‘I know you hear me, brother,’ Lorgar said quietly, into the vox. ‘Those implants are killing you.’
Angron didn’t even look back. He was a blur of gore-streaked bronze armour, both toothed axes rising and falling in efficient, rhythmless murder.
Rather than defend the ship in hopeless desperation, the eldar captain awaited his uninvited guests in the comfort of the bridge. Angron came through the door first, after sawing through the xenos metal bulkhead with the snarling edges of Gorechild and Gorefather.
A withering hail of splinter projectiles clattered and clashed against his ceramite armour, blasting chips and scraps from the war plate. Venomous barbs sank into what little of his flesh was exposed, but Angron ignored the poison pumping through his veins, trusting his genhanced physiology to purify his blood.
Oh, how the Butcher’s Nails sang. They pounded at the core of his skull, as if drilling deeper into the brain-meat to avoid the caress of eldar venom.
He endured this savage hail of fire, and amidst the second volley, he levelled his axe at the figure seated upon the throne of sculpted alien bone.
Lorgar came through after him, a tepid disregard written plain across his golden features. The merest raising of his gloved hand formed a kinetic barrier around them both, psychically shielding them from the hail-fall of eldar splinter shells.
‘Have you ever set foot on the Nightfall?’ Lorgar asked, his calm eyes drinking in the foul scene. Corpse pits ringed the central throne, with the husks of men and aliens impaled on unclean spikes. Hooked chains dangled from the ceiling, many of them ripe with stinking fruit, in the form of inhuman bodies hanging without limbs or skin.
Angron could barely reply. Wracking twitches pulled his features tight, and forced his fingers to gun the triggers of his chainaxes in muscular spasms.
‘No. Never been on the Eighth Legion flagship.’
Lorgar’s lip curled. ‘This... This looks like Curze’s bedchamber.’
The World Eater crashed his axes together. ‘Let this be done, brother.’
‘As you wish.’
The primarchs raised their weapons, and charged as one. First, the white-masked wielders of klaive swords. Angron sawed his path through them, while Lorgar hammered them aside with his maul, or sent them reeling with bursts of psychic fire. For the first time in either of their lives, the two brothers fought in unity with another being. Angron turned, disembowelling a dark-armoured bladesman seeking to attack Lorgar from behind. In turn, the Bearer of the Word protected his blood-spattered kin, deflecting an eldar’s thrust with his maul’s head, and killing the warrior on the backswing.
The union was effort to control and maintain, for it didn’t come naturally to either of them. But they held it until only one other soul remained alive on the bridge.
‘Any last words?’ Lorgar asked. The ship shook around them with greater force now. The Ursus Claws had bitten too deep. The Conqueror was pulling its prey apart purely by the strength of its grip.
Angron staggered to his brother’s side, drooling and dizzy – a flawed statue of the perfect warrior, ruined by mistreatment. As bloodstained as they both were, they could almost have been twins.
The alien prince was a thing clad in baroque, ceremonial armour; a creature of angelically consumptive features and the foul stench of impure blood beneath oiled skin. The eldar lord’s final words hissed into the air, spat from pale lips.
‘Two mon-keigh god-princes. There was only supposed to be one. The one to become the Blood God’s son. The pain engines bend the soul to the Eightfold Path. That path leads to the Skull Throne.’
‘The Blood God’s son...’ Lorgar’s focus drifted to Angron, as the possibilities played out behind his soothing eyes. ‘It cannot be.’
Angron raised his axes. The raider didn’t move a muscle.
‘Wait.’ Lorgar reached for Angron’s shoulder. ‘He said–’
But the axes fell, and the alien captain’s head rolled free.
Three days later, the Conqueror limped back to its fleet. While its hull had sustained extensive damage, most of it was superficial. The real losses had been in terms of crew; fully half the indentured serfs and trained mortal adepts were dead. On a ship of such grand size, the several thousand that remained alive were almost counted a skeleton crew.
Of the three thousand warriors Angron took with him aboard the flagship, barely a third had returned. The eldar reaped a bloody toll in their defeat, and the XII Legion’s funerary rites lasted day and night, while the ship sailed back to its kindred. The airlocks opened and closed, silent maws yawning into the void, exhaling the shrouded bodies of slain World Eaters and crew.
Lorgar made ready to depart the Conqueror, and bid farewell to his brother on the embarkation deck.
‘It was good to purge some of the bad blood between us,’ Angron said. To his credit, he kept his rebellious muscles from twitching, no matter how the Butcher’s Nails stabbed at his nervous system.
‘For now,’ Lorgar agreed. ‘Let neither of us pretend it will last forever.’
Angron wiped his bleeding nose on the back of his hand. ‘You said something on the enemy ship. Something about the Nails.’
Lorgar mused for a moment. ‘I do not recall.’
‘I do. You said the implants were killing me.’
Lorgar shook his head, offering his kindest, most sincere smile. In his mind, he heard the eldar reaver’s words once more. The one to become the Blood God’s son. The pain engines bend the soul to the Eightfold Path. That Path leads to the Skull Throne.
‘I was wrong, and my concern was foolish. You have survived this long. You will endure into the future.’
‘You are lying to me, Lorgar.’
‘For once, Angron, I am not. Your Butcher’s Nails will never kill you, I am certain of that. If I could ease some of the pain you must be suffering, then I would, but they cannot be removed, and tampering with them is likely to kill you just as quickly as removing them. They are as much a part of you now as the weapons you wield and the scars you carry.’
‘If you not lying, you are at least hiding something.’
‘I am hiding many things.’ Lorgar spoke through a smile, deceitless in his regret. ‘We will speak of them in time. They are not secrets, merely truths that cannot bloom until the moment is right, and the pieces of this great puzzle begin to fall into place. There is much I do not yet understand myself.’
The World Eaters primarch bared his teeth in a metallic smile. It contained nothing of warmth.
‘Back to your ship then, crusader. It was a pleasure to shed blood with you, while it lasted.’
Lorgar nodded, not looking back over his shoulder as he ascended the ramp into his gunship.
‘Farewell, brother.’
Angron watched the gunship leave the docking bay, and streak away towards the Fidelitas Lex.
‘Khârn,’ he said quietly. The equerry moved forward from his master’s honour guard, who stood silently in their hulking Terminator armour.
‘Yes?’
‘Lorgar has changed, yet he still keeps his secrets beneath a forked tongue. What is the name of the Word Bearer you duel with?’
‘Argel Tal. The Seventh Captain.’
‘You have known him long, yes?’
‘Decades. We fought together in three compliances. Why do you ask?’
The primarch didn’t answer at once. He reached up to scratch the back of his head. The flesh felt raw, swollen. The headache was worse than usual, coming to a crest. He could feel a trickle of blood worming a warm trail down his neck, running from his ear.
‘We have many months of difficult unity with the Word Bearers ahead of us. Remain vigilant, Khârn. That is all I ask.’
The two warriors duelled the very next night: the sons of the crusader and the gladiator facing each other in the pit, chainaxe aga
inst power sword. Argel Tal’s crimson war plate was undecorated, missing the scrolls of faith and devotion he wore in battle. Khârn’s white ceramite was similarly unadorned, but for the chains binding his weapons to his arms.
Both warriors ignored the cheers and cries of their comrades at the pit’s edge. Helmetless, they duelled in the sand, blade cracking against blade.
When their weapons locked again, the two warriors squared against each other, boots grinding back through the sand as they sought leverage. Their faces were inches apart, breathing acid-stinking breath as they struggled to break the deadlock. Argel Tal’s voice betrayed a curious duality, his twin souls speaking through one mouth.
‘You are slow tonight, Khârn. What steals your attention?’
The World Eater redoubled his efforts, muscles straining to throw his enemy back. Argel Tal responded in kind, ichor forming stalactites along his upper teeth.
‘Not slow,’ Khârn forced the words through a sneer. ‘Difficult... to fight... two of you.’
Argel Tal gave a toothy grin. As he drew breath to speak, it was all the edge Khârn needed. The World Eater leaned into a turn, letting his adversary overbalance. The revving chainaxe howled through the air, only to crash against the Word Bearer’s golden sword edge yet again.
‘Not slow,’ he chuckled breathlessly, showing his exhaustion as plainly as Khârn showed his own. ‘But not fast enough.’
The accursed implants sent a bolt of jagged pain sawing down the World Eater’s spine. Khârn felt one eye flicker, and his left arm spasm in ungainly response. The Butcher’s Nails were threatening to take hold now. He disengaged, backing away with his axe raised, taking a moment to spit out the acidic saliva brewing beneath his tongue. Chains rattled against his armour as he came en garde.
The chains were a personal tradition, spread even among the other Legions after their popularity had escaped beyond the fighting pits of the World Eaters. Sigismund, First Captain of the Imperial Fists, had taken to the custom with his usual zeal, binding his knightly weapons to his wrists on dense black chains. He’d made an impressive name for himself here in the bowels of the Conqueror, duelling with the XII Legion’s finest warriors late in the Great Crusade. The Black Knight, they called him, in honour of his prowess, his nobility and his personal heraldry.
The Flesh Tearer was another to earn great glory in the World Eaters pits – Amit, a captain of the Blood Angels, who’d fought with the same savagery and brutality as his hosts. Before Isstvan, Khârn had counted them both among his oath-brothers. When the time came to lay siege to Terra and bring the palace walls tumbling down, he would regret slaying those two warriors above all others.
‘Focus,’ Argel Tal growled. ‘You are drifting, and your skill fades with your attention.’
Khârn disengaged with a twist of his axe blade, and attacked in a series of vicious, howling cuts. Argel Tal wove back, dodging rather than risk missing a block.
The Word Bearer caught the last strike on his sword’s edge, and locked Khârn in place again. Both warriors stood unmoving as they pushed against one another with equal force.
‘The war to come,’ said Khârn. ‘Does it not feel ignoble to you? Dishonourable?’
‘Honour?’ Argel Tal’s twin voice was throaty with amusement. ‘I do not care about honour, cousin. I care about the truth, and I care about victory.’
Khârn drew breath to reply, just as the chamber’s vox crackled live.
‘Captain Khârn? Captain Argel Tal?’
Both warriors froze. Argel Tal’s stillness was born of inhuman control over his body. Khârn was motionless, but not entirely still – he trembled with tics from the Butcher’s Nails cooling in the back of his skull.
‘What is it, Lotara?’ he asked.
‘We’re receiving word from the fleet. Lord Aurelian is sending a mass-pulse from all Word Bearers vessels, focused by the Lex. Kor Phaeron’s armada has just launched its assault on Calth.’ She paused, taking a breath. ‘The war in Ultramar has begun.’
Khârn deactivated his axe and stood in silence.
Argel Tal chuckled, a threatening lion’s purr in his daemonic twin-chorus. ‘It is time, cousin.’
Khârn smiled, though the expression held nothing of amusement. The Butcher’s Nails still hummed in the meat of his mind, flicking out their pulses of pain and irrational anger.
‘Now the Shadow Crusade begins, while Calth burns.’
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Matthew Farrer
Matthew Farrer lives in Australia, and is a member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. He has been writing since his teens, and has a number of novels and short stories to his name, including the popular Shira Calpurnia novels for the Black Library.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden
Aaron Dembski-Bowden has written several novels for Black Library, including the Night Lords series, the Space Marine Battles book Helsreach, The Emperor’s Gift and the New York Times bestselling The First Heretic for the Horus Heresy. He lives and works in Northern Ireland with his wife Katie, hiding from the world in the middle of nowhere.
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
After Desh’ea first published in Tales of Heresy, copyright © 2009, Games Workshop Ltd.
Lord of the Red Sands copyright © 2013, Games Workshop Ltd.
Butcher’s Nails first published as an audio drama, copyright © 2012, Games Workshop Ltd.
This edition published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Neil Roberts.
© Games Workshop Limited 2009, 2013. All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 978-1-78251-016-1
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