Aurelian

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Leading the squad of Word Bearers was a towering figure in ceramite painted the red of fine wine. He stalked down the gang-ramp, ignoring how it shook beneath his boots. The primarch’s unmasked face was pale, given life and colour by the tattooed stripes of runic scripture inked in gold upon the white flesh. Axalian could claim the honour of standing in the Emperor’s presence a number of times, and this being resembled the Master of Mankind more than any other, but for the changes he wrought to himself to appear different.

  ‘My Lord Aurelian,’ Axalian saluted.

  ‘Tell me,’ Lorgar bared his perfect teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile, ‘where is my brother Fulgrim?’

  ‘THE SCARS SUIT you.’

  They faced each other in a mausoleum of tank husks, while their warriors looked on. Thirty Word Bearers held their bolters in loose fists – half of them in their Legion’s traditional granite-grey ceramite, the other half clad in betrayers’ red. Change had come to the Seventeenth Legion after the Dropsite Massacre. Great change indeed.

  Lorgar stood at the head of his phalanx. Fulgrim, clad in burnished purple and gold, needed no such formation. His Emperor’s Children surrounded the intruders; some stood in neat squad rankings in the presence of two primarchs, others remaining by the hulls of battle tanks, awaiting orders to close into formation. All of them sensed the unpleasant tension in the air, few fingers strayed far from bolter grips. Legionaries firing upon brother Legionaries may have seemed madness only weeks before, but the age of innocence and inviolate trust was over. They had buried it forever on this very battlefield.

  Fulgrim’s effortless charm manifested in a warm smile, a brotherly glint in his eyes. He made no effort to reach for a weapon, as if such behaviour was beyond conception.

  ‘I am not making a jest,’ Fulgrim said, ‘the scars suit you.’ He stroked his fingertips along his own pale cheeks, tracing a mirror image of where the scars were carved down Lorgar’s face and neck. ‘They blend well with your tattooed scripture, almost like understated tiger’s stripes. They ruin any hopes of refining your features to perfection, certainly, but they are not entirely unattractive.’

  Lorgar’s own smile seemed genuine enough to all who looked upon the scene from the sidelines, at least as sincere as Fulgrim’s.

  ‘We must speak, you and I, my beloved brother.’

  Fulgrim gave an elaborate shrug, his face a guileless picture. ‘Whatever could you mean? Are we not speaking now, Lorgar?’

  Several of the Emperor’s Children chuckled through vox-speakers. Lorgar’s smile didn’t fade. He said two words into his own open vox-channel. A name.

  ‘Argel Tal.’

  CAPTAIN ROUSHAL OF the Emperor’s Children destroyer Saturnine Martyr covered his eyes as his command deck exploded in light and noise. The peal of thunder shattered several consoles, cracking glass instruments and driving a thick crack through the occulus screen.

  He was already yelling into the vox for an emergency containment and repair team, while cursing at his on-board cult of tech-adepts for whatever laxity allowed such a grievous malfunction.

  Several of the returning shouts insisted it was a teleport flare. Either way, alarms were ringing.

  When Roushal dragged himself off the floor, waving a hand through the dissipating mist, the first thing he encountered was the muzzle of a bolt pistol. Fat-calibred and painfully wide, it broke his teeth on the way into his mouth, and rested hideously cold and bitter on his tongue. He tried to swallow. Three of his teeth went down with the saliva. They tasted smoky and bitter.

  ‘Unguh?’ he managed to gasp.

  The mist cleared enough to reveal the massive arm clutching the pistol, and the Word Bearer in traitors’ red to whom the arm belonged.

  ‘My name is Argel Tal,’ said the warrior. ‘Remain silent, on your knees, and you will be allowed to survive the next hour.’

  FULGRIM HESITATED.

  ‘Yes, Captain Axalian?’

  The captain needed a second attempt to speak. The primarch was clearly unconnected to the main vox-net, and he was the ranking officer in his lord’s presence. It fell to him to appraise the Legion commander of the orbital… situation.

  ‘Lord, we are receiving a mass-aligned signal from forty-nine of our vessels. One signal, coming from the Saturnine Martyr, is the source pulse. The others are confirmations, aligned to the source message.’

  Fulgrim ground his teeth together. The smile died in his handsome eyes. ‘And what is the message, Axalian?’

  Before the captain could reply, Lorgar clicked his gorget’s voxsponder to a louder volume. The voice that came through was crackled by distance distortion, but the words were clear enough.

  ‘This is Argel Tal of the Gal Vorbak. Objectives achieved, my lord. No casualties. Awaiting order to teleport back to our ships.’

  Lorgar silenced his vox. ‘Now, brother,’ he smiled at Fulgrim, and there was no mistaking the absolute sincerity in the expression. ‘Let us talk alone.’

  Fulgrim swallowed, too composed to ever reveal his discomfort, but unable to force life and colour to his strained features.

  ‘You have changed, Lorgar.’

  ‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

  THIRTEEN

  LA FENICE

  THEY HAD SPOKEN for hours, walking together by the edge of the battlefield, weaving between the barricades and firebases established by the Iron Warriors Legion. They kept their voices low, watching one another with careful eyes, while any Legionary or servitor nearby scattered before their slow path. It seemed clear, in no uncertain terms, that the brothers had no wish to be interrupted.

  By the time Lorgar left the surface, night had fallen upon the killing fields of Isstvan V. The work continued, with Axalian and his cohorts returned to work hours before, lifting the salvage and leaving the scrap. The captain was close enough to witness the brothers finish their discussions, noting that the Seventeenth Primarch’s saccharine amusement had abated, as had the anger simmering within his gaze.

  As for Fulgrim, he seemed similarly dispassionate, adopting neither the familiar smile he usually wore in Lorgar’s presence, nor the subtle signs of fraternal condescension that had so thoroughly marked their decades of brotherhood.

  When the teleport flare faded, Axalian voxed for his waiting Thunderhawk to hold position, and switched communication channels.

  ‘This is Axalian to the Heart of Majesty. Priority request.’

  The expected delay lasted almost a full minute, before a voice fuzzed back on fragile vox. ‘Captain Axalian, priority request acknowledged. How may we illuminate you, sir?’

  ‘What is the status on the forty-nine vessels with Word Bearer ‘‘visitors’’?’

  Again, the delay. ‘Fleet reports indicate the Seventeenth Legion is recalling its embarked guests via teleportation.’

  Ah, Third Legion pride at work. No warship captain would confess to being taken by surprise like that, let alone boarded by those they’d trusted. Embarked guests. Axalian almost grinned. How delightful.

  He was just about to reply when his battle-brother’s voice rasped back from the Heart of Majesty in the heavens above. ‘Captain Axalian, we are receiving conflicting reports on the primarch. Where is Lord Fulgrim? The fleet is calling out for immediate visual affirmation of his location.’

  The captain looked to where the flare of teleportation fog was little more than a disseminating glimmer.

  ‘I had visual confirmation on the primarch until a few moments ago. Inform the fleet, he teleported with Lorgar.’

  With morbid curiosity, he listened to the slipstream of voices in conflict across the orbital vox-net. It took almost five minutes for sense to break through and when it did, it wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

  ‘This is the flagship to all vessels. The primarch is aboard. Repeat: this is the Pride of the Emperor to Third Legion fleet. Lord Fulgrim is aboard.’

  THE CHAMBER LAY in darkness. It assaulted the other senses to make up for its lack
of the most important one: the smell of decay was a raw musk hanging thick in the cold air, and never before had Lorgar considered that absolute silence could have an oppressive presence all its own.

  ‘Lights,’ the primarch said aloud. His voice echoed dramatically, but nothing answered.

  ‘The acoustics in here have always been wonderful,’ Fulgrim said, and his brother could hear the grin in those words.

  The Word Bearer lifted his fist. A moment’s thought wreathed it in heatless, harmless psychic fire, but it was a parasitic luminescence, seeming to eat the darkness rather than banish it. Still, it was enough.

  Lorgar regarded the devastated theatre. Whatever last performance had taken place here had been one of supreme decadence. Bodies, already gone to rags and bones, slumbered in cadaverous repose across the chairs and aisles. Discarded weapons and broken furniture lay strewn across the scene. Nothing was unmarked by the black stains of old blood.

  ‘I see your Legion’s pursuit of perfection does not extend to cleanliness,’ Lorgar said softly.

  Fulgrim grinned again. He could see it now, his brother’s teeth oranged by the amber witchlight.

  ‘This is holy ground, Lorgar. You of all souls should respect that.’

  Lorgar turned and moved on, walking over the bodies toward the stage. ‘You are the puppet-slave of a single god. I am the archpriest of all of them. Do not tell me what I should respect.’

  The stage was riven by damage and darkened by shed blood. Both primarchs ascended the steps to the platform itself, their ceramite boots forcing the reinforced wooden boards to creak and whine.

  ‘There it is,’ Fulgrim gestured behind the thin, silk curtain. Lorgar had already seen it. He brushed the gauzy veil aside with the gentle push of a man moving an unbroken spiders web.

  The Phoenician. The painting stole his breath for a long moment, and he was complicit in his awe, glad to let it do so. Few works of art had moved him as this one did.

  Fulgrim, triumphant in this rendering, wore his most ostentatious suit of armour, as much Imperial gold as Third Legion purple. He stood before the immense Phoenix Gate leading into the Heliopolis chamber on board his flagship, a vision of gold against even richer gold. At his shoulders, reaching out in angelic symmetry, the great fiery pinions of a phoenix cast burning light against his armour, lighting the gold to flame-touched platinum and enriching the purple to a deep Tyrian hue.

  All of this, from the look of haunting purity in the pale eyes to the last and least strand of white hair, was formed from a mortal’s craft. To stare with a primarch’s eyes, even from this respectful distance, showed the faint topography of brush strokes across the canvas. Only the most divine muse could inspire mortal hands to create such a masterpiece.

  ‘My brother,’ Lorgar whispered. ‘What a man you were. A paragon among wolves and wastrels.’

  ‘He always enjoyed flattery,’ Fulgrim smiled. ‘Do you so quickly forget how he sneered at you, Lorgar? Does his disregard slip from your memory so fast?’

  ‘No,’ the Word Bearer shook his head, as if reinforcing the denial. ‘But he had every right to think less of me, for I was never whole. Not until now.’

  The thing wearing Fulgrim’s skin peeled back its lips in a smile the true primarch would never have made.

  ‘You asked to see your brother, chosen one. Here he is.’

  ‘This is a painting. Do not mock me, daemon. Not after we at last reached an accord.’

  ‘You asked to see the brother you had lost.’ The smile didn’t leave Fulgrim’s face. ‘I have upheld my end of our agreement.’

  Lorgar was already reaching for the crozius on his back.

  ‘Peace, chosen one,’ Fulgrim held up his hands. ‘The painting. Look longer, look deeper. Tell me what you see.’

  Lorgar turned again and stared at the exquisite masterwork. This time, he let his eyes slip across the image, seeking no details, merely drifting until they rested where they may.

  He met the image’s soulfully-rendered eyes, and at last, Lorgar breathed through the faintest of smiles.

  ‘Hail, brother,’ he finally said.

  ‘Do you see?’ the daemon at his side asked. For a moment, for those three words, it wasn’t Fulgrim’s voice at all.

  ‘I see more than you realise.’ The Word Bearer turned to face his brother’s captor. ‘If you think to relish all of eternity while playing puppeteer to my brother’s bones, you will find yourself fatally disappointed one night.’

  ‘You speak the lies of a desperate and foolish soul.’

  Lorgar laughed with a rare and sincere grin, perhaps the only expression that ever broke his resemblance to his father.

  ‘Your secret is safe with me, daemon. Enjoy your stewardship while it lasts.’

  He gave Fulgrim’s shoulder a comradely slap and walked through the aisle still decorated with corpses, chuckling as he left the graveyard theatre.

  When he closed the door, he took his witchlight with him, leaving Fulgrim and the painting together in the darkness.

  OUTSIDE THE DOORS, Argel Tal waited with his honour guard. Most of the Legion had repainted their armour in the same crimson as the Gal Vorbak – another sign of the changing times. Each of these warriors wore betrayers’ red.

  ‘Sire,’ Argel Tal greeted him. The horns on his helm lowered as the Legionary nodded. Lorgar felt the palpable heat of the man’s twin souls – one living, one parasitically leeching from the first in imitation of life, replacing its theft with a symbiotic flood of power.

  Harmonious. Pure. Divine. This was the unity of Chaos, when flesh and spirit met.

  ‘My son, tonight we convene the Council of Sanctity, and I will speak once more of Calth. Then, in the hours that follow, I will summon you and your most trusted subcommanders. After the Council of Sanctity has dispersed, I will speak to you not only of Calth, but of what follows it.’

  The warrior hesitated before speaking. ‘I do not understand, lord.’

  ‘I know. But you will. There is a great difference between glory and sacrifice, Argel Tal. Sometimes, fate takes care of itself. In those times, you may follow your heart and do whatever you will. You may chase the glory you seek. And other times, destiny needs the courage and blood of mankind to force it through to a better future. Even at the cost of passion and vengeance. Even at the cost of a glory most highly deserved. We all make sacrifices, my son.’

  Argel Tal bristled, though he sought to hide his offence from his primarch’s eyes. ‘I would like to believe I know enough of sacrifice already, my lord.’

  Lorgar conceded with a nod. ‘That is why I turn to you with the truth this evening, and not Kor Phaeron or Erebus. You, like me, have looked into the gods’ eyes. And you, like me, have other wars to fight even as the Calth system burns.’