Black Legion

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Sanguinius was formed of psychically resonant crystal, as were all of the echoes of those slain aboard the Vengeful Spirit throughout its long history. Corridors and hallways across the ship were rimed with these outgrowths, and they formed most frequently after battle or tumultuous journeys through the Eye. I had become accustomed to them – they had been the very first things we had seen when we initially came aboard the Vengeful Spirit in our hunt for Abaddon. They were mindless statues of hazy crystal, easy to dismiss unless one were foolish enough to touch them. They ‘sang’ when touched, psychically offering numbed images and sensations of their deaths in last, useless gasps of a soul’s energy. The phenomenon had briefly fascinated me, but I soon relegated it as beneath notice.

  Sanguinius had died aboard the Vengeful Spirit, and here his ghost remained, as the warp-saturated steel of the ship’s hull resurrected the primarch along with the other fallen. This was not the first time I had seen Sanguinius’ crystalline shade. I had shattered it once, intrigued by the potency of the crystal shards, and one of them served now as the smooth pommel jewel of my force sword, Sacramentum. The crystal primarch always regrew, sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere, just as the other crystal corpses across the ship always regenerated after shattering.

  Ashur-Kai bowed his head as he passed the kneeling angel, paying respect to the agony etched upon that perfect face of stained diamond. Most of the others ignored it, save for Lheor who gave a pained grin at the sight. He idly swung his chainaxe as he passed, the weapon’s teeth briefly roaring, biting and breaking one of the immense wings from the body.

  I felt a twinge of psychic expression from the crystal ghost, a stab of false pain from the psy-crystals.

  ‘Another glorious victory,’ I chided my brother. He turned the grin on me, moving to my side. There was no real amusement in his eyes.

  The first surprise was that Ilyaster joined the gathering, his desiccated visage and patchy remnants of hair rendering him skullish and without humour. His sunken gaze drifted across those of us that had already gathered, and he nodded with a formality he would soon learn was unnecessary in this company.

  ‘I am Ezekarion,’ he said in his desert-tomb voice.

  None of us argued. He was welcomed with nods and a few fists banging against breastplates. He too halted at the sight of the now one-winged crystal incarnation of a dead primarch, kneeling in torment beneath the banners of old wars. He processed what he was seeing, but rather than mutilate the thing he simply walked around it, just as absorbed in the history hanging from the gothic rafters.

  These meetings of the Legion’s commanders were the most visible efforts to bring order from disorder. We would speak of supply lines, resources, materiel, formations, crew numbers, targets, duties… In short, we would behave as if we were an organised fighting force, not a disparate conclave of warband leaders bound together in a realm that defied physics and military logistics. Every warrior would speak their piece, citing their relevant contributions. Abaddon, in turn, would hold court in relative silence. He knew the value of letting his subcommanders exercise their authority and – as with any army – feed on their various rivalries. Officers were driven not just to excel before Abaddon and earn his sparse praise, but to exceed the deeds and usefulness of their kindred’s warbands, impressing the Ezekarion and putting themselves in the running to serve the Legion’s highest commanders.

  Abaddon was cautious with his compliments, but one truth was always in evidence: those who quelled internal rivalry within their warbands, either by charisma, murder, or ritual challenges – those who could be trusted to fight reliably and not abandon battle plans at the whim of their own blood-greed or to heed the calls of the Gods – these were, without fail, the warriors who were most often rewarded. To them fell the positions of honour and glory within every assault, and the Ezekarion leaned most heavily upon them to secure victory. They became the backbone of the Black Legion.

  War-frothing raiders and treacherous mercenaries have their uses in any conflict, do not doubt, but Abaddon has always willed the Black Legion to be more than another gathering of howling slavers and psalm-chanting reavers. As common as those aspects are within our ranks, we do not let ourselves be defined by them. No true organisation would be possible if we did.

  None of us were surprised when Moriana entered. The only unexpected element in her appearance was that she wasn’t at Abaddon’s side. She didn’t make anything of her entrance, merely walking through the great double doors and taking her place near to Telemachon, who stood with calculated insouciance. She greeted him with a hand briefly on his vambrace, the gesture somehow sisterly. Their heads bowed together in murmured conversation. She smiled as she spoke, and his aura flared in response, a greasy brightening of bitter amusement.

  We stood in a loose circle, gathered but separate, as was our informal custom. Falkus, the First. Sargon, the Second. I, the Third. Tele­machon, the Fourth. Lheor, the Fifth. Ashur-Kai, the Sixth. Ceraxia, the Seventh. Valicar, the Eighth. Vortigern, the Ninth. Amurael, the Tenth. Ilyaster, the Eleventh. And Moriana, though she had said nothing of it, evidently the Twelfth.

  Ezekyle was last of all, stalking with slow, grinding growls of his Terminator battleplate. At gatherings of our warbands, he would always take the focal point of attention, drawing all eyes towards him and calling out across the gathered masses. Here, among his trusted kin, he merely joined the circle we had formed.

  Once more I was struck by how unconscionably weary he was. If we had expected his time alone with Moriana and her serpent-tongued prophecies to illuminate and revitalise him, we were both right and wrong. Ferocity blazed in his eyes, the ferocity of reborn purpose, but it was the effort of a man on the very brink of ruin. Whatever had rejuvenated him, be it knowledge or something more sinister, it was also eating him alive.

  ‘The fleet will sail for the Eye’s edge,’ he ordered. ‘We will declare war on the Imperium and the corpse that occupies its throne. If Sigismund’s Black Templars stand in our way, we will break them. If Thagus Daravek opposes us, we will destroy him. If any of you have questions, now is the time.’

  So casually did he state his galaxy-changing intent that several of us smiled, myself included. But as expected, all eyes turned to me, so certain that I would be the first to speak. This time, however, it was Ashur-Kai.

  ‘We are prepared, Ezekyle. Every void-guide and sorcerer aboard every vessel in the armada is ready to weather the storm.’

  I could see the weight he bore on his shoulders, and for a moment I felt a stab of sympathy. He fought a war I could not help with, one far harder than the games we assassins played. He had to lead the Legion from unreality into reality, breaking us free of a prison the Gods themselves kept closed.

  ‘You have my trust and faith,’ Abaddon replied solemnly.

  ‘My thanks, brother,’ Ashur-Kai said, inclining his head.

  Abaddon looked around the circle. ‘Who else?’

  They all looked to me again, but I did not speak second, either. That fell to Amurael.

  ‘We sail for the Imperium,’ he said. ‘An event we have all fought and bled to bring about is finally here, and every warrior in the fleet stands ready. Outside this ship, a Legion’s worth of warships await our signal to sail. But I’m asking you, brother to brother, why are we declaring war on the Imperium now?’

  Ezekyle looked across the circle at him, golden eyes locked. ‘This is what we have hungered for,’ he replied. ‘This is what we have worked towards. You ask why we will declare the war now? Because we can, brother. Because, finally, we can.’

  ‘That isn’t what I’m asking. Do we wage this war by your command?’ Amurael indicated Moriana with a cursory wave of one hand. ‘Or on her whim?’

  ‘This war is a matter of vindicta,’ Abaddon replied, using the High Gothic word for vengeance, knowing its resonance among our kind. ‘It has always been about revenge, Amurael. Our re
venge. Moriana’s appearance is merely a fortunate twist of fate. We would sail with or without her. You know this, brother.’

  Amurael nodded, though not at once. The hesitation was telling even if I had been unable to read the surface thoughts drifting through his aura – he trusted Abaddon, but Moriana was an outside agent, and she stank of manipulation more than measured guidance.

  Moriana, for her part, said nothing. That was wise, for Amurael’s sentiments were shared by most of us there that day. We accepted her, or at least tolerated her, but we did not know her.

  ‘Does it matter?’ asked Vortigern. His face was severe, his expressions forever cold. In all my life, I have met no soul as serious as Vortigern of Caliban. ‘I will fight by your side either way,’ he said to Abaddon, hand resting on the hilt of his sheathed sword. ‘Whatever this human’s motivations may be, they are irrelevant to us. Our plans remain unchanged, do they not?’

  Lheor nodded, the movement a brief jerk of the head. Even back then, he was beginning to lose control of his body, his nervous system at the mercy of the adrenal pain-engine in his skull. ‘Matters to me,’ he grunted. ‘Tell us what the witch said, Ezekyle. No secrets here, eh?’

  Abaddon nodded. ‘No secrets here,’ he agreed. ‘And answers will come. Armsmistress, you have remained silent thus far. I would hear your thoughts if you would share them.’

  Ceraxia towered above us, looking down from within the shadows of her hooded robe. I could just make out the softly rotating eye-lenses in that shrouded gloom, and the dark metal polish of her resculpted form. Her segmented, scorpion-like legs hissed and clicked with adjustments of minute pistons. Each of her lower limbs ended in a great blade that left scratching dents in the deck. This four-armed, spider-legged machine-goddess drew forth from her robe the Black Templar’s helm that I had recovered from Maeleum, and though it would have undoubtedly made a more emphatic point if she dropped it onto the deck, such was her reverence for its manufacture that she kept it clutched in two of her hands, close to her red-robed form. Not a trophy to her, but a holy icon.

  ‘I care naught for the poems of seers,’ she said, emitting her words from a vocaliser formed by her fused, clenched golden teeth. A pale light flickered through this metallic fusion with every syllable. ‘Or warriors’ reasoning for revenge. The fleet is ready, so the fleet shall sail. We have evidence of further wonders developed by the Martian Mechanicum in our absence from the Principal Materium. Examples of such treasures must be brought into our possession, unmade, remade and knowledge of their form and function secured for our own use.’

  I cut through this with a chop of my hand. ‘With respect, Ceraxia… Ezekyle, tell us what we came to learn. Tell us what devours you, and what this seer means when she speaks of fate riding upon the blade of an unclaimed sword.’

  ‘It’s always you, Khayon,’ he said with a weary smile. ‘My assassin, and my accuser.’

  ‘I am what you need me to be, brother.’

  He met my eyes, nodded once in acknowledgement, and then, at last, he told us.

  Vindicta

  I will not relate every word that passed between the Ezekarion in that meeting. So much of it you already know, and the rest you have surely inferred.

  Suffice to say that we spoke of the warp’s whispers and their weight against his mind, and we spoke of the creature that cried out within those etheric tides, the creature that called itself Drach’nyen. That monstrous and deceitful entity’s existence has its place in the tale to come, but it was not, in truth, the focus of our gathering.

  Primarily, we spoke of the coming war and the reasons it would be waged. It has ever been thus, even in the Ancient World, when mankind was bound to the surface of Terra and battles were fought with spears and shields and riding beasts and warships of wood. Warlords have always considered the notion of a casus belli, the reason for committing to war. This was no mere raid we planned to harass the Imperium’s frontiers. This was to be a clarion call, summoning allies and warning foes.

  This was to be the declaration of the Long War.

  And here, my Inquisitorial gaolers, we must speak of scale.

  There are those among the Legions, and scribes of what few Imperial texts are permitted to exist, that suggest the entire crusade was fought purely so Abaddon could claim his blade. This is brazen falsehood. Hundreds of thousands of legionaries would spill from the opening Eye, with millions of mutants, humans and daemons in a tidal horde behind them. Most of them knew nothing of Drach’nyen then, and most know nothing of it now. They have their own lives to live, as pathetic and stunted as those existences may be.

  That false coin comes with another side, of course. There are those that believe we wished to surge forth and take Terra in the first breath of the war. Ignorance of this staggering scale is the rawest, rankest madness.

  The road to Terra is the most fortified, impossible series of ­battles imaginable. Wars are not fought in one engagement, but piecemeal: campaign after campaign, city by city, fleet by fleet, world by world. Even if we could bring our wrath to Terra in a ­single strike, what use would it be? The rest of the Imperium would remain unconquered, and would descend on Terra to cut our throats while we celebrated our temporary triumph.

  Horus Lupercal had half of the Imperium’s forces, and he still failed to take the Throneworld, deluded creature that he was. We have a fraction of a fraction of those galaxy-spanning warhosts. Horus began with – and lost with – more than we could ever muster. As the Imperium reeled in the wake of the rebellion, so did we. As it has struggled to recover all these millennia later, so have we.

  For all of the ways in which the Legions are stronger than we once were – with our daemon-engines and Neverborn allies and the myriad gifts of our spiteful Gods – there are twice as many ways in which we are weaker. Supply lines no longer exist, leaving our guns starved of shells and our warships hoarding diminished supplies of energy and resources. Few warbands can lay claim to the materiel of a Mechanicum cruiser or a forge world within the Eye, and those that can must fight endlessly to protect it from rivals. Slaves die or lose their minds to the warp as easily as they breathe. Whole fleets scatter to the warp’s winds, for Eyespace is far less stable than the material realm. Battle­ships die of thirst, fuel-dry and crippled in the dark void, to be forgotten or swallowed as part of a macro-agglomeration space hulk.

  Warbands fight amongst themselves over ammunition, territory, plunder, even clean water. Champions that aspire to replace their warlord masters fight duels or sink to betrayal in order to rise above their former stations. There is no true agriculture in the Eye, no harvest worlds supplying sustenance necessities; whole worlds and fleets survive on the flesh and bones of the unburied dead, or the warp-stained roots of alien plants, or the corpulent bodies of mutant livestock. Commanders and warband leaders, even of the same Legions, wage war against one another over matters of pride or power, or to win the all-too-brief favour and dangerous blessings of the erratic Gods.

  Worst of all, recruitment for the Nine Legions is a matter of hellish difficulty. We lack anything like the reliable resources we once had to sustain ourselves and maintain our genetic lines. I could not even begin to estimate the number of ‘bastard’ legionaries born after the Heresy, forged with gene-seed raided from Space Marine Chapters loyal to the Golden Throne.

  And all of this is before the long and difficult journey to actually escape the clutches of the Eye, which is, as I have stressed, our prison and our punishment for failure as much as our haven. The Eye’s edges are where the storm rages hardest. Ships seeking to leave are torn apart in those reaping tides. Do you not think we tried? There is no swifter way to lose warships than by hurling them towards the Great Eye’s edge.

  Perhaps I paint an ugly picture with all these truths. We are so much stronger than we were, yet so much weaker. We have such zealous purity of purpose, weighed down by impoverishment, treachery and desperati
on.

  I will not lie, not even here, for deceit would be useless. The Black Legion’s history carries its share of shame and bitterness as well as the glories we clutch with such pride. Some Imperial scholars cannot imagine why we have not yet won. Others cannot see anything but defeat in our future. There is no clear truth. It is all smoke and mirrors, all illusion and confusion.

  Of that fateful night when Abaddon revealed the source of the dreams that dragged at his consciousness, it is not the gathering of the Ezekarion that stands out to me. It is what came after, when our nameless Legion’s warlords returned to their warships, and I alone remained at Abaddon’s side. Even Moriana was dismissed. After their shared seclusion, Abaddon seemed to have no further use for her. At least, not for a time.

  ‘Khayon,’ he said, as the others left, ‘when was the last time we sparred?’

  It had been a great while. Years, in truth. My place was often away from the Ezekarion, and away from the ashen dead I ostensibly commanded. My place was wherever Ezekyle pointed on a hazy, shifting star map and said he required someone dead.

  We duelled, our swords live, power fields crashing and spitting each time the blades met. Lupercal’s Court was our arena, and we fought for hours beneath the dusty weight of Horus’ failed rebellion.

  Ezekyle is a barbarian. A slayer. In battle he is a warrior without peer, but his strength is in the force of his presence, the relentless viciousness of his assault. To meet him on the battlefield is to know, without doubt, that your life will end if you stand and face him. He does not fight, he merely kills. That is not to say he is unskilled. His talents are supreme, his focus inhuman, his speed supernatural. He is a force of murderous nature, his weapons never still, his eyes ever aware, alert to every shift and tension of muscle in his foe.