‘What have we done?’ he whispered. ‘These are my brothers.’
Kor Phaeron grunted in wordless disapproval. ‘Boy, order the attack. We must support Argel Tal and the Iron Warriors.’
‘But what are we doing? Why have we done it this way?’
Erebus didn’t scowl, he was far too composed for that, but Kor Phaeron wore his human emotion with greater ease. He fairly snarled the words, leeching them of kindness.
‘We are bringing enlightenment to the galaxy, Lorgar. This is what you were born for.’
Erebus turned to regard his primarch. ‘Is it not a grand sensation, sire? To be the architect of all this? To see your designs reach fruition?’
Lorgar would not, could not, look away from his duelling kin. ‘This was not my design, and you know it as well as I. Let us not pretend I have any skill at orchestrating bloodshed and betrayal on this scale.’
Kor Phaeron’s lips twisted as close as they ever came to a smile. ‘You give me far too much credit.’
‘It is well-earned.’ The primarch’s gauntleted fist was tight around Illuminarum’s haft, and minute tremors narrowed his eyes with each blow that rained upon Ferrus’s black armour. ‘Ferrus is tiring. Fulgrim is going kill him.’
With a grinding purr of servos, Kor Phaeron came forward to rest a clawed hand on his foster son’s arm. ‘Do not let it grieve you. What must be, must be.’
Lorgar didn’t shake the hand off, which both Erebus and Kor Phaeron counted as enough of a triumph. Lorgar’s feyness had worn on them both, and it took great patience and subtlety to incite him to violence. This battle had been years in the planning, and they would not allow him to foul it now with misplaced compassion. Emboldened, Kor Phaeron continued. ‘The truth is ugly, boy, but it is all we have.’
‘Boy.’ Mirth had no place in Lorgar’s smile. ‘I am over two centuries old, and I am dragging my father’s empire to its knees. Yet you still call me boy. Sometimes I find that a comfort. Other times, a weight around my shoulders.’
‘You are my son, Lorgar. Not the Emperor’s. And you are bringing hope to mankind.’
‘Enough,’ said the primarch, and now he did shake his foster father’s hand loose. ‘Come. Let us get this day done with.’ Lorgar raised his crozius maul to the sky.
It was all the signal they needed. Thousands of Word Bearers roared their approval behind him, as their liege lord led them to war.
The war on the surface was of no concern to him anymore.
Staying alive was, but then, that was always a concern. He was forever aware of that fact, which was why he was so good at it. Still, he had to admit it had become a more pressing matter, and a more difficult aim to reach.
Ishaq had never been in a void battle before, and it wasn’t something he hoped to get into again. The ship shook as if in a storm’s grip, shuddering with a belligerent aggression that defied all expectation. Every two dozen steps he took found him thrown to the floor with knee-aching violence, and resulted in hisses of pain along with the creation of new swear words – the latter usually by melding three existing curses together in a stream of invective. When Ishaq Kadeen swore, he swore with feeling, even if not with sense.
Half of the problem was that he was lost, and the other half of the problem was that he was lost on what was jokingly-referred to as the monastic deck, where the Word Bearers and their Legion serfs went about the business of being heroes (and the slaves of heroes). Sneaking onto the deck had seemed a good idea at the time; he’d hoped for some panoramic views of Astartes training chambers, or discarded suits of armour awaiting repair, or immense weapon racks to show the scale of war waged by the Emperor’s Legions. All of these would have made for fine, private and personal images very rarely seen from the Great Crusade, and would have bolstered his portfolio immeasurably. Stealing the grey, hooded Legion robe had been no trouble at all. Even slaves with vows of silence had to do their laundry.
It had started well. Then the battle had started, and he’d got lost.
Luckily, no Word Bearers were on board, all of them committed to the world below. The Legion serfs he did see were hurrying along about their business, but even they were hardly a sizable population. Evidently they had other duties to perform when their masters went to war. What they might be, Ishaq had no idea.
‘Shields down,’ shouted a voice over the shipwide vox, accompanied by some truly horrendous shaking. ‘Shields down, shields down.’
Well, that wasn’t good.
He stumbled around a corner as the lights flickered above. Another long corridor awaited him, with various junctions leading off deeper into this never-ending maze. At the far end, he could see another bulkhead of dense, multi-layered metal. He’d come across several of these so far, and was almost certain that they led to the most interesting parts of the deck. Ishaq wasn’t about to attempt to gain entrance though – a single failed retinal scan would mark his location to the Army units on board, and he could look forward to a quick execution. Oh, yes. He remembered the penalties for coming here all too well.
The Euchar were proving to be a problem too. Squads of them patrolled the halls with their lasguns held diligently to their chests, and though he was immune to their gaze with his robe’s hood covering most of his face, they made it difficult to take any picts, even if he had actually come across anything worthwhile.
Ishaq was finally considering a tactical retreat when the ship shook with enough violence to send him sprawling off-balance, head banging off the steel wall. It hurt enough to stun him, and it stunned him enough that he didn’t even think of swearing.
That lapse was rectified several seconds later, when an automated voice declared a list of breached decks over the vox. The list came to a climax with the words: ‘Deck Sixteen, void breach. Bulkheads sealing. Deck Sixteen, void breach. Bulkheads sealing.’
In a moment of almost poetic disgust, Ishaq looked up to see the great, red ‘XVI’ emblazoned on the wall where he’d hit his head. It was even decorated with spots of his blood.
‘You’re kidding me,’ he said out loud.
‘Deck Sixteen, void breach,’ the crackling voice monotoned again. ‘Bulkheads sealing.’
‘I heard you the first time.’
The ship rattled again, with the definite booming of explosions only a few corners away. Smoke billowed from the far end of the corridor.
Ishaq’s world dimmed into the deep, unwanted red spectrum of emergency lighting. At best, it would ruin any picts he took. At worst, and much more likely, he was about to die.
Argel Tal drew back his claws. The blood lining them sank into the curling metal, drank as thirstily as desert soil drinks rainwater. He released a great howl to the sky as he waded forward, kicking aside wounded Astartes and carving out at the massed Raven Guard in range. Their blades broke against his armour, each strike hitting with a curiously muted sensation – he could feel the slices as if they were chopping into the skin of his armour, but they never bled, never caused any pain.
blade left danger kill
The warnings manifested with tickling pressure behind his forehead, somewhere between a voice, a premonition, and a tide of instinct. He wasn’t sure if Raum was warning him, or he was warning Raum – both voices were the same, and his movements were only half his own. He would swipe with a claw, but the blow would accelerate and hit harder than he could ever manage himself. He would block a sword blow, but would find his talons around the enemy’s throat before he had time to think.
He wrenched his head to the left – he smelled the metal tang of the descending blade, he caught the flash of sunlight along its edge without even looking – and Argel Tal span to kill its wielder. The Word Bearer’s claws raked across the warrior’s torso and the Raven Guard dropped instantly, his armour savaged and pulled from his body. Argel Tal’s fingers burned as they absorbed his brother’s blood. Under his helm, his grinning mouth was stained red by a bleeding tongue.
In every battle of his life, he’d felt a desperation beneath the
ferocity of the moment. A feverish awareness of how to survive always nestled beneath his righteous anger, even in those moments of near-suicidal attack when he’d led dozens of his brothers against hundreds of the enemy. As his claws ravaged the armour and exposed faces of the Raven Guard around him, he cast that awareness aside.
‘Traitor!’ one of the Raven Guard cried at him. Argel Tal roared in reply, the ceramite of his helm cracking open to reveal a jagged maw, and leapt at the warrior. The Astartes died on the blood-mulched ground, pulled and torn to pieces by Argel Tal’s jointed claws.
He was dimly aware of snarling laughter coming over the vox. At one point, in the senseless, timeless melee, Xaphen had shouted to them all.
‘The Gal Vorbak are released at last!’
‘No,’ Argel Tal replied with growling certainty, without knowing how he knew. ‘Not yet.’
He tore the helm from a Raven Guard’s head and leered into the struggling warrior’s face.
‘Beast...’ the Astartes choked. ‘Corruption...’
Argel Tal caught his reflection in the warrior’s eyes. His black helm roared back at him, the left eye still ringed by a golden sun, the mouth grille split to reveal monstrous jaws of ceramite and bone, the crystal blue eye lenses leaking trails of blood down his painted faceplate.
Argel Tal sank his claws into the warrior’s body, feeling the tingle of leeching blood as his talons scratched at the man’s organs and bones. ‘I am the truth.’
He pulled, and the Raven Guard came apart in his hands, rendered into bloody chunks.
‘No peace among the stars,’ he said, unsure if both of his voices were speaking or if he merely imagined one of them.
‘Only the laughter of thirsting gods.’
The Gal Vorbak howled as one as they cast around for more prey, chasing down the Raven Guard that sought to regroup and oppose the unbelievable treachery facing them. Argel Tal howled loudest of all, but the sound soon died in his throat.
A shadow, the shadow of great wings, eclipsed the sun.
The ground murmured with his landing. Claws slashed from their power-fist housings with silver flashes, and shimmering wings of dark metal reached up from his shoulders into the air above. Slowly, so painfully slowly, he raised his head to the traitors. Black eyes stared from a face whiter than Imperial marble, and written across the pale features was the most consummate, complete anger Argel Tal had ever seen. It was an emotion truer and deeper even than the rage that ruined the faces of the daemons within the warp.
And Argel Tal realised it was not anger, nor rage. It went beyond both. This was wrath, in physical form.
The primarch of the Raven Guard turned with an inhuman cry, letting the thrumming wing-blades affixed to his smoking jetpack slice out with their killing edges. Word Bearers tumbled away in droves, shredded into lumps of armoured flesh. The claws followed, rending through any of the grey warriors unlucky enough to be within range of the warlord’s landing.
Once he was in motion, Corax never slowed. He was a blur of charcoal armour and black blades, carving, chopping, dismembering without effort, mutilating with the barest movement, butchering with an ease that belied his ferocity.
Lascannon fire rained towards the primarch as the Iron Warriors turned their turrets on the gravest threat in range. The Word Bearers caught in the net of streaming fire were sliced apart as surely as the ones killed by Corax’s claws, but the beams themselves flashed aside from the primarch’s armour, never striking it straight-on, leaving savage burn scars without once penetrating.
The voices of dying Word Bearers became a conflicting chorus over the vox.
‘Help us!’ one of the captains screamed to Argel Tal.
The Crimson Lord cast aside the last Raven Guard he’d killed – the warrior’s neck had crackled most satisfyingly as he was strangled – and ordered the Gal Vorbak to charge. It left his helm as a split-jawed roar, for even his face was no longer his own.
Even with the cry reduced to wordless malice, the Gal Vorbak understood and obeyed. The first to reach Corax was Ajanis, and the Raven Guard lord butchered the warrior without even turning to face him. A burst of flame from the flight pack seared Ajanis’s armour, slowing him long enough for the swinging wings to shear through his torso as Corax turned to face other enemies. The crimson Word Bearers leapt and struck at the primarch, but their assault did little more than their grey brothers’ had done.
We die in the shadow of great wings, came the voice from within.
I know.
Argel Tal leapt forward to meet his end at the hands of a demigod.
Lorgar hesitated, and in that moment his crozius maul lowered. Blood marred its ornate head – the blood of the Raven Guard: the same blood that ran in his brother’s veins ran through his genetic progeny.
Bolter shells cracked against Lorgar’s armour, their heat and explosive debris going utterly ignored. Just as the Word Bearers struggled to stand before Corax, so too did the Raven Guard fall back and die in droves to Lorgar’s dispassionate, surgical destruction through their ranks.
Lorgar’s head snapped back as a bolter shell thudded into his helm, disrupting the retinal electronics and warping the ceramite. He wrenched the mangled metal from his face and killed his attacker with a single swipe of Illuminarum. The blow sent the Raven Guard tumbling away over the heads of his retreating brothers, crashing down among them.
‘What is it?’ Kor Phaeron stalked to Lorgar’s side, his claws as wet as the primarch’s crozius. ‘Push on! They are breaking before us!’
Lorgar aimed his maul across the battlefield. Corax was wading through the Gal Vorbak, ripping the crimson warriors apart.
‘Who cares about the albino’s cowardice?’ Kor Phaeron was frothing, spit spraying from his lips as he cursed. ‘Focus on the fight that matters.’
Lorgar ignored the bile in his father’s words, as well as the infrequent shells crashing against his armour. Given a blessed respite from the primarch’s murderous advance, the Raven Guard were falling back from him in a black tide. They left their dead in a carpet at the primarch’s feet.
‘You do not understand,’ Lorgar shouted over the din. ‘My brother is not fleeing. He has flown to where the fighting is thickest. He is cleaving a path to his gunships, drawing the worst of our firepower, so his sons might escape.’
Erebus was a grey blur of lethal motion, hammering an unhelmed Raven Guard sergeant to the ground and killing him with a return swing that caved in the warrior’s skull.
‘Sire...’ The First Chaplain’s armour was blackened from flamer wash, the joints still smoking. ‘Please focus.’
Lorgar clutched his sundered helm in one hand. The vox-link was still open. He could hear the tinny screams of the dying. ‘He is killing so many of us.’
The helm fell, gripped no more. He held his bloodied maul in ironclad fists, and clenched his teeth just as tightly. ‘No,’ the word was breathed with absolute conviction.
Kor Phaeron’s face was a mess of wounds, and even with his augmentations, he was breathing in a hoarse rasp. The battle was costing him dearly. He met Erebus’s eyes for a moment – and something akin to disgust passed between them.
‘Your deeds are ordained on these killing fields,’ Erebus spoke almost as if delivering a sermon. ‘You must not face your brothers yet. It is fate. We play our destined parts, as the pantheon wills it.’
‘Kill. The. Raven. Guard.’ Kor Phaeron growled through bleeding lips. ‘That is what you are here to do, boy.’
Lorgar stepped forward and cast a sneer that settled over both his mentor and ancient foster father. ‘No.’
Kor Phaeron screamed in frustrated anger. Erebus remained composed. ‘You have laboured for decades to raise an army of the faithful, sire: a Legion that would die for your cause. Do not deviate from the path now you at last possess what you have dreamed of.’ Lorgar turned from them both, first watching the retreating Raven Guard, then seeing Corax slaughtering his way through Word Bearers – some ar
moured in grey, some in crimson.
‘We have found gods to worship,’ he said, staring without blinking. ‘But we are not enslaved to them. My life is my own.’
‘He’ll kill you!’ Kor Phaeron’s sluggish Terminator warplate wouldn’t let him run, but there was real fear, real sorrow, beneath the anger and panic. ‘Lorgar! Lorgar! No!’
Lorgar broke into a sprint, boots pounding over the churned earth and dead bodies of his brother’s Legion, and for the first time in his life, he went to engage in a battle he had no hope of winning.
‘My death is my own, as well,’ he breathed the words as he ran.
He saw his brother – a man he’d barely spoken to in two centuries of life, a man he barely knew – butchering his sons in a vicious rage. There was no thought of conversion. No hope of bringing Corax into the fold, or enlightening him enough to cease this murderous rampage. Lorgar’s own anger rose to the fore, burning away the passionless killing of only moments ago. As the Word Bearers primarch hammered his way through the Raven Guard to reach his brother, he felt power seethe within him, aching to rise out.
Always, he’d bitten back his psychic potential, hiding it and hating it in equal measure. It was unreliable, erratic, unstable and painful. It was never the gift it seemed to be for Magnus, and thus, he had swallowed it back, walling it up behind unyielding resolve.
No more. A scream of release tore itself free, not from his mouth, but his mind. It echoed across the battlefield. It echoed into the void. Energy sparked from his armour, and a sixth sense unrestrained at last, with its purity perhaps coloured by Chaos, exhaled from his core. A sound like the crashing of tides in the Sea of Souls swept through the ravine, and Lorgar felt the heat of his own fury made manifest. He felt his unchained power reaching out, not only to enhance his physical form, but reaching to his sons across the battlefield.
And there he stood at the heart of the killing fields, winged and haloed by amorphous contrails of psychic fire, shouting his brother’s name into the storm.
Corax answered with a shriek of his own – the call of the betrayer, the cry of the betrayed – and the raven met the heretic in a clash of crozius and claw.
The First Heretic Page 37