Age of Darkness

by Christian Dunn

  ‘Horus himself charged me to speak those words to you,’ he said. If the Night Lord had seemed cadaverous before, now he was practically exhumed. The primarch’s eyes, with what little white actually showed around the black pupils, were inhumanly bloodshot. His gaunt features were dusted with a faint sheen of cold sweat, and a trickle of dark blood ran from his nose. He wiped it away on the back of his gauntlet. ‘Savage weapons, one and all, too dangerous to be wielded without cost. That is all history will see of us. Even you, Lion. Even you.’

  The Lion shook his crowned head. ‘You underestimate our father’s empire.’

  ‘And you overestimate humanity. Look at us. See how we’ve duelled for the last two years out here in the void. A crusade between two Legions and countless worlds that is still only just beginning. You have chased me for two years, across a hundred battlefields, and why do we meet now? Because I allow it.’

  The Lion conceded to that with a slight nod. ‘You hide, like vermin fleeing the coming of dawn.’

  Curze shrugged, the barest rise of one shoulder guard. ‘You will never reach Terra in time to defend it, brother. The warp will not let you. This crusade will not let you. I will not let you. Do you think the archives of future generations will look upon you kindly for your absence?’

  Curze paused in his diatribe, wiping away a fresh trickle of blood. ‘Or will the human descendants of this Imperium look to your legend and whisper of doubt? Will they ask why you were not present to defend the Throneworld, and speak likely lies that perhaps the Lion was not as loyal and true as the mighty, perfect Rogal Dorn? Perhaps the Lion and his Dark Angels waited in the deepest reaches of space, watching, listening, and deciding to join the fight only when an obvious victor emerged.’

  The Night Lord’s eyes glinted again, with both amusement and sorrow. ‘That is your fate, Lion. That is your future.’

  ‘Forgive me, brother.’

  Curze tilted his head. ‘For what?’

  Corswain was watching both primarchs yet still never saw what happened, such was the speed of the Lion’s movements. One moment the two brothers were speaking – the Lion’s features cast down in contemplation, Curze’s eyes fever-bright as he promised an ignoble fate. The next, Curze’s features twisted into a taut rictus of pain, blood running between his clenched teeth. The Lion held tight to the grip of his blade, buried to the hilt in his brother’s stomach. More than a metre of shining, bloodstained steel thrust from the back of Curze’s armour.

  ‘For such a dishonourable blow,’ the Lion whispered into Curze’s pale, bleeding face. ‘I do not care who knows the truth now, tomorrow, or in ten thousand years. Loyalty is its own reward.’

  The Lion pulled his sword free. The Night Lord fell back.

  At the same moment, the chainblade atop Sevatar’s halberd snarled to life.

  X

  Corswain vaulted a low wall and crouched behind it, taking aim over the top. His visor display realigned, targeting reticule skipping left and right, locking onto nothing. Sevatar and Sheng had vanished as soon as the first blow fell. Alajos and Corswain had raised their weapons, issuing a challenge to empty air. The Lion was already following the retreating, limping Curze, leaving his two warriors behind.

  Alajos pinned himself to a pillar now, his breathing coming over the vox. ‘I didn’t see where they went.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Corswain confessed. ‘This is Corswain of the Ninth, to the Vehemence. Respond, Vehemence.’

  ‘Vray of the Vehemence.’ How calm she sounded. Corswain almost laughed.

  ‘Ware treachery in the heavens,’ he said. ‘We’ve engaged the enemy.’ Corswain caught sight of the Lion through a small forest of pillars, advancing on the retreating Curze, their weapons crashing together several times a second.

  ‘Do you require a teleportation recall?’ the mortal captain’s reply came back.

  Corswain risked another glance over the wall, but saw no sign of Sevatar or Sheng. They’d gone to ground in the foundations of the fortress, out of sight but not out of mind.

  ‘No. We need to move. You won’t be able to maintain a recall lock.’

  Alajos stared around the stone column. ‘Let’s go.’

  Corswain followed, keeping low, trusting the wind’s roar to mask the sounds of his boots on the ground.

  XI

  The primarchs duelled, heedless of their sons’ hunt. The Lion’s blade wove an exquisite dance, while pain acted as Curze’s catalyst. The Night Lord ignored the bloody wound in his belly, letting his arcane genetics quickly seal the injury shut. He fought as he always fought – like a killer backed into a corner. Brutal scythes slashed from their housings on the back of the primarch’s oversized gauntlets, and the air rang with the clash of metal against metal, with the fizzing crack of opposing power fields.

  The Lion wrenched his blade back, the silver steel breaking through the air in lashing chops, blurring into a crescent that reflected the moons above. Each carving strike crashed against Curze’s blocking claws. Both warriors moved beyond mortal capability, with speed that defied sight. Yet one was a knight, the other merely a murderer. Curze’s grin was a brittle facade at the best of times. Now it turned to glass.

  ‘We never sparred, did we?’ the Lion sounded almost bored, his words still carrying over the vox. Every few seconds would see a new cut ripped open in Curze’s armour or slashed across his face. He was fast enough to avoid death at the Lion’s hands, but not skilful enough to flawlessly defend against every attack.

  ‘I never cared for swords,’ Curze weaved under the carving blade, thrusting out with both claws. The Lion tilted back, his balance executed to preternatural perfection. Curze’s claws shredded the ivory tabard, barely scratching the layered ceramite beneath.

  ‘There exists nothing of elegance inside you.’ The Lion turned the blade in his hands, parrying another dual-claw strike with his single blade. ‘And nothing of loyalty. For a time, I considered you my truest brother. No others grew untouched by civilisation, only you and I.’

  Curze licked his sharpened teeth, eyes narrowed with effort. ‘You should be with us, brother. Even your own Legion senses it. The First Legion’s strife is not unknown to the Warmaster.’

  ‘There is no strife.’

  Their blades locked in that moment, Curze catching the Lion’s sword in the net of his linked claws.

  ‘No?’ The Night Lord spat the word as a curse. ‘No risk of the fair Angels falling? When did you last walk upon the soil of Caliban, oh proud one?’

  The Lion smiled – the first time Curze had ever seen it – but the movement of his brother’s lips still did nothing to warm his statuesque visage. Stone gave off more warmth than that smirk. He gave no answer beyond the smile.

  Curze returned it, just as insincere, just as lifeless. In that moment, he stopped fighting, ceased his measured duelling, and leapt at his brother with a howl. Where the warring primarchs had represented the pinnacle of human possibility in warfare, now the Lion’s poise, skill and grace counted for nothing. They brawled as brothers, rolling across the ground, hands at each other’s throats.

  When the tumbling ended, Curze knelt atop the Lion. Pinkish saliva sprayed from his pale lips as he bore down on his brother, claws clasped to strangle, to inflict that most slow and intimate of murders, when slayer and slain stare into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Die,’ Curze breathed. Desperation ruined his voice, rasping it from bleeding lips. ‘You should never have survived that tainted world you call home.’

  The Lion’s armoured hands grasped his brother’s throat in mirror response, but the Night Lord’s advantage was crystal clear. Curze shook the Lion’s neck in his fists, cracking his brother’s head against the rocky ground again and again and again.

  ‘Die now, brother. History will be kinder to you this way.’

  XII

  He was getting farther ahead, weaving thr
ough a forest of stone columns and rockcrete walls, far enough for Alajos to warn him, ‘Caution, brother. We’re being hunted.’

  ‘Why haven’t you summoned the Ninth Order?’

  Alajos grunted in response. ‘I already have. A drop-pod assault will still take seven minutes to reach us.’

  Corswain moved to another pillar, his eyes gleaming red and his tabard turned cream in the gloom. ‘I’m going to help the Lion.’

  ‘Corswain...’ Alajos warned again. ‘He needs none of our help to slay that ghoul.’

  ‘I saw him go down into the dust.’ Corswain risked another glance. The fortress’s foundations were a forest of stone columns and walls, and the wind whipping through the crater stole any hope of hearing the Night Lords’ armour thrumming.

  ‘What did you see?’ Alajos’s voice came more hesitantly now, ripe with doubt.

  ‘The revenant leapt at the Lion. They went down into the dust.’ Corswain listened to the wind clawing at his helm, muffled to dull buffeting. ‘I think I see them. Cover me.’

  ‘Wait!’

  He didn’t wait. He sprinted through the construction site, falling under fire almost immediately. Sheng. It had to be. Corswain weaved through fire from his left, ignoring Alajos’s warning cries. Several shells struck home, ripping chunks from his war plate and sending black armour shards cracking against the stone walls. Each detonating shell kicked like a warhorse, knocking him off-balance, but he could focus on nothing but the Lion lying in the dirt, his slack neck in a heretic’s grip.

  The enemy fire ceased. Alajos was breathless over the vox, ‘I’ll... kill Sheng.’ The audible clashing of blades served as percussion to the words. The captain already battled the Night Lord. ‘Behind you!’ he threw another warning over the vox.

  As Corswain tore closer to the prone figure of his liege lord, the snarl of a chainblade throttling up came from behind. He didn’t turn as Sevatar finally made himself known, never breaking the headlong sprint.

  ‘I can outrun him,’ he whispered into the vox. The chainspear’s growl was already fading. His hearts thudded as hard as a warhorse’s hooves on the snowy ground. Around pillars, over low walls, he sprinted and weaved, doing all he could in case Sevatar opened fire.

  Behind him, only silence. Over the vox, the crash of blade on blade.

  ‘Brother,’ Alajos voxed, ‘keep running.’ The tone of his voice was enough to make Corswain turn, though he didn’t slow down. After vaulting another wall, he looked over his cloaked shoulder just in time to see his captain die.

  XIII

  Alajos was many things beside his rank of Ninth Captain: a loyal son; a dutiful knight; a gifted tactician; and a warrior with a head for the detailed logistics of planning and organising a crusade force. He was also one of the finest swordsmen in the First Legion, and had once lasted almost a full minute in a spar with his primarch.

  He suspected the number of Legiones Astartes warriors capable of besting him numbered fewer than twenty across all the Legions. Ezekyle Abaddon of the traitorous Sons was one; Jubal Khan of the Scars another; and Templar Sigismund of the Fists definitely another.

  As was Sevatar. His name joined the others, coursing through both sides of the Imperial Civil War, cheered by some, cursed by others.

  Sheng was Nostraman gutter trash – he offered almost no threat at all despite being his primarch’s huscarl. When Alajos assured Corswain he would kill the Night Lord, it hadn’t been false bravado. He could, and would, do just that. The first clashes of blade on blade told Alajos all he needed to know about the other warrior’s form: Sheng was an aggressive killer, seeking to stab rather than chop, dodging rather than blocking. But the tells betrayed him, as they always did to those who knew what to seek. Sheng was slower than Alajos. Weaker. Less experienced. He overbalanced when he dodged. He missed the perfect angle of his blade each time he parried.

  Appallingly inelegant swordwork. He’d be dead in minutes. Alajos engaged him and held nothing back, utterly convinced of victory.

  When Sevatar finally broke cover behind Corswain, Alajos had whispered his warning. Corswain chose to run on. Sevatar, curse his eyes, chose not to pursue. Alajos had watched Corswain’s pounding boots breed more distance between them, while Sevatar stalked back to aid his foul brother, Sheng.

  Alajos backed away from them both now, his blade up to guard against Sheng’s stabbing sword and Sevatar’s grinding halberd. The Night Lords stalked closer, stolen skulls and Dark Angel helms clacking against their ceramite war plate as they dangled on chains.

  On a whim, Alajos tore the helm from his head. If this was the end, then by the Emperor’s blood, it would be done properly. He raised his blade in salute to them both, ceremonially kissing the hilt as he watched them come closer.

  The blade lowered, at the ready.

  ‘I am Alajos,’ he told them. ‘Captain of the Ninth Order of the First Legion. Brother to all knights, son to one world, sworn to one lord.’

  Sevatar lowered his halberd with a lance’s intent. The whirring teeth chewed air with a petulant whine. ‘I am Sevatar the Condemned,’ he growled, ‘and I will wear your skin as a cloak before dawn ruins the sky.’

  ‘Come then,’ Alajos chuckled, though never in life had he felt less like laughing. They charged as one, a short blade and cutting spear descending in the same moment. The Angel parried, barely, his long sword catching both strikes with awkward grace. All the while he surrendered ground, backing away, drawing the Night Lords with him.

  In his own Legion, only two knights had managed to beat him in the sparring circles. One was Astelan, absent these past years from the Great Crusade. The other was Corswain, Paladin of the Ninth Order, bearer of the Mantle of the Champion.

  With Alajos’s death, he would buy his brother’s life.

  ‘Brother,’ he voxed, ‘keep running.’

  XIV

  Corswain’s retinal display blurred as it refocused. The autosenses obeyed his impulse, tracking the distant movement and zooming to capture Alajos backing away from his attackers. It ended with humiliating speed, despite the captain parrying several strikes in a matter of heartbeats. Even at this distance, Sevatar was a blur of movement in grainy night-vision, his long halberd cutting and chopping, coming closer to digging into the Angel’s armour with each strike.

  The end came when Sheng’s blade plunged into Alajos’s thigh, driving the knight down to one knee. The Angel’s return cut cleaved through the Night Lord’s forearm, chopping the hand – and the sword it held – free. Even as Sheng was staggering back, Sevatar let his blade fall.

  Corswain saw his brother’s head roll clear of the armoured shoulders, the murder that failed all those months ago finally finished.

  He turned and ran again, rounding the final pillar. Alajos’s sacrifice bought him precious seconds. He used them to hurl himself onto the primarch’s back, driving his sword through the spine of one of the Emperor’s sons.

  XV

  Curze screamed, his ghastly face raised to the sky. More blood drizzled from his pale lips as the insane pressure in his back and chest increased, until his breastplate gave way with a brittle crack that split the night. The wounded demigod clutched at the sword tip poking from below his collarbone, screaming like a man doused in chemical fire. More than a shriek of pain, it was an aural assault in itself, sending Corswain staggering back. The knight’s grip slipped from his blade – in desperation he clutched at whatever he could reach. One hand fisted in the primarch’s lank black hair, the other snagged a thick chain hanging from Curze’s pauldron.

  The Night Lord primarch staggered to his feet, hauling the struggling warrior up with him. Corswain yanked the primarch’s head back, pulling out a fistful of tangled hair, while ripping the bronze chain from the shoulder guard gave him a weapon. Instead of lashing it against the primarch’s skull as a whip, he slapped it around Curze’s throat, holding tight to both
ends. The cold metal garrotte tightened as the Night Lord stumbled and thrashed. Corswain tugged harder, hearing the soft, wet clicks of vertebrae giving way beneath Curze’s ragged gasps.

  Corswain had broken horses as part of his squire training back on Caliban. Instinct made him tense the first time a horse bucked beneath him, and his rigid muscles had seen him easily thrown from the beast’s back. To break a horse, especially the proud and muscled chargers so prized by the home world’s knights, required as much grace and care as it did raw strength. The key was to move with the horse, to stay balanced, for the rider to keep his muscles loose and flexible in order to adapt to whatever tricks the creature might try. Corswain hadn’t thought of those days in a long time, but the bucking, thrashing ride he endured now brought it all rushing back. He knew he couldn’t have been on the primarch’s back for more than a handful of seconds, but it already felt like an age.

  Curze twisted again, with enough force this time that the Angel lost his grip on the heavy chain. Corswain ended his tumbling fall by crashing against a stone pillar, the impact of his armour plating taking a huge chunk from the dense stone. He’d been shrugged off like a bothersome insect. Even strangled, beaten, bleeding, cut and stabbed, Curze had hurled him aside with almost no effort at all.

  He hurt. Blood of the Emperor, he hurt. But he scrambled back to his feet, reaching for his sword in the dirt. If he could–

  The shadow fell over him. Something hit – a mountain avalanche against his left side – throwing him back into the air. The ground spun, became the heavens, became both earth and sky at once. Corswain felt himself thudding along the rocky earth until he crashed to a rest against a stone wall.

  For a moment, all he could taste and see was dust and blood, blessedly knocked insensitive to the protests of his tormented body.

  The dull-witted invulnerability passed all too quickly, leaving him at the mercy of his injuries. His head was a swollen globe of blunt pain, contained by the helm that prevented his skull from coming to pieces. Agony replaced strength in his body; his entire left side felt shattered, literally broken into fragments. When he rose, it was with a scream of spasming effort. Only one leg and one arm obeyed his needs. One shattered eye lens showed a flawed, lagging view of the foundation site. The other showed nothing at all. He was blind in that eye, feeling something hot, wet and useless now occupying the broken socket. Three teeth fell from his lips as he voiced a second scream. They rattled at the base of his helmet.