The Crimson King

by Graham McNeill

  ‘Go,’ he ordered the Terminators, but not a single warrior stepped away. Together they crashed through the falling rubble towards Amon, knowing they could not possibly escape before the pyramid collapsed. Every warrior of the Scarab Occult had attained the rank of Philosophus and but for their kine powers, Ahriman knew he would be dead already.

  He scrambled up a slope of vitrified stone and dust. Amon’s body lay at a sickeningly unnatural angle, his back clearly broken. The price he had paid for hosting the primarch’s echo.

  ‘You damn fool,’ he said, knowing he would have done the same had the task been given to him. He lifted Amon from the rubble, and fused plates of broken armour crumbled from his body. Ahriman heard splintered spinal bones grate beneath the equerry’s battered, putty-like flesh.

  Amon grunted in agony, his eyelids flickering.

  The roar of falling steelwork surged in volume.

  Ahriman looked up in time to see the remains of the Pyramid of Photep’s upper reaches crashing down in a tsunami of steel. The Scarab Occult formed a circle around Ahriman and Amon, but there could be no escape and no survival.

  ‘You are the damn fool,’ groaned Amon. ‘You always were.’

  Ahriman closed his eyes and bellowed in frustration.

  But death did not come.

  He lifted his head to see a ceiling of shivering steel hovering a metre above him in defiance of this world’s arbitrary gravity.

  ‘How are we still alive?’ said Ahriman.

  He looked to the Terminators, but not even the Scarab Occult possessed artes potent enough to save them. Their auras showed as much surprise as his.

  ‘Amon? Is this you?’ he asked.

  Amon shook his head, his teeth grinding in pain.

  ‘This is not Amon’s doing,’ said a melodic voice that echoed inside Ahriman’s skull, as though twins spoke as one. ‘It is mine.’

  Ahriman turned to see one of the yokai automata standing with its slender arms upraised. Every portion of its sculpted body was etched in spiralling symbols of invocatus and diabolus, like an uhi-cut tribesman bearing his tā moko markings.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We purged the Tartaruchi’s automata of their inhabiting warp entities.’

  ‘You did indeed,’ replied the yokai. ‘This body is new and cold, but it is very suited to me.’

  ‘I will destroy you,’ promised Ahriman, pushing his mind into the aggressive enumerations. ‘Whatever you are.’

  The yokai took a step back, still with its arms raised.

  ‘You would go against your primarch’s will?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Ahriman as a terrible suspicion began to form. ‘What are you?’

  The yokai chuckled. ‘You don’t recognise me, Ahzek? I’m hurt, and more than a little disappointed.’

  ‘You are the Iron Oculus,’ said Ahriman, horrified the Torquetum’s seer was free of its sarcophagus prison.

  ‘I am Aforgomon,’ said the yokai. ‘Gifted with a new form and blessed with new purpose.’

  ‘What purpose do you think you have?’

  ‘The same as yours, Ahzek,’ said the daemon. ‘I intend to save Magnus the Red.’

  Amon watched the Khemet rise into the storm from the apex of his pyramid. He watched until the clouds swallowed the starship, then willed the floating support throne back inside his workshop.

  The golden structure of his mechanical prison was perfectly shaped to his broken body, and a psychic hood rising over the back of his skull allowed him control of its every function.

  Amon’s back was destroyed.

  The dust daemon of the Wolf King had shattered his bones like glass from the cervical vertebrae to the lumbar. But for the galaxy having been turned on its axis by treachery, Amon knew he would now be dead or interred within a Dreadnought sarcophagus.

  Magnus awaited him, studying a diagram of planetary motion overlaid with the best tidal predictions the Corvidae could manage. He looked up as Amon entered, his face creased in the thin smile of one who bears the guilt for another’s suffering.

  ‘Are you in pain, my son?’ asked Magnus.

  ‘My spine is in fragments,’ pointed out Amon. ‘I cannot feel anything at all below the neck.’

  ‘I wasn’t referring to bodily pain,’ said Magnus with genuine remorse. ‘When you bore my spirit, you felt what I felt when Russ broke me. You felt my loss, my guilt. You felt… everything.’

  ‘And I would do it again in a heartbeat, my lord.’

  Magnus nodded. ‘I know you would. Which is why you will always be my most loyal son, Amon. But the agonies of the flesh will return. Are you prepared for that?’

  ‘I am, but Hathor Maat has assured me his Pavoni adepts can keep the worst of it at bay while they resculpt my bones.’

  ‘Hathor Maat has left with Ahzek and his cabal.’

  Amon tried to nod, then remembered he could not.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They are all gone.’

  ‘The tides are auspicious,’ said Magnus, tapping the chart before him. ‘It bodes well for their quest.’

  ‘I should be with them.’

  ‘No,’ said Magnus, ‘I need you here. We have a great deal of work before us.’

  ‘What help can I be, my lord?’ asked Amon, manoeuvring his throne to a position before a workbench strewn with cracked lens glass, pewter frames and piles of sanding cloths. ‘My body is crippled and what power I have left recedes with the tides of the Great Ocean.’

  ‘It vexes you that your Fellowship declines,’ said Magnus. ‘But it will rise again. Sooner than you know.’

  ‘When?’

  Magnus did not answer and moved to another table, upon which sat the delicate mechanism of an antikythera, a combination of divinatory telescope, armillary sphere and immaterial barometer.

  ‘My brother once crafted me such a device,’ said Magnus, turning the screw attached to the central plates to move the lenses and align the aether-sights. ‘Crafted on a world that weathered Old Night, but was lost to the same madness nonetheless.’

  ‘I remember you telling me of the piece,’ said Amon. ‘A beautiful artefact. Exquisite. Unique, even. And now lost forever.’

  ‘Lost? Yes, I suppose that’s one way of putting it,’ said Magnus, turning the screw again to increase the tension in the concealed springs within the device.

  ‘I was remaking it for you, but it did not survive the journey to this place,’ said Amon. ‘The lenses are distorted now and the plates are misaligned. You won’t see anything.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m looking for.’

  Magnus peered down the lenses and unlatched the pin securing the Antikythera’s moving parts. The springs released their pent-up energy, and the allegorical aspects of the celestial vault engraved on the bronze plates spun freely.

  ‘Tell me, Amon, do you understand what is meant in mechanics by a dissipative system?’

  ‘No, my lord, I was never meant for a life in the forge.’

  Magnus grinned, keeping his eye to the viewing lens.

  ‘Indeed. Well, a Techmarine would tell you that a dissipative system is one that loses energy to friction. He would also tell you that most of these systems suffer loss gradually in a manner that is entirely predictable. But there are other dissipative systems that do not follow this pattern. They are chaotic and untidy. For a while they lose energy steadily, then suddenly, only to then regain their predictable rate of loss without apparent rhyme or reason.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand your meaning here, my lord.’

  ‘If you consider life as a chaotic dissipative system, you will understand what I mean,’ said Magnus. ‘Can you guess the most dissipative system anyone has ever or will ever encounter?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘It is war, Amon,’ said Magnus. ‘War is violently un
even and wholly unpredictable. Its course can rarely be divined, even by the greatest seers, and even they will oft times be taken completely unawares. As we now know to our cost.’

  Magnus placed the Antikythera back on the bench, apparently satisfied by what he had seen.

  ‘The conflict between Horus and the Emperor is war on a scale not known since the earliest epochs of the galaxy. It is the greatest chaotic dissipative system I have ever seen.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this, my lord?’

  ‘Because I cannot see how it will end,’ said Magnus. ‘And what cannot be avoided must be welcomed.’

  The Thousand Sons face the ghostly warp-echoes of their past

  Part Two

  The Barque

  of Ra

  Seven

  Zhivago

  Seer hunter

  Men of ice

  ‘This is the one?’ asked Dio Promus.

  ‘Yes, assuming Uexküll’s last exload is correct,’ said Magos Videns, scrolling through the Zhivago’s manifest on his dataslate and checking it against the alphanumerics stencilled on the bulkhead. ‘Deck sixteen-nine alpha, Medicae Astartes. Triage station twelve hundred?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then this should be Varaestus Sarilo.’

  ‘What’s his electoo serial code?’

  ‘Nineteen, corvus-lambda, twenty-seven, sixth of the tenth, fifty-first, one-zero-two-three-five.’

  Promus nodded and inspected the candidate critically.

  The unconscious legionary lay on a steel gurney in a portion of the Zhivago set aside for Legiones Astartes casualties en route to Terra. Too badly hurt for field Apothecaries to repair, not damaged enough for a Dreadnought frame.

  And far too valuable to be left to die.

  Sixty-four other legionaries shared this vaulted space, some freshly dead, most with wounds so awful they existed in that liminal space where life and death were indistinguishable.

  Varaestus Sarilo was naked but for a grubby sheet draped across his midriff. His wounds were many and deep, and all to the fore. Sweat beaded his taut skin as transhuman biology worked unknowable miracles within to knit broken bones, renew ruptured organs and weave flesh.

  A swept-winged raptor tattooed across Sarilo’s ribless torso told Promus he was Raven Guard. Even without the tattoos, skin pallor revealed his heritage.

  ‘No matter how many alien suns they see, the sons of Corax never darken,’ said Promus. ‘I wonder, flaw or birthright?’

  ‘A legacy of their sire,’ said Videns.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Promus, pressing his fingertips to the carved ivory of Sarilo’s bicep. ‘Yet another reason to be thankful that Lord Guilliman’s blood flows in my veins.’

  He let a fraction of psy-power bleed from his mind, sending a bioelectric pulse through the warrior’s skin. The muscle rippled as invisible etchings formed temporary ridges of scar tissue, revealing the sub-dermal electoo.

  ‘Nineteen, corvus-lambda, twenty-seven, sixth of the tenth, fifty-first, one-zero-two-three-five,’ confirmed Promus.

  ‘I could have used haptics to confirm that,’ said Videns. ‘I know how you dislike–’

  ‘No,’ said Promus. ‘If I cannot bear the touch of a brother legionary’s skin, how will I endure a connection to his mind?’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Videns with a curt bow.

  The subdued light of the medicae deck reflected from the Statisticator’s chromed cog-mask. Two vertical slits of an augmitter served as a mouthpiece, and instead of eyes, a rotating selector held a collection of brass-framed loupes. A floor-length robe hung on Videns in a way that suggested his bodyplan owed nothing to conventional anatomy.

  Promus set aside his skull-topped staff and reached up to unsnap his helmet seals. The smell of the infirmary ship assailed him immediately: a toxic melange of stagnant blood, rotting flesh, soiled bindings, mud from a dozen worlds, counterseptic and sweat.

  But the smells would not be the worst of it.

  Not by a long way.

  ‘Step back, Videns,’ said Promus.

  The magos did as instructed, knowing to keep his distance from the Librarian at moments like these.

  Promus removed his helm and his vision greyed as the armour relinquished its input to his mortal senses. The shimmering crystalline matrix of the psychic hood worked into the rear curve of his burnished grey plate dimmed.

  Pain rammed into his mind.

  Hard, straight up the spine.

  It stabbed his joints with hot nails, filled his lungs with blood-frothed matter. It splintered his bones to powder and stabbing glass. It split the meat of his limbs as earth opens before a ploughshare and ran molten from his body like heated wax. It crackled on flash-burned skin and rotted him from the inside with gangrenous corruption.

  Phantom sensation and psychic echoes, but no less traumatic.

  Just under seven thousand wounded souls were listed on the infirmary ship’s manifest, and Promus felt every scrap of their pain. He willingly took it all.

  His mind screamed with it, a sparking circuit board that ran the gamut of suffering from purely physical pain to the anguish of limbs lost, senses ripped away and hideous deformity carved in storms of hot shrapnel.

  Promus rammed a fist into the bulkhead, crumpling the inches-thick steel. His eyes locked wide. His teeth ground against one another like tectonic plates crafting mountain ranges. Engorged veins and straining sinews swelled and stood proud on his neck.

  He could dissipate the pain into his hood, free himself from the suffering of those around him, but he did not. Pain was a gift, and to feel it was to nurture it, to gird his humanity to the awful necessity of the burden he bore. A blood price he paid willingly.

  Promus exhaled and unclenched his fists. The pain was still there, but it was part of him now. Manageable.

  Better, it gave him a way in.

  ‘Librarian?’ said Videns.

  Promus nodded and let out a shuddering breath.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  Videns consulted his slate.

  ‘Cognitive diagnostics suggest a high probability of psychological suitability, though Legionary Sarilo’s records are far from complete.’

  ‘Only to be expected,’ said Promus. ‘The Nineteenth do not easily submit to such evaluations. His last?’

  ‘The last verified evaluation was five standard years before the Isstvan infamy.’

  ‘Your analysis?’

  ‘My initial statistical prognostication still stands,’ said Videns. ‘Legionary Sarilo’s latent psychic traits and genetic markers suggest minimal imagination, a propensity for dogmatic thought, and an almost slavish devotion to duty.’

  ‘There is nothing slavish about the Nineteenth.’

  ‘A mere turn of phrase, but his genetic predispositions say otherwise.’

  ‘Genetics do not tell of a life,’ said Promus. ‘Only by his deeds can a warrior be damned or proven.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I am confident Legionary Sarilo will be a worthy candidate for the Sigillite’s programme,’ said Videns.

  Promus drew on the power within him, power he had once used with pride as Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines Legion, but which now marked him as dangerous. He placed his hands either side of Sarilo’s head and the warrior moaned, his mind already sensing the presence of an intruder.

  Past experience told Promus a Space Marine’s mind was a steel-toothed trap. Subtlety was pointless.

  He let out a breath and rammed his consciousness into Sarilo’s mind, a clawing trawl of his warrior soul.

  And a bloody tide of memory and experience roared over him.

  Wars waged and enemies slain.

  Brothers lost and honour tarnished.

  The world of black sands. Isstvan V.


  A name of cursed provenance, a new byword for treachery.

  Raining blood. Fire and steel screaming from the sky. A shout of betrayal from ten thousand guns. Trusted friends now bitter foes. Pain and torment, a father fallen.

  Lost or dead? Who could say?

  Pain warred with loss. A thirst for vengeance. The massacre of the Urgall Depression overshadowed all else, the desperate flight. Days of hopelessness. Days trapped on a world where everything sought his death. Nights of being hunted by clicking horrors from the shadows that knew the dark better than he ever would.

  Then ships out of the void, deliverance from afar.

  Hope the fight was not lost. Then despair as hope burned.

  Shattered Legions fighting to their last breath.

  No hope save death in battle. Vengeance. Always vengeance.

  Vengeance! Vengeance! Vengeance!

  The raw purity of it. Striking and killing, bathing in the blood of those who had betrayed the Emperor. A hunger that could never be sated, a thirst that could never be quenched.

  Vengeance!

  Promus withdrew from Varaestus Sarilo’s mind.

  His hands felt burned. He snatched them back, fingers spread wide. Violent urges were a roaring storm in his skull. He threw back his head and howled, a primal shout as potent as any loosed by the Rout.

  His hood blazed, the psy-matrix burning phosphor-bright as it dissipated the psychic aftershocks of his mental union with Varaestus Sarilo. Promus’ heart thundered in his chest. He willed its jackhammer rhythm to slow, expelling the rushing tide of aggression in sweat and shuddering breaths.

  His vision bled crimson, his breath hot with fury.

  The urge to kill drained by degrees.

  Promus shook his head.

  ‘You were wrong,’ he said.

  ‘Wrong?’ said Magos Videns. ‘Every aspect of statistical probability suggested Varaestus Sarilo was perfect.’

  ‘Perhaps he was,’ said Promus. ‘But Isstvan broke him. He is damaged, consumed by a need for revenge.’

  ‘Few of your kind are not,’ pointed out Videns.

  ‘My vengeance will be had when Horus lies dead at the Emperor’s feet,’ said Promus. ‘I do not reckon it simply by the tally of foes reaped. Sarilo’s thirst for vengeance is a temptation, and temptation is weakness.’