He considered it part of his penance to watch each binding. Each time, he would wait for the moment when the captive’s eyes would glaze, not in death, but in surrender. Each time he would watch for that precious second when the daemon’s consciousness devoured its way to the fore of the victim’s mind. The screaming would cease. Silence would resume, blessed in the wake of such sounds.
Nineteen had volunteered. Nineteen members of the fleet’s astropathic choir, nourished by years of Xaphen’s sermons, had volunteered for the honour of keeping the Legion’s greatest secrets. Curiously, these burned out the fastest, succumbing to biological erosion before those who were unwillingly bound. It seemed suffering was a source of strength in the ritual – Xaphen had noted it, and informed Erebus. He received thanks in return, and the rite was amended in the Book of Lorgar. Xaphen had blazed with pride for weeks afterward.
The Custodes had found the chamber at the heart of the monastic deck, but someone, somewhere, somehow, had found it first. Aquillon had been led there. Of that, Argel Tal was certain. He vowed in silence then. Whoever that treasonous soul might be, he would pull it apart and feast upon its flesh.
‘We were never human.’ He said the words quietly, not even realising he spoke them aloud. Raum seized hold in the moment of melancholic anger, and the body they shared broke forward into a run.
‘For the Emperor!’ Aquillon cried.
The Gal Vorbak answered with the laughter of daemons.
In the years to come, Argel Tal recalled precious little of the battle. Sometimes he attributed this to Raum’s presence in ascendancy, sometimes he attributed it to his own guilt seeking to purge the night from his mind. Whatever the truth, any reminiscence left him hollow and worn, at the mercy of fragmented images and half-remembered sounds.
It was like thinking back to the moments of earliest childhood, before genetics had shaped his mind with an eidetic memory, when it was a struggle to fill a forgotten time with all five senses and make them feel real.
We were never human. He never forgot those words, nor how they were both true and false, all at once.
Malnor.
Malnor sometimes rose from the churning mess and resolved with clarity. When had Malnor died? How long had they been fighting? He wasn’t sure. Nirallus’s blade had hewn the Gal Vorbak’s head clean from his shoulders, but Malnor did not fall. A wraithly image of his helm remained, snarling and shouting in silence. Nirallus, a blade master beyond anything Argel Tal had ever seen, had been forced to carve Malnor to pieces to put the warrior down for good.
The fight was too frantic and frenetic for sanity to have any place in its motions. Thought and formality vanished, replaced by training and instinct. A blur of blades and claws. The crack of ceramite. The grunts of pain. The smells of spit, of acid, of sweat, of parchment, of bone, of panic, of confidence, of smoky bolter muzzles, of charged blades, of tear-salt, of breath, of blood, and blood, and blood.
And then, the first kill.
Nirallus. The blade master. He killed Malnor, and that left him vulnerable. Torgal and Sicar had leapt onto the Custodian’s back. Chop, chop, chop went the hacking blades, biting into armour joints at the back of the neck and the base of the spine. A life for a life.
Nirallus fell. Torgal leaped away, to safety. Sicar stayed to feed, and earned death himself. Aquillon. The Occuli Imperator. He avenged his brother’s slaughter by ending Sicar a heartbeat later with clean, bright sweeps of his sword.
Argel Tal was on him in that moment. He remembered the leap, and the soreness in his throat as he roared once more. He remembered the juicy, meaty crunch as the Custodian’s head ripped free of its neck. Like a flopping serpent, Aquillon’s spine hung down from the dripping helm. A dizzying stench of blood; a maddened laugh that may or may not have been Argel Tal at all. He never knew for certain.
Six of the Gal Vorbak still drew breath. Six possessed warriors gave their desert dog cackles and ran for the last Custodes with daemonic vigour burning in their limbs.
And this was the last moment Argel Tal could ever recall, until the air was cold again and it was all over. Sythran pulled his helm free, and faced them bareheaded. Instead of waiting with his halberd in hand, he hurled it as a spear.
The Gal Vorbak scattered, but it still struck home. One of them took the blade in the chest with a crack like a falling tree. The spear pounded through ceramite, bone and meat with enough force to burst from the Word Bearer’s back. The Astartes flipped over with the impact, his chest cavity stripped hollow, his lungs and two hearts blasted out of him, reduced to pulped meat on the ground.
Sythran had smiled as the other five descended upon him. He considered his vow of silence complete given the circumstances, and he laughed at the warrior he’d killed.
‘I always hated you, Xaphen.’
VI
Valediction
It is so very like you, to think of one soul’s safety while an entire world burns beneath your feet. I reassured you that you were wrong to worry; that all would be well, as it always is.
Now the sirens wail and the corridors echo with gunshots. The precaution you ordered as a comfort is now a last hope of defence, and I am not a fool – I know they will not be able to protect me against what is coming.
I write these words as quickly as I can, hearing the crashing of blades getting closer with each moment. I could try to hide, but I won’t. The answer is obvious: they will find me no matter where I am, and I cannot outrun such enemies. They will find me if I cower in the cargo holds, or sit comfortably in my own chamber. The secrets I hold mean they have no choice but to come for me, and though you have left these breathless guardians, I am under no illusions. They will come and they will find me. When I die, I will die without betraying my Legion. I promise you that.
My life has been long, and I have no regrets. Few can say such a thing, and even fewer can do so with sincerity. Even you cannot make that claim, Argel Tal.
When you read these words, please know I wish you all the fortune in the world. I have heard the way you speak of Calth and the wars to come, and I trust in your vision and passion for the righteous crusade our Legion will lead. You will bring enlightenment to the galaxy. I have faith in that, never doubting it for a single moment.
Stand with Xaphen, as he stands by you. You are the sons of a demigod, and the chosen avatars of the true deities. No one can take that from you.
I hear blades against my door please remember th
Epilogue
The Crimson Lord
Calth.
A bountiful, beautiful world, a world under the aegis of the XIII Legion, as Khur had once been claimed by the XVII.
Calth. A name on the lips of every Word Bearer. Calth, where Guilliman’s Legion gathered for war.
Lorgar’s Legion sailed almost in its entirety. Enough warships to blockade the beloved kingdom of Ultramar, and burn the face of every world black. Enough warriors to drive the Ultramarines to their knees. Isstvan had been forced into history at the point of a traitor’s sword. Soon there would come another massacre to fit into Imperial archives alongside it.
Calth.
Argel Tal remained alone for now. He had no patience for the cries of praise his brethren kept offering in his presence. He had no desire for their regard or worship.
Instead, he sealed himself away from his own Legion, kept company only by the regrets he’d accrued over half a century of treachery.
Across his lap lay a golden blade of exquisite manufacture, etched and engraved for the hand of a master swordsman, gene-coded to activate only for the man it was made for. It was the weapon of one he had called brother, taken from Aquillon’s body in the light of an unforgettable sunrise.
In his hands was a digital data-slate, sized for human fingers. A cursor blinked halfway down the screen, waiting for words that would never be entered. An unfinished sentence ended the text. Argel Tal had read it more times than he cared to recall, each time hoping that he’d see the intent, the meani
ng, that never made it onto the page.
The ship shivered as it sailed through the underworld of human myth. They would reach Calth soon.
Aquillon. Xaphen. His brothers were gone.
Argel Tal put the sword aside, and left the data-slate on the modest table by his pallet. He rose to his feet, knowing it would soon be time to end this isolation. The Legion called. The Legion needed him. The primarch himself had asked if he would to stand with Kor Phaeron, leading the assault on Calth.
He would obey, even if he stood alone.
My brothers are dead.
No, the voice rose from within. I am your brother.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe some gushing thanks to a fizzy six-pack of people: Rob, for knowing when to ignore me; Mark Newton, for the discussions on selling-out; the Abnetts, for the advice about kicking in doors and the subsequent prisoner policy; and my editors Nick and Christian, for their judicious cutting of slack.
A statelier thanks goes to Alan Merrett, Dan, Graham and Jim for making room for the new guy without too much teasing.
About The Author
Aaron Dembski-Bowden is an English novelist with a half-Polish name. He’s been a deeply entrenched fan of Warhammer 40,000 ever since he ruined his copy of Space Crusade by painting the models with all the skill expected of an overexcited nine-year-old. He lives and works in Northern Ireland with his fiancée Katie and their cat Loken, hiding from the world in the middle of nowhere. His hobbies generally involve reading anything within reach, and helping people spell his surname.
For my brother Adam, the glue that keeps
my family together.
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