Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  Rogal Dorn had moved between each facet of the operation, hearing the plans of generals and meeting with the humans who would shepherd the world into its new future. He had not stopped, and he had weighed each decision, both great and small, as though it were of equal importance to all the others. Archamus had once heard the great Iterator Evander Tobias describe it as ‘a total lack of toleration of anything but complete precision or competence’, and the description was as adequate a portrait of the primarch’s focus as Archamus could think of. But – like so many pithy epithets – it fell short of the truth.

  Archamus had watched Dorn at work for over a century, and never once had he seen his path waver or deviate from its course. He did not simply wage war; he was changing the world he moved through by force of will. That had caused trouble in the past, the kind of conflict that came when such a drive met an equally great force on a different course. And it was going to cause trouble now. Archamus had known it as soon as he learned what other force was to share this victory with them.

  They reached the space in front of the palace’s throne room. Guards from the Seventh Outremar Elite stood to either side of the silver-and-jade doors, power spears held at attention.

  Dorn turned and met the eyes of his commanders.

  ‘You have done well, my sons,’ he said, and Archamus knew that this would be the only word that Dorn would give on the conduct of his warriors. There was no need to say anything more. Each of them bowed their heads. Dorn nodded. ‘You have your duties, see to them. We will speak at the fifth hour.’ Yonnad, Polux and Sigismund moved away. Archamus remained. That was his purpose – to be his lord’s shadow and protector. He had once heard a human officer wonder aloud why a being like a primarch needed a personal guard. There were many reasons, of course, and only some of them had to do with the threat of harm. But the core of why Dorn had a bodyguard was simple: to guard against hubris.

  Dorn gestured to the squad of Huscarls behind Archamus.

  ‘Disperse,’ he said. The warriors moved away, folding into the edges of the corridor. Archamus waited. Dorn did not normally issue orders directly to the Huscarls. They were trained to move around him as though they were not there, their actions calibrated to never intrude on his actions or awareness. The order he had just given said that something was different.

  Archamus’ awareness sharpened, his mind filtering through the details of the situation and surroundings. His memory pulled details of the Spire Palace’s layout before his mind’s eye. He looked slowly at the doors that led into the audience chamber. A crowned figure looked back at him from the sculpted silver, its hands holding a sceptre and a crescent moon.

  ‘Do you intend to enter the throne room, lord?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dorn, carefully.

  ‘I presume you are aware that the security protocols have been manipulated. There has been no security sweep of the throne room in the last hour, and there are no guards within.’

  ‘I am aware of that. Do you wish to advise caution?’

  ‘I am going to assume that I have already, and that you have said that you will proceed as you intended.’

  Dorn smiled, the expression fading as quickly as it rose. ‘A good set of assumptions.’

  ‘I must insist that I come with you, lord.’

  ‘Insist?’ growled Dorn.

  ‘I am oathed not only to your service but your protection.’

  Dorn looked at him for a long moment.

  ‘Very well.’ The primarch gave a single nod. ‘Very well. Do you know what waits for us inside?’

  ‘I think I do, my lord.’

  Dorn’s mouth twitched into a fleeting smile. ‘There are many battles in this Crusade – some costly, some bitter, some that it would be better not to fight.’ He put his hand on the door. ‘Question every­thing you see,’ he said, and pushed the doors wide.

  III

  The throne room was dark. Light spilled from behind Archamus and Dorn as they stepped through the door. The walls were sheets of beaten copper, curved and riveted so that they looked like the rippled fabric of curtains. Tiny beast heads carved in jet capped each rivet head. The floor was an oval expanse of brushed steel. An oval table sat at the centre of the floor. The ceiling soared up and up, tapering to a shadowed point far above. At the far end of the room, on a plinth of raw iron, was a throne spun from carbon and gold wire.

  A figure sat on the throne, hands resting on the chair’s arms, the light from the door gleaming off his armour’s silver trim. Scales covered the curved plates, and a crest of bronze serpents rose from the crown of his helm. The throne would have been huge for a human, made to amplify the power of those who sat on it. The armoured figure fitted it perfectly, his size and presence making it seem not a throne but a mundane chair. The emerald hydra on the figure’s chest winked reflected light as he inclined his head in greeting.

  Dorn met the green glow of its eyes.

  ‘Close the doors,’ he said to Archamus softly.

  Archamus turned and pushed the doors shut. The light vanished, and the gloom became true darkness.

  ‘A little too dark for such a meeting,’ said a voice from the throne.

  Pale light kindled within the folded surface of the walls. The metals gleamed, shifting between colours of ice and moonlight. Dorn stepped forwards, eyes fixed. The sound of his steps rang softly on the floor. He stopped in the centre of the room, next to the table. Archamus stayed next to the door, his hands still beside his weapons.

  Dorn looked at the figure on the throne for a long second and then turned away.

  ‘Dispense with the theatrics,’ he said.

  A second figure in armour stepped from a fold in the chamber’s walls. His armour was also the indigo-blue of the Alpha Legion, but plain and adorned only by an alpha symbol on one pauldron, and a crocodilian head snarling in silver on the other. To Archamus’ eye the figure was fractionally shorter and less bulky than the figure on the throne.

  ‘An attempt to impress?’ said Dorn to the second figure, his voice level and cold. ‘Or a test?’

  ‘My apologies,’ said the second figure. ‘A habit, that is all.’

  ‘No,’ said Dorn, ‘a choice.’

  Archamus stepped away from the door, eyes moving from the two figures to his surroundings. He blinked briefly through infra-sight, dark-vision and images formed from sonic and electro-field distortion. Then he blinked the augmented views away and looked with his eyes alone.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘there is another one, to the right of the throne, armour cycled down to minimal power.’

  Dorn nodded.

  ‘Thank you, Archamus. I was just waiting to see if my brother was going to reveal his presence now, or whether he was going to continue this charade.’

  Dorn turned as a third figure stepped forwards, armour purring to life as he moved. This one was also smaller than the figure on the throne, and wore armour that spoke perhaps of a line captain or battalion commander. A crest of stiff, white-and-black striped horsehair haloed the top of his helm, and a green cloak hung from his shoulders. His right hand rested on the pommel of a sheathed sword.

  Dorn kept his eyes on this newest figure. At a glance Archamus could tell that all three of them were shorter than Dorn, but taller than himself – very large for legionaries, but within a blurred zone of size that made it difficult to judge whether they were legionary or primarch. There were differences, though: tiny variations in stance and posture that would have been lost to a normal human eye. The one on the throne was the largest, and his armour and demeanour screamed that this was a lord of the Alpha Legion... But there was something too blunt about that picture. Archamus had had a fleeting impression of a slight restriction in the way he moved, as though the figure were as much armour and machine as flesh.

  As for the other two, the one in the plain armour would not have been out of p
lace standing in a rank of a hundred Legion warriors. The most recent one to appear had size and moved as though used to command, but both qualities were expected in a ranking Space Marine.

  ‘Again, my apologies,’ said the same deep and smooth voice as had spoken before, but this time it came from the helms of all three figures.

  ‘An apology only has meaning if it is rooted in regret,’ said Dorn. ‘Your words are meaningless.’

  No reply came, but the third figure reached up and unlocked his helm, as the figure in the throne rose, stepped down to the floor and took his own off. The warrior in the plain armour followed suit.

  Three near-identical faces looked up at Dorn. All were olive-skinned and clean-shaven, their skulls hairless. Archamus could see echoes of both Dorn’s features and those of the other primarchs, but somehow no one feature dominated – as though the face were a blend of all the others. The three faces were very similar, though there were minute differences in bone structure and subcutaneous musculature. But no two sets of differences were the same. Each of them seemed to wear a mask that was deliberately the same, but also different enough that anyone trying to sort one from another would become lost in differences. And of course, he realised, that was exactly the intention.

  Dorn’s eyes had not moved from the figure who had worn the plumed helm.

  ‘Alpharius,’ said Dorn, as he stepped forwards, eyes hard. The other two warriors began to bow, yielding their pretence as Dorn went to greet his brother primarch.

  Dorn turned suddenly, his hand flashing out to the figure who had stepped from the throne. The blow never landed. The figure twisted aside from Dorn’s fist, the speed of the movement the mirror of Dorn’s attack. Archamus’ bolter was in his hand even as the two Alpha Legion warriors drew their weapons.

  ‘Hold!’ roared Dorn, and the room froze. The sound of the word folded and echoed off the walls.

  He lowered his fist, and the figure he had tried to strike straightened.

  ‘Try my patience again, and I will not stay my hand,’ said Dorn.

  Alpharius – for Alpharius it must have been – raised an eyebrow. The other two warriors stepped next to him, and for a moment it was as though Archamus were looking at three paintings of the same subject to different themes: lord, warrior, son.

  ‘When did you know?’ said Alpharius, and Archamus recognised the voice as the same that had spoken throughout.

  ‘Before I stepped through the door,’ said Dorn. Alpharius breathed a cold chuckle.

  ‘These are my senior commanders in this warzone–’

  ‘Compliance,’ said Dorn. ‘The war is over.’

  Alpharius gave the smallest of shrugs.

  ‘We will see,’ he said, and gestured to the legionnaire with the cloak and crested helm of a centurion, and the giant in the plain armour. ‘This is Ingo Pech, and Kel Silonius.’

  ‘I know of them,’ said Dorn.

  Alpharius looked at Archamus. ‘You can lower the weapon, Master Huscarl. With both my brother and myself here there are few places in the galaxy safer than this room.’

  Archamus kept his bolter steady. Dorn glanced at him and gave a small nod. Archamus lowered the weapon and clamped it to his thigh.

  ‘We can speak alone if you wish,’ said Dorn.

  Alpharius shook his head. ‘I do not keep things from my commanders.’

  ‘That is a lie,’ said Dorn calmly.

  Alpharius smiled. ‘Do you really wish us to be at cross-purposes, brother?’

  ‘We are at cross-purposes, and honesty is a quality I value.’

  ‘And I do not? Is that the point you are trying to make?’

  ‘You did not declare that you were operating on this world. Not until you had to.’

  ‘Our ways are not the same, but you cannot question their effectiveness.’

  ‘You did not have to kill them!’ Dorn’s voice shook the air like a roll of thunder. Archamus looked at his primarch, but Dorn’s face was as fixed and emotionless as ever. Only in the dark glitter of the eyes did the rage leak out. When he spoke again, his voice was low and controlled. ‘You did not need to kill them.’

  A heartbeat of silence followed the words. Archamus watched Alpharius and his two warriors. All of them were as unmoving and expressionless as statues.

  Everyone in the chamber knew what Dorn was referring to. The world they stood on had resisted initial overtures of compliance. A so-called World-Prince and a web of blood-tied nobility saw the world as theirs, and theirs alone. Their pride would not let them bow to any other, no matter how mighty. But the billions living within the planet’s hives, and the potential contribution those hives could make to the Great Crusade, could not be allowed to remain outside the dominion of the Emperor. Mankind had endured more than enough fracture and folly to allow such defiance to pass. Dorn himself had taken the task of bringing the world to compliance at the head of his Imperial Fists. They had been winning, hive by hive, battle by battle. And then the Alpha Legion had arrived.

  They had announced themselves by taking one of the smaller hives, set to be the focus of the Imperial Fists’ next offensive. The hive’s leadership surrendered suddenly following a coup. A signal for Rogal Dorn’s personal attention saying that the hive would fall had been received six hours before it surrendered. The signal had used the Imperial forces’ highest level of clearance and had signed off by saying that Lord Alpharius and the XX Legion were honoured to be joining the VII Legion in bringing the planet to compliance. There had been attempts to meet with Alpharius and his warriors, but if they heard those calls, they had remained silent.

  Alpha Legion forces had been sighted in the weeks that followed; a wing of armour had swept out of the ash wastes, to lend their aid to the assault on a primary surface hub of the planet’s subterranean tunnel network. Scattered reports had placed warriors in variations of Alpha Legion colours in multiple battle-zones. Dorn had pressed on, and hive by hive the world had continued to fall. But a core of resistant hives remained, centred around the seat of the World-Prince.

  On the eve of a renewed assault to take the last hives, the World-Prince had sent a signal surrendering. In the course of a single hour all of his direct blood relatives had been killed. The assassin in each case had been someone trusted and close to the slain. At the end of that hour the World-Prince had given his world to the Imperium, and four hundred and one members of the planet’s ruling nobility were dead.

  Alpharius shrugged, the enamelled scales of his armour shimmering with the gesture’s movement.

  ‘We did not need to kill them. That is true. We could have waited for you to grind your way through their troops, step by tedious step.’

  ‘The future cannot be won by a war waged in shadows.’

  ‘It will not be won any other way.’

  ‘Then that future will be dead before it can begin.’

  ‘Do not moralise at me, brother!’ spat Alpharius, and now it was his turn to flick from control to anger. ‘Would the deaths of all those you would have killed been acceptable because they died in open battle?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dorn.

  Alpharius held Dorn’s gaze.

  ‘I think we see the universe very differently, Rogal.’

  ‘No. I do not think we see the same universe at all.’

  They looked at each other, both of their faces set, so similar for all their differences.

  ‘The end matters,’ said Alpharius at last. ‘Victory matters. Everything else is just delusion. With victory we can build dreams, but without victory they remain just dreams.’

  ‘And how would you salvage a dream from your victory? Here and now, on this world. We cannot trust the World-Prince to rule for us, and you have removed those who could have taken his place. Even a defeated people prefer rule on their own. You have won this battle, but you have done it by seeding the ground with resen
tment and bitterness.’

  ‘Some would call what I did gentle compared to the ways of our other brothers. Curze, Mortarion, Angron, even the Khan and feted Horus – would you call what they would have done preferable?’

  ‘They–’ began Dorn.

  ‘You are certain that you are right,’ said Alpharius, ‘but if you disdain me, then why not my maker? Why not our father? He created us all. Or do you think my nature accident, or Him ignorant of what I do for Him? What any of us do for Him?’

  ‘You think He approves of your methods?’

  ‘He created us all, moulded the mysteries in our blood, put us to use as He needs, sees what we do and yet chooses to do nothing. What does that tell you?’

  ‘That He expects us to see our own flaws and overcome them,’ said Dorn.

  ‘Yes? And how are you progressing with yours?’

  Nothing moved in the chamber. Pech and Silonius glanced at each other, but Alpharius waited, unmoving, eyes unblinking.

  ‘You will withdraw your forces from this world,’ said Dorn. ‘All of them. The agents and operatives too. I know that you use them, and I know how. I will be looking for them, and if I find any they will not be spared.’

  ‘You will not find any,’ said Alpharius.

  Dorn shook his head and began to turn towards the doors. Archamus moved with him. He could feel the pressure of his lord’s anger aching through the air like cold from a glacier. Dorn stopped at the doors and turned back.

  ‘Your initial strikes were misdirected,’ he said to Alpharius. ‘You infiltrated one hive, and made it fall by systematic destabilising of authority, but you should have waited. You could have used it as a node from which to disperse your human operatives and agents into the other hives. You managed that to a degree, but you could have forced a total collapse in their defences across the planet, not just surrender by assassination. That move was also mistimed. Another thirty-seven hours and the pressure from our assault would have been eroding their ability to communicate. Secondary psychological fear, doubt and confusion would have been rising to a peak. You could have ridden that, played and controlled its pace, forcing hives to fall or change sides at the exact moment when it would amplify whatever effect you wanted. What you did was effective, but it was not optimally so, by your own criteria.’