’ reiterated Cartik.
‘In good tides, it is still a journey of many months. Even years.’
Aquillon looked down at Cartik. One by one, so did the others.
‘Yes, Occuli Imperator?’ the man said.
‘Inform the Sigillite that we await his orders. The Astartes are resistant to exterior forces taking part in the coming battle, but we will be spread across the Word Bearers’ fleet, commanding four of their vessels.’
‘By your word,’ Cartik said reflexively. It would be a long night of pulsing so urgent a message all the way to Terra, and maintaining a link with an astropath on the distant home world long enough to carry a reply. ‘It will be as you wish.’
The Custodians left the room without saying another word.
Argel Tal shivered in his armour, cold despite the heat, icy sweat drenching his skin before it was absorbed into the layers of his armour and recycled back into his body.
The scraping of heavy ceramite on steel decking was a rhythmic rasp, screeching each time his body gave another shudder in time to his heartbeat. He’d tried to stand countless times. Each attempt met with failure, crashing back down to the floor of his meditation chamber, denting the deck and chipping paint from his armour.
An open vox-channel to the other Gal Vorbak brought him their curses and murmured prayers, but he could neither recall opening the link, nor remember exactly how to close it. They suffered as he suffered. Most didn’t sound capable of speech, either – their voices lost in feral, ragged snarls.
The door signal chimed once.
Argel Tal released a low growl, needing several moments to form a single word.
‘Who?’
The wall-speaker hissed. ‘It is Aquillon.’
The Word Bearer turned watering eyes to his retinal chron, seeing the digital runes counting up. He had forgotten something. Some... event. He couldn’t think clearly. Saliva stringed between his aching teeth.
‘Yes?’
‘You were not present at our sparring.’
Yes, that was it. Their daily spar.
‘Apologies. Meditating.’
‘Argel Tal?’
‘Meditating.’
There was a pause. ‘Very well. I shall return later.’
Argel Tal lay on the decking, shivering and whispering mantras in the language at Colchisian’s core, freed of its Terran and Gothic roots.
At one point, lost in a haze of pain, he’d drawn his combat blade. In a trembling grip, he used the sword to slice the palm of his gauntlet, seeking to release the burning from his blood. What dripped from the wound was like boiling oil, bubbling and popping, and it ate into the deck floor in hissing rivulets.
The slice closed the way a smile slowly fades. Even the cut in his armour resealed with disgustingly organic scarring.
He managed to haul himself to his feet after another hour had passed, composing himself enough to stand without trembling. Over the vox, his warriors were laughing, weeping, betraying emotion after emotion rarely heard from the throats of Astartes.
‘Xaphen.’
The Chaplain evidently needed several long seconds to reply. ‘Brother.’
‘We must... hide this from the Custodes. Spread the word. The Gal Vorbak are to be sequestered in meditation. Penance. Contemplation as we travel to Isstvan.’
‘We can just kill them.’ Xaphen barked the words over the
vox-network. ‘Kill them now. The time has come.’
‘They die,’ Argel Tal swallowed a gobbet of acid, ‘when the primarch says they die. Spread the word across the ship. The Gal Vorbak is suffering penance, and refuses all outside contact.’
‘By your word.’
In the background, his brothers were screaming and howling. The sound of fists and foreheads crashing against walls transmitted over the vox in dull clangs. He couldn’t breathe. He had to get his stifling helmet off; even the ship’s warm, recycled air was better than choking in this ashes-and-ember reek.
Fingers clasped at his collar seals, but each tug jerked his whole head. The helm wouldn’t come free. Cold sweat, somehow, had cemented it to his face.
Argel Tal moved to the doorway, pressing the activation plate. Once the door was open, the Crimson Lord broke into a staggering, lurching run, moving down the corridors, seeking the one place of refuge his disoriented mind could focus upon.
‘Enter,’ she called.
The first thing she heard was the servo-snarl of armour joints with the booted thunder of Astartes tread. She opened her mouth to speak, but the smell silenced her. Aggressively strong, the potent chemical iron-reek of melting metal, with the ashen scent of burning coal.
The footsteps were uneven, leading into her chamber, and ended with a crash of ceramite on metal that shook her bed. In the wake of the crash, the door sealed again. She sat on the edge of her sleeping mattress, staring blindly where she’d heard the Astartes fall.
‘Cyrene,’ the warrior spoke. She knew him instantly, despite the strain in his voice.
Without a word, she slipped from the bed, feeling for where he’d fallen. Her hands brushed the smooth armour of his shin guard, and the tattered oath paper that hung there. With that as her frame of reference, she moved up, until she sat by the warrior’s shoulders, cradling his heavy helm in her lap.
‘Your helmet will not come off,’ she said.
This was his face now: this image of slanted eyes and snarling ceramite. He didn’t answer.
‘I... I will summon an Apothecary.’
‘Need to hide. Lock the door.’
She did so with a spoken command.
‘What is wrong?’ There was no concealing her concern, or her rising panic. ‘Is this what Xaphen spoke of? The... the ordained change?’
So the Chaplain had already told her everything. He knew he was foolish to be surprised by that fact – Xaphen had always shared all with the Blessed Lady, using her as yet another instrument in his spread of the new faith among the Legion and the serfs alike. Argel Tal blinked sweat from stinging eyes before he replied. A targeting lock outlined Cyrene’s face above him, and he voided it with gritted teeth.
‘Yes. The change. The ordained hour.’
‘What will happen?’ The unease in her voice was an aural nectar. Through a perception he didn’t quite understand, Argel Tal felt stronger when he heard the break in her breathing... the way her heart beat faster... the warmth of fear in her voice. Tears fell onto his faceplate, and even this made his muscles bunch with fresh strength.
We feed on her sorrow, the thought rose unbidden.
‘Are you dying?’ she asked through her tears.
‘Yes.’ His own answer shocked him, because he’d not expected it, and yet knew it was true the moment he spoke it. ‘I think I am.’
‘What should I do? Please, tell me.’ He could feel her fingertips stroking along the faceplate of his helm, cool to the touch, soothing some of the pain. It was as if her cold fingers rested directly against his feverish skin.
‘Cyrene,’ he growled, his voice barely his own. ‘This is the primarch’s plan.’
‘I know. You won’t die. Lorgar wouldn’t allow it.’
‘Lorgar. Does whatever. Must be done.’
He felt his voice growing fainter as he fell, drifting and slipping back from awareness as if into a sleep forced by narcotics. With ringing echoes, his thoughts split into an uncontrollable duality.
He could see her, her closed eyes that still trailed tears, her tumbling locks of chestnut hair curtaining down around her face. But he could see more: the pulse at her temple, where the vein quivered beneath her thin, too-human skin; The wet, crumpling boom of her heartbeat, pumping liquid life through her fragile body. The scent of her soul, escaping moment by moment throughout her entire life, breathed from her body until her body would breathe no more. She smelled alive, and she smelled vulnerable.
Somehow, that fired his hunger, like battle-lust, like starvation, but more potent than both – fierce enough to pain him. Her blood would tingle on his tongue, and sing through his digestive tract. Her eyes would be sweet balls of chewy, mouth-watering paste. He would break her teeth and swirl the shards around his mouth, before pulling her tongue from her bleeding lips and swallowing the severed length of flesh whole. Then she would scream, gurgling and tongueless, until she bled to death before him.
She was prey. Human. Mortal. Dying, minute by minute, and her spirit was destined to swim in the Sea of Souls until devoured by one of the Neverborn.
She was also Cyrene. The Blessed Lady. The one soul he’d come to at the nadir of his life, as his body broke and his faith broke alongside it.
She would be a joy to destroy. Her sorrow would sustain him, even enrichen him.
But he would not harm her. He could, but he would not. The wrath, born from nowhere, faded in the face of this realisation. He was not enslaved to his feral needs, despite their urgent strength.
He would never abandon his brothers, or shirk from Lorgar’s vision. Everything was a choice, and he would choose to suffer through this as the primarch had intended for him, carrying the changes so that others would never have to. Humanity would live on through the strength of the chosen few.
‘Argel Tal?’ she spoke his name as she always spoke it, with a curious gentleness.
‘Yes. We are Argel Tal.’
‘What’s happening?’
He managed a reassuring smile. It split the ceramite of his helm, and the faceplate smiled with him. She couldn’t see the daemonic visage leering up at her.
‘Nothing. Only the change. Watch over me, Cyrene. Hide me from Aquillon. I can control this. I will not harm you.’
He raised a hand, watching through swimming vision as the edges of everything grew blurry and indistinct. A bladed claw met his stare, a human hand coated in cracked crimson ceramite, the black talons stroking her hair with inhuman care. For a time, he simply watched his new claws catch what little light existed in the room’s ever-present darkness – the metal of his armour now an epidermis of ceramite, and the claws of his gauntlets now the talons of his own hand.
‘Your voice is different,’ she said.
His vision focused, the blurs fading, gelling into acuity. The claw was no more than his own gauntleted hand, as human as it had always been.
‘Do not worry,’ Argel Tal told her. ‘One way or another, it will be over soon.’
The Gal Vorbak did not remain in seclusion for long. Most emerged from their sealed chambers within a handful of nights. Xaphen was the first, leaving his chamber seemingly unchanged, though he was never without his helm as he travelled the ship’s decks. A brazier burned at all times from its cage mounting on his power pack, trailing the scent of ashes and coals wherever he went. He spent his time visiting the other Gal Vorbak in their meditation chambers, allowing no other visitors.
Argel Tal left Cyrene’s chamber after three nights. Aquillon was in the sparring halls, just as the Word Bearer had expected.
‘I had a feeling you’d be here,’ he said.
The Custodes stepped back from one another: Aquillon had been duelling with Sythran, both of them wielding live weapons and wearing full armour, including their crested helms.
Sythran deactivated his guardian spear, the spear blade turning off with a snap of discharged energy. Aquillon lowered his blade, but left it active.
‘A long meditation,’ he said, watchin
g through ruby eye lenses.
‘Is that suspicion in your voice, brother?’ Argel Tal grinned behind his faceplate. ‘I had a great deal to dwell upon. Sythran, may I borrow your spear? I wish to duel.’
Sythran turned his head to Aquillon, saying nothing. The Occuli Imperator spoke for him. ‘Our weapons are keyed to our genetic spoor. They would not activate in your hands. As an addendum, it is considered the height of insult for one of us to let another touch the blades issued into our care by the Emperor himself.’
‘Very well. I meant no offence.’ Argel Tal moved to the weapon rack, donning a battered, ancient pair of power claws over his gauntlets. ‘Shall we?’
Aquillon’s golden helm tilted slightly. ‘Live weapons?’
‘Duellem Extremis,’ Argel Tal confirmed, tensing his fists to activate the electrical power fields around the long claws.
Sythran left the practice cage, sealing his commander and the Crimson Lord within. He’d seen Argel Tal and Aquillon cross blades on hundreds of occasions, and an educated, experienced estimate would see the Word Bearer defeated within sixty to eighty seconds.
The commencement chime sounded. Eleven clashes and five seconds later, the bout was over.
‘Again?’ enquired the Astartes. He heard Sythran’s quiet exhalation in place of speech. Aquillon said nothing, either.
‘Is something amiss?’ Argel Tal asked. With the claws on his gauntlets, he couldn’t offer a hand to help Aquillon rise.
‘No. Nothing is amiss. I had not expected you to attack, that is all.’
The Custodian regained his feet, his own armour joints humming as false muscles of machine-nerve and cable-sinew flexed and tensed.
‘Again?’
Aquillon hefted his long blade. ‘Again.’
The two warriors flew at one another, each strike flashing aside with bursts from their opposing power fields. Every second saw three strikes made, and each strike snapped back with the weapons’ electrical fields repelling one another after the metal kissed for the briefest moment. The air was rich with the ozone scent of abused power fields in only a matter of heartbeats.
The First Heretic Page 33