by Guy Haley
‘Plaguefather,’ said Mortarion. He bowed his cadaverous head. Ku’gath respectfully returned the gesture. The ragged skin and exposed fats of his chins creased under his jaw.
‘Where is the third? Where is your wayward son?’ said the greater daemon.
‘I am here, summoned by the Mycota Profundis as is our bargain,’ said a surly voice. A second image materialised, this one of helmeted Plague Marine, one horn jutting from the brow of his malformed Cataphractii Terminator plate. Layers of diseased flesh, fat and bone, part merged with the being’s armour, were visible, again as if cut away. Osseous tubes rose behind his head, and an infernal buzzing accompanied his words that threatened to drown them out.
For all the racket of Typhus’ manifestation, his contempt was clear when he spoke.
‘Gene-father,’ he said.
‘My son,’ said Mortarion. His tone was coolly indifferent, whereas his son’s was provocative. ‘We are gathered then, the three champions, followers of the seventh path, masters of life and death.’
‘Not yet masters,’ said Ku’gath with a sorrowful shake of his great horned head. ‘Unworthy acolytes.’
‘The time of your redemption is at hand,’ said Mortarion. ‘The sevenfold way opens. The seven campaigns of this invasion bear fruit ready to rot. Roboute Guilliman has returned to Ultramar.’
Ku’gath gave a sly look of delight, almost a smile. Typhus laughed.
‘You are foolish, my lord father, if you think this will end well,’ said the first captain. ‘We should have finished his realm while he was absent.’
‘Typhus, Typhus,’ said Mortarion. ‘So long you have lived, and so little you have learnt. What use is the destruction of a kingdom without the death of the king?’
‘A king without a kingdom is no king, but a vagabond. His suffering would have been pleasant meat to savour,’ said Typhus. ‘You court disaster in confronting him. This employment of the Hand of Darkness is convoluted and foolhardy. Simplicity was the watchword of our Legion – the direct attack, the weathering of pain, not this deviousness. This was not the plan of the Great Father.’
‘It is my plan!’ said Mortarion, his gloomy voice rising stridently. ‘And its success will honour the Great Father. He entrusts us with our will and our initiative. I will use mine. He will be pleased.’
‘If you succeed,’ said Typhus. He looked around the horarium disdainfully. ‘You are blinded by the past as always, my lord. You look to Barbarus and remake it wherever you go. Embrace change fully. Embrace Chaos. Abandon these schemes. Let us drown Ultramar in disease and move on.’
Mortarion flung up his arms and spread his wings. ‘I have, and this is my reward! I am remade in terrible image. I am become death!’
‘You do not believe. Not truly,’ said Typhus. ‘You have paid nothing for your power. The false Emperor made you, gene-father. Nurgle took you as a prize – you are a trophy, my lord. You would never have found your way to enlightenment without me. Without me, you would have nothing. You would be dead, your soul dispersed into the warp. I fought my way into the Great Father’s attention. I became his herald by will and by the dint of my own efforts. What have you done to win his favour?’
‘Curb your insolence,’ said Mortarion.
‘Or what, my lord? I have Nurgle’s favour. You would not dare to move against me. You think that you are in control, that your new being is separate from the warp and yours to do with as you will. It is not. It is Nurgle’s. You must submit to him fully, or Grandfather will have hard lessons for you. This plan of yours, to lead your brother on Nurgle’s dance, it is ill-conceived. If we must strike, strike now. We should gather our fleets and cripple his forces while they gather at Macragge. Do not allow him the luxury of time to consult with his warriors, or consolidate his position.’
‘Do not presume to tell me what to do,’ said Mortarion. ‘You will work with us.’
‘I will do as I please,’ said Typhus. ‘If only you would abandon the last of your being to the lord of life, you would see. You have no power over me. You do not truly understand. If you did, then you and I might be reconciled.’
‘Do you level the same criticism against Ku’gath, first captain?’ said Mortarion icily. ‘You dare speak to him in that way?’
‘He is as flawed as you, in his own way,’ said Typhus. ‘Maudlin where you are nostalgic.’
Ku’gath nodded dolefully. ‘You are right! I am unworthy. So unworthy. I cannot help it.’
‘All Ku’gath cares for is setting right the loss his birth caused,’ said Typhus. ‘He at least desires to honour Nurgle through his efforts, and so can be forgiven. You seek to honour yourself. You do your own work with this fool’s errand. Give him a day too many, and Roboute Guilliman will defeat you, and we shall lose all hope of bringing Ultramar within the walls of Nurgle’s manse.’
‘You will obey me. You will follow our plan,’ said Mortarion. ‘I require your vectorium at Espandor, when the time comes.’
Typhus snorted. ‘You cannot command me as you once did. I am high in the favour of the Plague God – equal to you in his eyes, if not higher. Who was it who delivered him the Death Guard? It was I, not you. You still do not understand the true nature of Chaos. I do. I am following our plan as originally formulated. The blessing of the Great Father was on that strategy, not on this quest for vengeance. You deceived me, Mortarion. You intended to play with your brother all along. This will displease the Plague God. I will continue as we originally agreed. I will have no part in this folly.’
‘If you will not come to Espandor, you will be at Parmenio. The numbers do not lie, my son. It is calculable. Great Nurgle will command it is so. It is preordained.’
‘Maybe there is hope for you,’ said Typhus. ‘More and more you dabble with the warp’s true power. Perhaps one day you will master it, and leave your bitterness against your Barbaran father behind you. But you are wrong if you believe that I will fight at your side. You have no real foresight. I will not be there to help you, no matter what your numerology says. And now I go. Be warned, little father – I have the ear of the Great Father himself.’ Typhus’ image blurred and vanished. The part of the mycelium mat supporting his warp ghost twitched and decayed into putrid slime.
Mortarion stared long and hard at the space where his wayward son had been.
‘And you, Ku’gath,’ said Mortarion. ‘Are you against me also?’
‘I stand with you, favoured son of the Great Father,’ said Ku’gath. ‘You see the chance for revenge, I for redemption. Together we may serve ourselves, and the will of Papa Nurgle.’
In the main, daemons were beyond the comprehension of men. Many were bizarre things, their motives inexplicable even to Mortarion, who was now more daemon than human himself.
Ku’gath was different. His profound regret made him relatable. The misery he wallowed in was something mankind knew only too well, and Mortarion knew misery best of all.
‘Your plan is working,’ said the daemon. ‘The dead walk across the worlds we foul. The peons of Ultramar have had their eyes opened to their slavery and shake their fists at their blue masters. We shall combine forces when the time is right. We shall prevail. I need but a little more time to perfect my new concoction. Every strain of the galaxy’s finest diseases contribute their essence to its creation. There has never been anything like it.’ His voice came close to enthusiasm. ‘It will be as devastating as you desire, and more so – the finest plague, enough to slay a demigod! Delay the primarch. Keep him from Iax. Rot his empire, and when he is full of despair, we shall strike, and we shall kill him.’
Ku’gath withdrew from the communion. More of the mycelium mat fell into decay. Mortarion pulled himself free of the clinging tendrils, and with a wet rustle it shrank in on itself, shrivelling up to nothing. His eyes cleared. The fungal spike in the room’s centre collapsed into a mouldering heap that rapidly deliquesced i
nto stinking water.
Mortarion walked across the slippery floor and hung Silence again upon its chain. He held the scythe’s head in one hand and petted it before drawing it back across the room.
‘Soon, Silence, we will reap the greatest prize of all – the death of my brother!’ He set it swinging. The great clock restarted. Their king ticking again, so did all the others.
‘What do you think of that, father?’ said the lord of death. The soul in the flask screamed at him and raced around its confinement. The machines constraining it buzzed with the additional strain.
‘Shhh,’ said Mortarion. ‘You will need your strength. I have neglected you for too long. I have new stimuli for you to enjoy, new pains and soul-fevers. Such times we will have, you and I, when the hateful Imperium is overthrown. An eternity to explore the rotting of the spirit. The galaxy will be free of stagnation, and there will be a riot of life in its place. The Emperor offers death in life. Nurgle offers the constant renewal of life in death! So many of the Emperor’s loyal subjects will join with us when they see how their suffering may be banished by embracing pain. Typhus says I do not understand, father. But I do, I understand far better than him. With Guilliman gone, the Imperium will be doomed. All glory to the generosity of Father Nurgle! It has been foretold, and I shall make it so.’
Mortarion went to stand by a bank of valves and wheels hidden behind an array of clocks. The activated workings connected to the tubes that ran into the glass prison. He let his hand hover over them, tormenting the spirit of his xenos father with anticipation of the soul-rotting poisons he might unleash. Under his breathing mask, what remained of Mortarion’s mouth smiled. He let his hand drop. Leaving the wheels untouched, he departed the horarium.
The third part of Mortarion’s plan was in motion. He would leave Guilliman to his victory at Ardium. On other worlds, in other places, Mortarion would weaken him, poisoning his mind, body and soul, just as he poisoned the mind, body and soul of Guilliman’s realm.
And then Mortarion would destroy his brother.
Chapter Twenty
The Council of Hera
The Fortress of Hera had changed greatly since Guilliman’s time. The walls had grown outwards, swallowing parts of Magna Macragge Civitas below it and the Hera’s Crown mountains behind it. To the west, it had spread as far as Hera’s Falls. Their foaming rush had exchanged natural beauty for architectural elegance. Where once water had thundered down a steep natural gorge, now it was constrained in a vertical channel of marbled stone. Slippery rocks were replaced with tall statues, the irregular plunge pool by a square lake edged with greened bronze. The cliffs had been carved back. Statues stood in their stead, and shrines in stacked clusters.
The city was different, too. Flat land was at a premium on mountainous Macragge. Like a displaced nation, what Magna Macragge Civitas had lost to the Fortress of Hera’s encroachment it had taken from its neighbour. The seafront was over a kilometre further out than it had been ten thousand years ago, and beyond its edge the Pharamis Ocean was clustered with floating habitats.
Both fortress and city had lost much of what Guilliman remembered to the vagaries of war. Ultramar had been invaded many times while he slept, and as the capital world Macragge had been targeted over and again. Tyranids, orks, and the minions of Chaos had all left their mark. The grand triumphal arches of the Great Crusade had gone, blasted down in one war or another, and lesser monuments had taken their place. History had a great inertia, and the layout of the streets had resisted change, but every attack had swept away another part of the past in piecemeal destruction. Pale shadows in marble had supplanted old glories.
There were elements that had survived. The Library of Ptolemy was one, and the Temple of Correction another. Other landmarks had been rebuilt several times. One remaining feature was the Plaza of Attendance, a vast space like an inverted ziggurat stamped into the Fortress of Hera’s rampart plateau. The walls had advanced from the plaza, leaving it some way from the edge where before it had stood at the brink of man-made cliffs. The side nearest the city, once open, was now walled with a faceless armoury. The halls at the eastern end, where for a brief period the primarch Sanguinius had sat as Emperor, were long ago demolished.
But the plaza remained, and it was upon this familiar ground that Roboute Guilliman elected to land.
It was a windy night, and wet. Every Ultramarine on Macragge was upon the terraces of the plaza, as were hundreds of dignitaries from many of the segmentum’s worlds. The humans shivered in vicious squalling gusts that lifted ceremonial robes and exposed bodies to the cold. The Space Marines were still as statues, their armour running with rain. Banners waved damply. Emblems were secrets in the dark. From the city, celebratory fireworks struggled up into the downpour and search beams shone, lighting up the night in a glorious display of colours and turning the beating rain into falling jewels. Snatches of martial music came wavering through the storm.
All eyes were on the sky.
Lightning flashed, lighting the clouds from within. Thunder rumbled. More lightning burst, striking the tallest spires of the fortress. Underground engines whined as they absorbed the unlooked-for power, the humans glancing nervously upwards at gathering rods glowing with heat.
Through the wind, the roar of a landing cycle made itself known, fading in and out of Macragge’s thunder.
Suddenly, the primarch’s craft was there, emerging from the driving rain, a Thunderhawk gunship chased with gold and heavily decorated with painted battle scenes. Floodlights snapped on beneath it, and the ship came down in a pool of its own radiance at the centre of the Plaza of Attendance.
A clarion blew sonorously. Cyber cherubs bearing silver instruments and banners flew out of access tunnels, were buffeted by the wind, then recovered and flew over the Thunderhawk, where they struggled to stay in place as they proclaimed the arrival of the primarch.
‘Lord Guilliman, Lord Guilliman, Master of Ultramar, Lord High Commander of the Imperium, son of the Emperor, Imperial Regent, Lord Guilliman.’
The door slammed down, and out strode Roboute Guilliman. With him were five Adeptus Custodes, two high-ranking Sisters of Silence, ten of the Victrix Guard, Captain Sicarus, Captain Ventris and, lost in the shadow of so many mighty warriors, six of his most important civilian aides, a tall Primaris Space Marine following behind them. A human priest in simple robes came out last. He was a man so slight, he might have slipped between the cracks of the plaza’s worn pavement.
The primarch came to a halt and addressed his people.
‘I have returned,’ he said. Only that.
Marneus Calgar walked down a sodden carpet to meet his master. The empty presence of the Silent Sisterhood dragged at his soul, but he ignored it. Behind him marched Space Marines carrying the banners of all ten Ultramarine companies, Andron Ney at their head proudly bearing the Chapter standard.
Guilliman halted. Calgar knelt and bowed his head.
‘My lord,’ he said, speaking loudly over the rising wind. ‘We rejoice to see you home again.’
‘Rise, lord defender,’ said Guilliman.
Calgar raised his face. He wore no helmet. Rain streamed off grey hair and around his bionic eye. He got to his feet, and he and Guilliman clasped their huge gauntlets together. Guilliman looked upon the Chapter Master with the genuine affection of a father for his son.
‘We can only apologise for the weather,’ said Calgar.
‘And I can only apologise for the lateness of the hour,’ said Guilliman. ‘I desired to speak with you all as quickly as I could.’ He looked upwards. ‘Fear not the storm. This is a cleansing rain, and all Macragge’s moods are to be treasured.’ He returned his gaze to Calgar’s face. ‘Ultramar is under threat, and there is much we must do. I believe you know most of my followers here. These others are Sister-Commander Bellas and Sister-Commander Aphone of the Sisters of Silence.’ The two women bowed, their
proud topknots straggling in the rain, streaks of water running over their shaved scalps. ‘And Tribune Maldovar Colquan of the Heiratokoi leads this delegation from the Adeptus Custodes.’
Calgar bowed. ‘It is an honour to stand before someone who personally serves the Emperor.’
‘I serve whether I am away from the Imperial Palace or within it,’ said the tribune, a retort to an insult that had not been delivered. His voice was unfriendly through his voxmitter.
‘This is Captain Decimus Felix, my equerry.’ The primarch indicated the tall Primaris Space Marine. He wore the badges of an Ultramarines captain, though he had no company colours on his pauldron rims. Calgar would have been shocked if a Chapter Master had added an extra officer to the Chapter like this, in direct contravention of the Codex Astartes, but Guilliman was the primarch and could do as he pleased.
Guilliman proceeded to introduce his retinue of human aides and potentates, finally indicating the priest. ‘And this is Militant-Apostolic Mathieu. He is newly appointed to the role. The incumbent died not long ago,’ explained Guilliman.
‘Chapter Master,’ said the priest. He blinked rain from the corners of his eyes and smiled. ‘The blessings of the Emperor be upon you.’
‘Militant-apostolic,’ said Calgar.
It was curious to Calgar that Guilliman should allow himself to be accompanied by a priest. The primarch had kept his first militant-apostolic as distant from himself as he could. As much as he disapproved of it, the primarch had comprehended the power of the Adeptus Ministorum soon after he awoke, and the office of militant-apostolic was a recognition of their influence, but the primarch’s acceptance had gone no further than that. He had mistrusted the Ecclesiarchy from the beginning. So Militant-Apostolic Mathieu’s presence was a surprise. Maybe the primarch had come to accept the Imperium’s priests a little more while he had been crusading. A century was a long time.