by Nick Kyme
‘You sound anguished, brother.’
My teeth clenched, as the image of cradling Nemetor in my arms returned.
‘What have you done?’
The Night Haunter leaned forwards, and the light from the lume-strips above struck the lineaments of his face, describing them in white.
‘We killed you,’ he grinned, eyes mad with glee as he remembered the slaughter. ‘Cut you down like swine. I swear, the surprise on your face was priceless.’
‘We were brothers. We are brothers, still. Horus has gone mad.’ I shook my head, the anger bleeding away like the ice melting off my body. ‘Why?’
‘Because we were sold a false dream, by a false god. We were lied to and–’ Curze’s faked solemnity collapsed into sarcastic laughter. ‘I’m sorry, brother. I tried to maintain the facade as long as I could. I don’t care about any of that, I really don’t. You know, there is a cancer in some men. I’ve seen it. Rapists, murderers, thieves – Nostramo was overrun with them. Even when you try to stamp it out, like a disease it returns. If you’d seen what I’ve seen…’
For a moment, my brother’s gaze went to a distant place as if he were remembering, before his attention came back to me.
‘Some men are just evil, Vulkan. There is no why, it just is. Gluttony, sloth, lust, I am intimately acquainted with the sins of man. Which one do you think we were guilty of? Pride? Wrath? Was it greed that drove our father’s urge to reconquer the galaxy in his name and call it liberation? Terra just wasn’t enough.’
‘I see your sin, Curze. It’s envy.’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s the burden of knowing the future and being rendered powerless to do anything about it. I am cursed, brother. And so I must sin.’
‘And this is your justification for throwing the galaxy into turmoil? You follow a madman.’
Curze snarled, ‘I follow no one! And it was not so long ago, Horus was your brother. Are you so quick to turn your back on him? Did father make you more loyal than he or I? Are you his noble scion, Vulkan?’
I had seen Horus before he rebelled. After the Crusade had begun and we were thrown across the galaxy, twice I had met with him. I loved Horus, I looked up to him. I had planned to show my loyalty in the form of a gift, a weapon to befit his status as Warmaster. After I learned of his heroism at Ullanor, I forged a hammer. It was my finest work, craft I have not surpassed since. But I never gave it to him. Our second meeting did not go well. I sensed something of what Curze had mentioned, the ‘evil’ in some men that cannot be explained, that cannot be reasoned with or excised. Even though I could not answer then why I had withheld this boon, I did so because of the disquiet he stirred in me. I had not thought on it until that moment, and the revelation of it chilled me.
‘You betrayed us,’ I said to Curze. ‘Ferrus is dead.’ Although I could not help glance at his decaying corpse, grinning at me from the shadows.
Curze gave a wry smile. ‘Is he?’ Tapping the side of his head, he added, ‘Not in your broken mind, I think. Who is it you think you’re talking to in the darkness?’
So, he was watching me. And listening. All the time. I wondered what he hoped to learn.
‘You are a traitor,’ I told him. ‘Roboute will not stand by and allow this.’
‘Always Guilliman, isn’t it? What is so lordly about that war-accountant? At least Russ or Jonson have passion. Roboute fights battles with an abacus.’
‘He is rival enough to defeat Horus. His Legion will–’
‘Roboute is gone! That officious little snipe is done. Don’t cling to him for rescue. Dorn won’t help you either. He’s too busy being the Emperor’s groundskeeper, hiding behind the palace walls. The Wolf is too busy cutting off heads as our father’s executioner, while the Lion holds on to his secrets, and has no special fondness for you. Who else will come? Not Ferrus, certainly. Nor Corax either. Even as we speak, I suspect he flees for Deliverance. Sanguinius?’ Curze laughed cruelly. ‘The angel is more cursed than I. The Khan? He does not wish to be found. So who is left? No one, Vulkan. None of them will come. You are simply not that important. You are alone.’
‘I’m not the one who fears isolation, Konrad.’
Curze didn’t bite. He had waited for this meeting between us, planned every word and barb. He sighed.
‘It doesn’t matter why, Vulkan. All that matters is the here and now, what happens next.’
‘And what does happen next?’ I felt no fear or trepidation, only pity for him.
‘You lasted longer than I expected, I will grant you that,’ Curze said. ‘I greatly underestimated you.’
I tried to hide my ignorance behind a mask of defiance. Curze liked to talk. He was no proselytiser like Lorgar, nor was he prone to giving speeches like Horus, but he knew how to use words and liked how the right ones induced fear and uncertainty. Of all my brothers, Curze knew the mind and how to turn it upon its owner. To him, psychology was a ready blade as damaging as any knife or gun.
I said, ‘I am still your prisoner.’
‘Yes, and in that you also surpassed all my expectations.’
Again, I had no idea of his meaning but kept the fact of that hidden. I felt his blade, probing for weakness, searching for a chink in my mental armour. He could break my body, kill me if he wished to. But for some reason, he had kept me alive. I just didn’t know why.
Curze smiled, the shape of his upturned mouth reminiscent of a hooked dagger.
‘Eleven dead, six of those were mortals.’ A slight shake of the head betrayed his sense of admiration at the gruesome deed. ‘The way you swatted that wench…’ Curze whistled then bared his teeth in the light. Their points shone like arrowheads. Curze’s unguarded pleasure revolted me. ‘She broke like a reed, Vulkan. A reed.’ He gave a rueful laugh. ‘And here was I thinking Corax’s claims of your strength merely boasts. Because… you are strong, aren’t you brother? You must be to do what you did.’
‘Murder a woman? What strength does that require?’ I scowled. ‘Slaying the weak and helpless is something only you laud, you coward.’
‘Bloody-minded determination? The single-minded purpose needed to escape from an impossible prison? I’d call that strength.’
‘It’s not your prison, though. Is it?’ I said.
Curze nodded. ‘Very astute of you. You craftsmen do know how to recognise each other’s work, don’t you? It amazes me how you do it, how you can tell one rivet from another.’
He was taunting me again, trying to belittle me. It was petty and Curze knew it, but he did it anyway because it amused him and somehow reduced me in his eyes.
‘No, this prison is not mine,’ he admitted at last. ‘I’ve neither the patience nor the inclination. I had another build it for me.’ He looked around the chamber, and I followed his gaze, noticing the ornate flourishes, the way that function met artistry. Engraved upon the eight walls was a gruesome display, celebrating torture and pain. Agonies described in metal greeted my eyes and I looked away.
‘Beautiful,’ said Curze. ‘I can’t say I appreciate art, but I know what I like. And this… this, I like. Our brother was never really given enough credit for his aesthetic eye.’
It was a pantomime, all of this, a dark performance more in keeping with Fulgrim than the self-proclaimed Night Haunter. I suspected Curze was doing it deliberately, savouring every moment.
Then Curze turned his cold eyes back upon me. ‘It was always you that was hailed as the craftsman, Vulkan. But Perturabo is just as skilled. Maybe even more so.’
‘What do you want with me, Konrad?’
‘You intrigue me. When I said you’d shown strength, I wasn’t referring to you killing that serf…’
He let it hang like that, waiting for a response. I had none to give, so kept my silence.
Curze’s eyes narrowed, like little slivers of jet. ‘Are you really that ignorant? Did our fa
ther create you to be blind as well as blunt?’
‘I have sight enough to see what you are.’
My brother laughed, unimpressed at my attempted goading. ‘Indeed. But then, I already know what I am. I am at peace with it. I’ve accepted it. You, on the other hand…’ He gave a slight shake of the head, pursing his pale lips, ‘I don’t think you’ve ever been wholly comfortable in your armour.’
He was right, but I wasn’t about to give my gaoler the satisfaction of knowing that.
‘I am my father’s son.’
‘Which father?’
I gritted my teeth, tired of Curze’s obvious mind games. ‘Both of them.’
‘Tell me, brother,’ he said, changing tack, ‘how well do you remember One-Five-Four Six? I believe you called it Kharaatan.’
I didn’t know what Curze’s purpose was in asking me this, but my eyes locked to his and didn’t waver.
‘I remember it very well, as I know you must do also.’
‘Was it when we fought together during the Crusade? Yes, I believe it was.’
‘Thankfully.’
The dagger smile returned to Curze’s face. ‘You didn’t enjoy that war, did you?’
‘What is there to enjoy about war?’
‘Death? You are a bringer of death, a warrior, a merciless killer that–’
‘No, Curze. You are mistaken. You’re the merciless one, you’re the sadist. I never realised it before Kharaatan. Fear and terror are not a warrior’s weapons, they are a coward’s. And I pity you, Curze. I pity you because you have spent so long languishing in the gutter amongst the filth that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in the light. I doubt you can even see it through all that self-loathing.’
‘You’re still blind, Vulkan. It’s you who has forgotten, and don’t realise you’re down here in the gutter with the rest of us, murdering and killing. It’s in your blood. The pedestal you have built for yourself is not so lofty. I know what lies beneath that noble veneer. I’ve seen the monster inside, the one you tried so hard to hide from that remembrancer. What was her name again?’
My jaw tensed.
Curze betrayed no emotion. ‘Seriph.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, that was it.’
‘So what now?’ I asked, tiring of his game. ‘More torture? More pain?’
‘Yes,’ Curze answered frankly, ‘much more. You have yet to feel the extent of it, of what I have planned. You are, in many ways, the perfect victim.’
‘So kill me, then, and be done with it, or is part of my torture listening to you?’
‘I do not think I will kill you this time,’ said Curze. ‘We’ve tried ice.’ He stepped back, coalescing with the darkness. ‘Now let’s try fire.’
From below, I heard a low rumbling. It trembled the metal platform I was standing on. In seconds it grew into a deafening roar, and brought with it a terrible heat.
I realised then the nature of the prison I was in.
It was a furnace.
Curze was gone, and I was left alone with only the shattered memory of my grim brother for company.
I could hear the fire rising, feel it prickling my skin. Soon those needles would become knives, scraping back my flesh. I was born from fire on a brutal, volcanic world. Magma was my blood, onyx was my skin. But I was not impervious to flame. Not like this. Smoke billowed upwards in a vast and dirty cloud, engulfing me. Through it, as the conflagration followed and turned the air into a vibrating haze, as my screams rang out with the scorching of my body, I saw Ferrus.
He was burning too. The skin of his ghoulish face melted to reveal iron beneath. The silver of his arms, so miraculous, so magnificent and enigmatic, ran like mercury and merged with the soup of his flesh and blood. Bone blackened and cracked, until only a rictus skull mask remained. And as the fire took me, I saw the skull’s mouth move in a last silent condemnation.
Weak, said the fire-wreathed skull of Ferrus Manus.
And then it was laughing as we burned, laughing to our ending and damnation.
CHAPTER SEVEN
We are not alone…
‘In this age of darkness, only one thing is certain. Each of us, without exception, must choose a side.’
– Malcador the Sigillite
Haruk had been dead several minutes. Almost twenty by Narek’s reckoning. He was lying on his side, one arm flung out, still clutching his ritual knife, the other pinned beneath the dead weight of his body. His partially helmeted head lay askew. It had almost been forcibly removed.
He had received two fatal wounds. The first, a bolt-round through the neck, had ripped open Haruk’s jugular and exposed his carotid artery. It had also removed a portion of his lower jaw and vox-grille with it, but had not killed him immediately. The second, to the torso, had caved in most of his chest and destroyed eighty per cent of his internal organs when the mass-reactive shell had exploded on impact. From this, Haruk had died instantly.
Narek had found the wreckage of the body on the upper floor of a warehouse, slowly growing cold in a pool of blood. Kneeling down by his dead brother, he felt no grief for Haruk. The Word Bearer was a true bastard amongst bastards, who liked to make sport of his prey. His predilection had been his undoing this time. Kill quietly, kill quickly – this was Narek’s way. A toy was a thing to be played with, and toys were best left to children. An enemy was not a toy, he was a threat to your life until his was ended. But Haruk was a sadist. So many of Narek’s kin were turning this way. A change had come upon them, and it was not just manifest in the vestigial horns that were more than mere affectation for a war-helm, it was soul-deep and irreversible. This did not sit well with Narek, for he had once believed that the Emperor was a god and served this deity with a true zealot’s fervour. When the Legion erected the cathedrals on Monarchia, he had wept. It was beautiful, glorious. All of that was gone now and an older Pantheon had resurfaced to usurp the supposed pretender.
Narek discovers Haruk’s body
So, the sight of his slain brother did not hurt him. But, as Haruk was of the Word, Narek would perform the rites over the corpse as required.
Swathed in darkness, he muttered the necessary incantations that would put Haruk’s soul in service to the Pantheon. Now he would become the sport, a plaything of the Neverborn. Narek almost felt them in his veins, pulsing beneath his skin, and in the staccato beating of his twin hearts. They clung to this place, and their grip was ever tightening as Lorgar wrote his song of murder.
Elias had spoken of it one night, when the sky seemed blacker than pitch and the two of them had shared a drink between comrades, if not friends. This was the primarch’s symphony, and it had unleashed a Ruinstorm of such terrible intensity that the very galaxy was cleft in twain by it.
Lifting his hand from Haruk’s corpse, Narek concluded the rites, but felt the hunger of what dwelled in unreality pressing against the gossamer-thin veil of the mortal realm. A barrier can only stretch so much, and this one was near to splitting. Soon two worlds would meet; soon the galaxy would indeed burn.
Lorgar had foretold it in his writings. He had foreseen it in visions, and who was Narek to oppose that?
‘I am but a soldier, who clings to his duty and the bonds he once swore to his brothers,’ he whispered, and felt the weight of melancholy wrap around him like a cloak.
Dagon, returning from below, interrupted him.
‘He chased the mortal up here. But the place is empty. No sign of his killers.’
Dagon was waiting by the ruin of the stairwell, near to where Haruk had met his end.
Narek cast his gaze about the room, a panorama that began and ended with the body beside him.
‘Oh, there are many, brother. I can see two distinct tread patterns in the dust. They were already in here when Haruk followed the human.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Watching. They were usin
g this place as a vantage point to observe our movements.’
‘How could they know we were here?’ A hint of agitation in Dagon’s voice betrayed his sense of unease at hearing this news.
‘How else? They’ve been tracking and following us.’
‘A counter-attack? I understood there were no enemy assets in this region.’
‘There aren’t. None that we know of, anyway.’ Narek regarded the ruin of Haruk’s body, the silenced rounds that had ended him so precisely. ‘I don’t think it’s a counter-attack. They don’t have the numbers. This was quiet, a hunter’s kill. They want to stay covert, whoever they are. And they took the human with them also.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s an extremely good question.’
‘So what now? This changes things.’
Narek looked off into the middle distance. ‘Perhaps…’ He needed to consult Elias.
Narek activated the warp-flask. A foul sulphur stench fogged the air through his rebreather as communion was achieved quickly. Another sign of the veil thinning – the enhanced warp-flasks were proving more reliable than vox-comms.
‘Do you have him?’ asked Elias.
A simulacrum of the Dark Apostle was rendered in violet grainy light emanating from the neck of the flask like a vapour. On the other end of communion, Narek knew his image would also be rendered to Elias in this way.
‘No. Someone else took him.’
‘Someone else?’
Elias was still at the ritual site. In the background, Narek could hear the human sacrifices mewling as they awaited their fate. Elias would bleed the entire city if he had to. The cults too.
‘Yes.’
‘What about Haruk?’
‘He’s dead. I am crouched by his recently ventilated corpse.’
‘Should I be concerned, Narek?’
‘Too soon to tell.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘It means someone tracked us to Traoris and has shadowed our movements all the way to Ranos,’ Narek said levelly.
‘Who tracked us?’