by Guy Haley
‘Do not fear. He cannot pass. The Emperor’s ward is weakening, and soon the Neverborn will walk upon Terra, but for now, even Angron is forbidden entry to the Palace.’
There was truth in Sanguinius’ words. Angron spread his wings and came to a halt some way out from the wall. He swooped back and forth, his yellow eyes fixed upon his brother.
‘Sanguinius,’ growled Angron. ‘Face me. Let us fight, you and I.’
‘You shall not pass over these walls, nor under or through them until our father decrees it,’ said Sanguinius. ‘You know this to be true.’
Angron snarled. ‘Then come out and fight me, red angel to red angel, upon this field of battle where father can no longer interfere.’
Sanguinius saluted his brother as if Angron remained the troubled warrior of before.
‘We will fight, my brother, but not today.’
Angron roared and wheeled around, but he must have seen the truth of the Great Angel’s words, for he did not attempt to pass over the wall, and flew back to the burning plains below where the last unfortunate few of the outworks’ defenders were being hunted down.
Sanguinius stood at the edge of the ruined wall section. The crenellations had been entirely stripped away by the melta arrays, and the rampart cratered deeply. The wrecked stump of the siege tower burned some distance down. He looked out over Horus’ hordes, mutants and Traitor Space Marines, held up his sword and shouted.
‘None of you shall pass within!’ he told them. ‘You shall all perish! This is the judgment of the Emperor. Remember these words, for they shall haunt you when the moment of your death comes and you learn to regret your treachery.’
He turned away from it all.
‘Remove the corpses, Raldoron. Burn the Death Guard and throw the ashes over the wall. Have the Librarius check for warp taint. Mortarion’s sons have strange new gifts.’
‘My lord,’ said Raldoron.
‘And rest while you can.’ Sanguinius looked to the heavens. ‘They will try again and again. The veil between worlds weakens. The Neverborn are coming.’
Raldoron’s genesire had no further words for him, but leapt skywards and passed as a flashing mote of gold and white feathers towards the Palace centre.
Raldoron looked out over the zone of battle atop the wall. The Apothecaries and engineers had much work to do. Dozens of Blood Angels were dead or dying. The wall was badly damaged. The place where the outworks had sheltered the wall’s feet was covered over by the servants of the enemy. As his men worked through long hours to set things right, reports finally came in from Bhab command. At every point the enemy’s escalade had failed.
The walls held.
The attack was over.
Titans swayed through the Helios Gate, their ponderous footfalls shaking the ground. Again the voids slipped over Katsuhiro, making him sick to his soul. The Legio Solaria hooted a mournful salute to the fallen as the last came in.
Still firing into the enemy, who would not give up their suicidal attempt on the gate, the sons of Dorn fell back, covered by their tanks and the guns of the walls.
‘Close the gates!’ the cry went up, taken up by others.
Three minutes. That was what they had been offered. That was all that was given. Katsuhiro saw desperate men sprinting for the gateway. Three minutes was a lifetime quickly spent.
Once more the gate’s array of war-horns blared out their tune, the Palace itself giving a valediction for the dead. The ground thrummed with powerful motors, and the gates swung inwards. A last few conscripts sprinted through as they swung closed. Katsuhiro tried to go to them, but he was pulled away from the gate by shouting people he could barely hear.
Hands pulled him onto a low cot at the edge of the great canyon way behind the wall. There medicae personnel performed triage on a group of filthy, shell-shocked soldiers. Many thousands had manned the outworks in their section. Katsuhiro reckoned there to be less than one thousand left.
The Imperial Fists in the gateway altered their formation to intensify their firing through the gap of the closing portal. It shrank with increasing rapidity.
Guns fired nearby. A group of legionaries festooned with skulls ran at the rear of the gates from within the city and were cut down by bolter fire from loyal Space Marines, who turned around on the spot and smoothly switched targets. The Titans sang again as they moved off into the Palace. He watched them go. They moved so quickly despite their plodding pace. Then the gates swung closed with a boom, shutting out the battle and the horrors beyond the wall, drawing his attention back.
Katsuhiro stared at the rear of the closed gates. Transhumans moved all around the square behind the gatehouse. Now combat was done, they went about rearmament and repair without the post-combat shock lesser humans experienced.
A captain of their kind walked by, shouting orders from his voxmitter.
‘Please, my lord,’ Katsuhiro said, reaching up his hands.
He expected to be ignored, but the captain stopped at his cot and looked down on him.
‘Why did you save us?’ Katsuhiro asked.
As the Space Marine wore his helmet. Katsuhiro could not gauge his expression. Green eye-lenses stared at him hard, so soullessly he regretted speaking.
‘We were ordered to,’ said the Space Marine.
‘Then you think it a waste of resources,’ Katsuhiro said. ‘I do not blame you. I am a coward. Every time I think I have overcome my fear, then some fresh horror is revealed, and I am a coward all over again. The city was put in danger for our sake. I am sorry.’
The Space Marine lord stared down at him. He was so tall, so distant, the last bits of his humanity hidden behind the angled mask of his war-plate, and when he spoke his voice was near robotic thanks to the voxmitter; and yet Katsuhiro heard his compassion, even through all of that.
‘Hear me, son of Terra. Not one of you who fought upon those lines is a coward. You did what was asked of you. You performed your duty. I am proud to call you my comrade in arms, whatever the cost in blood and the risk of bringing you within these walls. This I, Maximus Thane, swear to you. Now rest. You will be needed again.’
The Space Marine walked away. A medicae orderly came to Katsuhiro and pushed him gently onto the cot. But Katsuhiro saw something behind Thane’s huge, yellow bulk that made him sit up.
‘That man! That man! Stop him!’
‘That’s the commander of the gate.’ The medicae muttered to his attendants. ‘Delirious. Battle shock. Administer somna vapour.’
A soft plastek mask was pulled over Katsuhiro’s face. He struggled against the hands pushing him down. Gas hissed down tubes beaded with condensation.
Thane moved on, calling to his men, revealing Ashul at the edge of a crowd, the man Katsuhiro had known as Doromek. The traitor.
‘Stop him, stop him,’ Katsuhiro muttered, already losing consciousness.
Ashul saluted ironically. Katsuhiro’s eyes slid shut. He forced them open one more time, but Ashul was gone.
Hissing filled the world, and Katsuhiro fell into welcome, dreamless sleep.
Gendor Skraivok and Raldoron duel on the wall.
The daemon primarch Angron sets foot on Terra.
Ascension
Absent father
A new champion
Daylight Wall, Helios section, 15th of Quartus
A broken man in broken armour stirred at the foot of the wall. A single casualty among thousands, he was not noticed in the battle’s aftermath by either side.
Gendor Skraivok was dying. The fall had brought him down across a lump of rockcrete and his back had shattered on it. He could move his arms. Everything below his shoulders might as well have been sculpted from clay.
The hum of his warsuit’s reactor had stopped. No power ran through the armour’s systems, and much of its ceramite shell was broken open. Skraivok could
see very little past his collar and his pauldrons. The walls soared above him, as if placed there with the sole purpose of framing the sky, where the living art of orbital bombardment danced in ever-changing patterns on the aegis. From a lump of stone his helmet looked at him accusingly, having been torn off as he slammed into the wall. It had contrived to land upright, solely, it seemed, to silently condemn him with cracked glass eyes.
Blood was leaking into Skraivok’s mouth. He spat weakly to the side, an action that stabbed his organs with a hundred knives of agony. The blood flowed faster than he could spit.
He groaned. If his other injuries did not kill him first, he was going to drown in his own vitae.
Gendor Skraivok did not wish to die.
‘Daemon,’ he whispered. ‘Daemon!’
He patted the ground to his left and his right. Amazingly, his hand touched the familiar hilt of his warp blade. Gripping it cost him greatly in pain, but he managed to bring the weapon onto his chest, where it clanked against his armour.
‘Daemon, can you hear me?’ He spat again. Blood was running down his throat.
The sword trembled.
‘You are here with me!’ he croaked in relief.
Skraivok’s smile became an expression of dismay as the metal’s trembling turned to shaking so pronounced it clattered on his armour. The blade began to fizz, boiling off into black smoke that fled upwards towards the flaring sky.
‘No!’ he said. ‘No! Daemon, wait! Do not desert me!’
The rattling died away as the weapon evaporated into nothing. Skraivok stared at his empty hand.
‘I don’t want to die!’ he said, weakly. He felt intensely sorry for himself. ‘I’m not ready! Daemon! Daemon…’
‘I have not deserted you, Gendor Skraivok. Not yet.’
Dragging footsteps approached. Skraivok turned his head. Relief turned to horror at what he saw.
The daemon came fully formed, solid as a man of flesh and blood. It was a scrawny thing with skin covered in tumorous lumps. Its head had something of the equine to it, being long, with eyes set far back and to the side of its face. The teeth were predatory, however: sharp along the front, large incisors lying neatly together, like the scissor-blade tusks of Terran boars. The head carried four short growths that were more nobbles than horns. Its ears, Skraivok noted, were very small and delicate.
It came closer.
‘Get away from me!’ Skraivok gasped, suddenly afraid.
A famine-swollen belly dangled from an emaciated ribcage. Its legs were knock-kneed. It limped. Its arms were overly long, held awkwardly across its body, with grasping, twitching fingers covered in warts. Dragging misshapen feet, it approached Skraivok slowly, as if bashful, unsure of how to greet a potential mate, but Skraivok could see even from his limited view how triumphant it felt.
‘Do not be afraid. I am your sword. I am your daemon. We spoke before, on Sotha, you and I. We are important to one another.’
‘I do not know you!’
‘I have many forms, and many names. You know me well, and always have, as you shall soon see. The walls between our spheres are breached. I can be here now, thanks to my connection with you. Others of my kind will come soon enough, but not for you. I am the first, and you are mine.’ It came to a halt at Skraivok’s side and looked up at the continuing battle. ‘Soon the Anathema will fall, and this sphere of being will be like ours.’
It stared down at Skraivok with huge brown eyes that might have been beautiful in another creature, but in its lumpen face were abhorrent. Thick, clear fluid wept from them, dribbling down its long snout and coating its teeth.
‘Now what do we do with you, I wonder?’
The Neverborn knelt over him, and rested a knotted hand upon Skraivok’s broken armour. Its fingers dabbled in his blood.
‘Why did you leave me on the wall?’ said Skraivok.
‘Because I could,’ it said. Its voice was wet and laboured. ‘Because you needed a lesson. I made you strong, Skraivok, and you assumed that strength was your own. You are a traitor and a murderer. Ruthlessness and a little cunning are your only gifts, but you mistook my talents for yours.’ It snickered. ‘Can you imagine, the Painted Count thought himself the equal of the First Captain of the Blood Angels? A priceless error.’
‘I slew Lord Shang,’ croaked Skraivok.
‘I slew Lord Shang,’ countered the daemon, ‘not you. Truly you are gloriously arrogant,’ it said with satisfaction. ‘A fitting bondsoul for me. We shall have such times, you and I.’
‘I am a captain of the Night Lords.’
‘You are, you are,’ the daemon said, patting him. ‘But you cheated your way to your command. You never had the patience or the discipline to properly master the gifts the Anathema bestowed upon your mortal body. You are no warrior, Skraivok. You never were. You are a parasite. You are a gutter politician. You are devious, and false. Nothing more.’
‘What do you want of me?’ Skraivok said. His life was ebbing away. Not long now. He almost welcomed it.
‘You have a choice to make,’ it said with relish. ‘You can die here, now, and your soul will flee into the warp where it will be torn to pieces by my kin who dwell there.’
‘The alternative?’ His eyes were heavy. Blood dribbled into his lungs.
The Neverborn leaned closer, and whispered with rank breath into his ear.
‘You can offer yourself to me, wholeheartedly, with no reservation or doubt, and I will take you into myself. You will become a part of me and I will become a part of you. Together, we shall live forever, and freely tread the materium and immaterium both. We shall bring such pain upon this sphere of being that it will wound the very light of the stars.’
‘I will die otherwise?’ he said.
‘You will do more than die. You will cease to be.’
‘Then yes,’ said Skraivok. ‘Yes! Anything but death.’
‘Anything?’ crooned the daemon.
‘Yes!’ said Skraivok. Fear sent a last jolt of energy into him. He lifted his head. ‘Anything.’
‘Then say the words,’ growled the Neverborn. Its thin lips were close enough to kiss. The fluid from its eyes dripped onto Skraivok’s face.
‘I pledge myself to you! I shall become yours! You will be me and I will be you! Is that right? Is that right? Please, do not let me die!’
The daemon chuckled. ‘I chose you so well. Yes, those words will suffice. This is your first lesson – the form of the words do not matter, only their sincerity, and I see that for the first time in your life, Gendor Skraivok, you are sincere.’
‘I am! I am!’
A long, reeking tongue slipped between the daemon’s lips, furred green and ulcerous, and pushed roughly into Skraivok’s mouth. It slithered into his throat, growing longer and thicker, plunging down, down inside him, blocking off his air, choking him. The daemon’s mouth parted wider, and wider. The tongue grew thicker while the rest of the being deflated, pouring itself through the serpent of its tongue into the Night Lord. Skraivok goggled and choked, his eyes wide with terror.
Did I mention, said the daemon into his mind, for the mind was its now too, that for you to deliver pain correctly, you must learn what pain is. I will take you now, into the warp, where for six times six hundred and sixty-six years you will learn the depths of agony. This is a great gift. No living being could survive the torments that await you, my friend, my soul bond, my Painted Count, but you will… You will become expert in pain.
Skraivok’s eyes bulged. The daemon slithered inside him, pulling its empty skin after it. Skraivok’s flesh glowed lurid purple, too bright to look at.
When the light went out, his armour was empty, but the daemon was good to its word.
The Painted Count was not dead.
In the depths of the warp, Gendor Skraivok began to scream.
The warp
He stopped to take in his surroundings.
There was a place his father had taken him soon after his arrival on Terra. A rotunda tower in the young Palace, whose colonnaded sides were protected from the freezing winds of Himalazia by shimmering atmospheric shields. The room at the top was of simple luxury. Nothing ostentatious, but everything fashioned to the highest standard, and of the finest materials. The floor was chequered with black and white marble fitted to the room’s circular shape, the flagstones rhomboids with curved edges that grew more slender until they reached the middle of the room, where they became tesserae locked into a geometric prison. At the very centre was an ancient symbol, a circle divided into two tailed shapes of black and white by a curved line, a small dot of black within the white and vice versa. The Emperor had told him that this symbol represented equilibrium.
Where he was now was an echo of that chamber. He saw it as it had been, and he saw it as it would become, its energy shields out, curtains shredded, floor cracked. The rotunda offered a view of the whole Palace, and it showed now a vista of fire. Hot breezes laden with embers wafted between the pillars. Horus looked on approvingly.
‘Why did you bring me here, father?’ he said. The Emperor did not show Himself. Horus felt His presence all around him, but no contact came. He remained hidden.
The Warmaster raised his eyebrows at this display. He felt the consternation of the Four, but he was not unduly concerned. His father had never liked to give a straight answer. His gaze wandered over the chamber, touching on a pile of cushions where he and the Emperor had talked long into that first night, then over the table where they dined together when time allowed. The Emperor was always occupied with His great work – His great lie, Horus thought – but at the beginning of it all He had had more time for Horus than He had for any of the others that followed.
That had been important to him, once. In truth it was so meaningless. Days full of lies to feed a tyrant’s vanity. It saddened him. Such a waste.