Xarl’s voice barked over the vox, caught between anger and disbelief. ‘What’s that damn fool doing?’
Talos didn’t answer. He was already running back.
Cyrion’s influence made it all the more difficult. Sight-stealing brightness flashed in colourful blurs across Talos’s eyes as the Land Raider down the avenue maintained heavy fire with its Godhammers. Talos closed his useless eyes, running blind between the Titan’s crushing legs, relying on his other senses to guide him.
Beneath the pounding stamp of the enraged Titan’s tread…
Beneath the mocking, deafening waspish buzz of constant lascannon fire…
There. The thrum of power armour. The heavy chatter of a bolter like an impish giggle in the wake of the superheavy weapons at play. Most identifiable of all was Uzas’s gleeful voice risen in the howling of names Talos had no wish to know. Names which cast him back – just for a moment – to his vision of Abaddon’s ‘allies’.
He threw himself at the sounds, shoulder-charging Uzas ten metres across the street with the dull crash of ceramite armour plates clashing hard. Still blind, he ran to his brother’s rising body, and powered his fist into Uzas’s helmed face.
Once, twice, a third time and a fourth.
With a weak growl, Uzas staggered on shaking legs. Talos headbutted him, the Nostraman rune on his forehead shattering one of Uzas’s red eye lenses. Feeling his brother go limp, the prophet hooked his fingers in Uzas’s armoured collar, and dragged the fool into the relative cover of a half-fallen hab block.
He looked up to see his death. The Titan’s arm, the one not releasing a torrent of murder down the avenue at Cyrion and Storm’s Eye, aimed directly down at him. The arm itself was longer than a battle tank, sucking in light and heat through side-vanes as it amassed the power to fire.
An inferno gun. It would liquidate him, Uzas, the stone of the building, the concrete of the street, in a wash of sun-fire.
One thought burned through his mind as Talos stared up at the trembling cannon.
This is not how I will die.
The explosives bolted to the Titan’s ankle detonated, as if the prophet’s silent words shaped fate itself.
Princeps Arjuran Hollison grunted a weak murmur, because it was the only sound he could make. Something was crushing his chest, blocking all attempts to breathe, and pressing him back against his throne. The pressure that forced him hard against his throne made the hardwiring needles and probes socketed to his spine and skull push far deeper than they should, effectively impaling him. He could feel the dim, pulsing throb of internal bleeding in his head and chest as his vision swam, and…
No. It was the Titan’s pain. Still linked to the enraged, crippled form of Hunter in the Grey, the princeps was drowning in the god-machine’s overwhelming pain.
And its overwhelming indignity.
It had fallen. Not in glorious battle. Not in war against a stronger foe. The Titan, Warhound-class, assembled in the hallowed and sacred forge-factories of Alaris II – noble and knighted Mechanicus world – had fallen. Stumbled. Crashed to the ground, now prone to the ant-like bites of lesser prey.
The cooling reactor core of the humbled giant bled helpless rage into Arjuran’s mind. Just as the Titan lay prone, so too was he defenceless against its maddening anger. He couldn’t move his head to unplug himself. Rage flooded him, terrifying in its intensity and inhumanity, rendered worse by the very fact it could not be escaped. The twisted metal crushing him (the pilot throne of his faithful morderati primus, Ganelon…) was unmovable. His hands beat weakly, worthlessly, against the restraining weight.
He became aware that not only was he crushed, but that he was at an angle. His right arm and leg, as well as the right side of his head, were numb with dull pain from being forced against the metal wall of the cockpit. Hunter in the Grey had twisted as it fell, coming down on its side.
Arjuran had a fragmentary burst of short-term memory. The pain in his left fist as the inferno gun streamed killing fire into the sky, a useless release as the Titan toppled.
Then the thunderous crash.
Then blackness.
Then pain.
Now the rage.
Arjuran was shivering and drooling, half-senseless from the fury of his fallen Titan, when the roof of the wolf-headed cockpit was torn away. Not that he was aware of it, but his body was spasming every few seconds with violent jerks, banging his cracked skull and broken leg against the wall. The Titan’s mortis-cry, an ululating wave of channelled hatred, was slowly killing the one crew member still alive. But then, Hunter in the Grey had always been a wilful and vindictive engine.
Arjuran gasped and wept as a dark figure dragged him from the throne. He gasped in relief, wept in thanks, as the plugs and cables snaked from his skull and spine.
Even now, deprived of the invulnerable shell of his Hunter, he could not care that he had traded one death for another. Blessed succour from the dying Titan’s poisonous emotion. That was all that mattered.
Held limply in the gauntlets of the enemy, Princeps Arjuran Hollison, born of the dynast-clans ruling the Legio Maledictis of Crythe Primus, once the commander of one of his home world’s precious god-machines, stared into the emotionless red eyes of his captor.
‘My name is Talos,’ the dark warrior growled. ‘And you are coming with me.’
XIII
SEEDS OF INSURRECTION
‘It is possible to win and lose at once.
Think of the war that rages for so long that a world is left worthless in its wake.
Think of the swordsman that slays his foe at the cost of his own life.
Think, finally, of the Siege of Terra.
Let those fateful nights burn into your memory.
Never forget the lesson learned when Horus duelled the false god.
Triumph bought with too much blood is no triumph at all.’
– The war-sage Malcharion
Excerpted from his work, The Tenebrous Path,
Ten thousand years ago, before humanity was riven by the betrayal of Horus the Chosen, 10th Company returned home to Nostramo.
10th Company, 12th, and 16th – three battle companies returning from the Great Crusade to be honoured by their home world.
The Night Lords were never like their brother Legions. They came from a world without warrior traditions stretching back through the centuries. The fortitude that girded them for the rigours of the Emperor’s Great Crusade was born of a world that knew fear, knew blood, and knew murder – more than any other globe in the Emperor’s grip. The people of Nostramo knew these aspects as a natural part of life. The acceptance of such darkness bred a Legion colder than any other; a Legion willing to discard its humanity in service to the Throne.
And this is exactly what it did.
This was an age when the Night Lords were the emergent Imperium’s most powerful threat. A world resisting the Imperial Truth could be conquered by the drudging half-mechanical Iron Hands or the massed precision of the ever-loyal Ultramarines. It could be brought to compliance by the howling hordes of the Luna Wolves – who would one day become the Black Legion – or the avenging wrath of the Blood Angels.
Or it could suffer the crippling evisceration of society offered by the untender talons of the Night Haunter’s chosen sons.
Fear was their weapon. As the end of the Great Crusade neared, even as the Night Haunter’s brother primarchs looked askance at their moribund, wayward kinsman, the Night Lords were the Emperor’s most potent weapon. Entire worlds would surrender their arms as their scanners revealed that the Astartes vessels that had translated into orbit bore the runic symbols of the VIII Legion. In these waning years, the Night Lords encountered less and less resistance, as deviant societies abandoned their defiance rather than die under the claws of the most feared Imperial Legion.
Their reputation was hard-won through hundreds of campaigns, unleashing their specific brand of terror upon those they conquered. It was never enough to take a wor
ld in the Emperor’s name. To cement the Master of Mankind’s rule, populations must be utterly quelled into obedience. Obedience through fear. A Night Lords strike force would ravage the heart of a world’s leadership, crucifying the bodies of its rulers on public address pict-screens, burning the monument-houses to the planet’s false gods, and systematically peeling back a society’s skin to expose the weaknesses beneath. In their wake, shattered populations lived the lives of loyal, silent Imperial citizens, never even whispering a word of rebellion.
And as the years passed, resistance faded.
The gene-forged warriors of the Night Lords grew discontent with this. Not only discontent, but bored. When the order came from Terra – the insane demand that the Night Lords and their primarch father return to suffer the chastisement of the Emperor – discontent and boredom faded to be replaced by the birth of a new emotion. The Night Lords grew bitter.
They, who had whored their humanity away in the fires of the Emperor’s wars.
They, who had allowed themselves to be moulded into the Imperium’s truest weapon of terror.
They were to pay for these deeds, like sinners kneeling before an angry god?
Indignity. Madness. Blasphemy.
The last Night Lords to set foot upon the surface of Nostramo were the warriors of 10th, 12th and 16th Companies. A homecoming of special rarity, for few Astartes ever saw their home worlds again, and Nostramo was hardly renowned for doing honour to its sons fighting away in the Emperor’s wars.
The parade was modest, but sincere. A gesture from the captain leading the three companies, as the expeditionary battlefleet refuelled and made repairs in the docks above Nostramo. Fifty Astartes from each company would make planetfall and march down the main avenue of Nostramo Quintus, leading from the spaceport.
Talos remembered thinking even at the time it was a strangely emotional gesture. Yet he’d descended to the surface in Blackened, along with the other nine Astartes of the full-strength First Claw.
‘I do not understand,’ he’d said to Brother-Sergeant Vandred, who was still decades away from becoming the Exalted, and still months away from becoming 10th Captain.
‘What is there to understand, Brother-Apothecary?’
‘This descent. The reception on the surface. I do not understand why the 10th Captain has ordered it.’
‘Because he is a sentimental fool,’ Vandred replied. Grunts of agreement sounded from the others, including Xarl. Talos said no more, but remained sure there was more to it than something so simple and senseless.
There was, of course. He wouldn’t find out what for many months.
During the parade itself – which was almost alarmingly populous – Talos clutched his bolter to his chest and marched bare-headed with his brothers. The experience was dazzling, though almost without sound at first. Little cheering took place, but the clapping soon became thunderous. The ambivalent people of Nostramo, in the actual presence of the Night Haunter’s sons, cast aside their apathy and welcomed their champions home.
It was not humbling. Talos was more confused than anything else.
Were these people so ardent in their love for the Imperium that they welcomed the Emperor’s chosen born from their own world? He had spent his youth on this world, hiding and running and stealing and killing in the black backstreets of its cities. The Imperium had always been a distant, ignorable thing at best.
Had so much really changed in a mere two decades? Surely not.
So why were they all here? Perhaps curiosity had dragged them from their habs, and the uniqueness of the moment was breeding the excitement now.
Perhaps, he realised with a bolt of guilty unease through his spine, the people thought they had returned permanently. Returned to reinstitute the cleansing laws laid down by the now-distant Night Haunter.
Throne… That was it. That was why they were glad to see them. In the absence of their lost primarch ruler, the populace hoped for the Haunter’s sons to return and take up his duties. The primarch’s lessons were being unlearned, the imprint of his silent crusade on society was a thing of the past. Talos had lived here himself, barely believing the world had once been a bastion of control and order under a gene-god’s rule.
Now it became humbling. To feel the weight of terrible expectation willed from the crowd. To know they were destined for crushing disappointment.
It became worse when the crowd started shouting names. Not insults, real names. It wasn’t en masse, but individuals in the groups lining the avenue shouted names at the Astartes, for reasons Talos couldn’t quite guess. Were they yelling their own names, to receive some kind of blessing? Were they screaming the names of sons taken by the Astartes, hoping those very same warriors now walked this wide street?
Few moments in life had been as difficult for Talos as this. To feel himself so separated from the life he once led, that he couldn’t even guess what other humans were thinking.
The thin line of enforcers keeping the crowds back broke in several places. Small-arms fire banged out, putting down the few members of the mobbing crowd that sought to walk with the Astartes. Only a handful made it to the ranks of marching warriors. They weaved this way and that, looking lost, looking drunk, staring up like frightened, fevered animals into the faces of the walking warriors.
A middle-aged man scrabbled at Talos’s chestplate with dirty fingernails.
‘Sorion?’ he asked. Before Talos could answer, the man fled, repeating the same whispered question to one of the Astartes two rows behind.
At no point did the Legion stop marching. Pistol-fire broke out as the enforcers, in expensive business suits, took out one of the mortals in the avenue that strayed far enough from the Astartes to guarantee a kill-shot without hitting one of the armoured giants. None of the enforcers wished to risk his own death by missing and hitting the revered armour of the Night Haunter’s sons.
An elderly woman harassed Xarl. She was barely over half of his height.
‘Where is he?’ she shrieked, wasted hands scratching at the marching warrior’s armour. ‘Xarl! Where is he? Answer me!’
Talos could read the discomfort in his brother’s face as Xarl marched on. The old woman, beneath her mop of wild white hair, saw him paying attention. Talos immediately faced forward again, feeling the old woman clawing at his unmoving arm with her weak grip.
‘Look at me!’ she pleaded. ‘Look at me!’
Talos didn’t. He marched on. Weeping, wailing after him, the old woman fell behind. ‘Look at me! It’s you! Talos! Look at me!’
An enforcer’s gunshot ended her demands. Talos hated himself for feeling relief.
Five hours later, back aboard Blackened, Xarl had sat next to him on the restraint couches.
Never before – and never again – would Talos see his brother’s face marked by such hesitancy.
‘That wasn’t easy for any of us. But you did well, brother.’
‘What did I do so differently?’
Xarl swallowed. Something seemed to dawn behind his eyes. ‘That woman. The one from the crowd. You… didn’t recognise her?’
Talos tilted his head, watching Xarl carefully. ‘I barely saw her.’
‘She said your name,’ Xarl pressed. ‘You truly didn’t recognise her?’
‘They were reading our names off our armour scrolls,’ Talos narrowed his eyes. ‘She said your name as well.’
Xarl rose to his feet, making to move away. Talos rose with him, gauntlet clamped on his brother’s shoulder guard.
‘Speak, Xarl.’
‘She wasn’t reading our names. She knew us, brother. She recognised us, even after twenty years and the changes wrought by the gene-seed. Throne, Talos… You must have recognised her.’
‘I didn’t. I swear. I saw only an old woman.’
Xarl shrugged off Talos’s grip. He didn’t turn around. His words echoed with the same finality as the gunshot that had silenced the old woman’s pleas.
‘The old woman,’ Xarl said slowly. �
�She was your mother.’
These thoughts echoed in Talos’s mind now, on the return to orbit from the war-torn surface of Crythe. The memories, which so safely hid within his unconscious at all times, broke through the surface now.
The mood aboard the transport was grim, despite the victory First and Seventh Claws had just achieved. The death of a Titan, even a Warhound-class Titan, a lesser cousin of the city-crushing Warlords and Imperators… This deed would be etched onto their war-plate, and machined onto the armour plating of Storm’s Eye. Nostraman runes would tell the tale of their triumph until the night when their bodies lay cold and Legion brothers came to scavenge the relic armour.
But the mood remained dark. Victory at such a savage cost was barely a victory at all. Talos recalled similar words written by the war-sage Malcharion, in the years after the Haunter’s assassination.
And with that thought, with that connection made, Talos’s roiling mind – already lost in the coldest, deepest and most furious pits of memory – turned blacker still.
Assassination. Murder. Blasphemy.
The last time he had wept was on that night, that night of wrenching agony, standing with thousands of his brothers and watching the traitorous whore leave the fortress-monastery, her gloved hands clutching their father’s head by its lank, black hair.
Hours before, Talos had shared his last words with his gene-sire.
‘My life,’ the primarch had said, head bowed before a gathering of his captains and chosen, ‘has meant nothing.’
The bowed god weathered the shouted denials of his favoured sons, who all fell silent as he spoke again.
‘Nothing. Yet, I will amend that with my death.’
‘How, lord? What glory will your sacrifice bring to us?’ These words from the Talonmaster. Zso Sahaal. First Captain.
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