Heralds of the Siege

by Nick Kyme

  The great chair of basalt and black iron rose above them.

  ‘This is beyond them,’ snarled Maloghurst.

  ‘What is happening to him?’ asked Aximand, looking at the still figure of Tormageddon standing a step back from the others. The daemonhost shook its head once slowly.

  ‘I cannot look at him. The warp is broken edges and crow calls.’

  ‘We must–’ began Kibre.

  ‘My… my throne…’ whispered Horus, and for a second his four sons froze. ‘My… father…’

  None of them moved. A drop of blood slid from the lips of the wound in the Warmaster’s side and struck the floor as a puff of ash. Kibre turned his head and looked at Maloghurst.

  ‘Get him to the throne!’ roared Maloghurst. He could feel it now, itching on the edge of his sight and at the back of his eyes. The warp was flowing around them, twisting tight like threads spinning into rope.

  Their feet rang on the steps to the throne. Beyond the viewport Maloghurst could see the lights of Beta-Garmon’s star burning like a cooling coal as it fell into the distance. Ice was forming on the crystal panes, spidering across the starlight.

  With growls of effort, Horus’ four sons lifted him onto the seat of his throne.

  ‘Step back,’ hissed Maloghurst.

  Blood ran from the Warmaster’s side, pooling and trickling onto the plinth in a black, smoking stream.

  For a second nothing else moved. Horus’ eyes were open, but if they saw anything, they fixed on nothing.

  ‘What–’ began Kibre once more.

  A single metal claw scraped on the right arm of the throne. The four sons were utterly still. The flow of blood from the wound had slowed to a dripping ooze. A breath hissed from Horus’ lips. His hand gripped the arm. Blades dug into black stone. Horus raised his head, eyes closing briefly, pale lips opening. His image was flickering, blurring into shadow and out of being.

  Maloghurst stepped forwards.

  The Warmaster’s eyes opened.

  Maloghurst felt the gaze touch him. A wave of heat rolled over him, and for a second he felt his body freeze, felt his flesh blast apart and scatter to the edge of time, felt his soul become a scream stretched to the edge of existence.

  The image of the Warmaster shimmered then settled.

  ‘It is… all right, Mal,’ said Horus.

  The four Sons of Horus knelt. The buzzing of their active armour throbbed in the quiet. Maloghurst felt his breath wheeze into his mask and allowed a measure of relief into his thoughts.

  Horus took a long, slow breath. The wound in his side had closed. All that remained was a narrow line on his armour, still wet with blood. The low moaning that had itched at the edge of Maloghurst’s awareness quieted.

  ‘Sire,’ said Aximand, ‘you–’

  ‘What is our position and strength?’ said Horus. His face was still pale, but the shadows were flowing into the recesses of his face, hardening its lines.

  ‘The vanguard fleet is with us,’ said Aximand, still watching his primarch unblinkingly. ‘Legion battlefleets Acheron, Styx and Charon remain in-system, along with the vassal groups Bellum, Catullus, Ni-Rho-Delta, Malik, Duterron and Noctis. Engagements continue, but we have dominance. The gate of Beta-Garmon is open.’

  ‘Yet you pulled the vanguard away?’ said Horus.

  ‘Sire, you were…’

  ‘I know, Little Horus,’ said the Warmaster. His eyelids closed briefly. ‘I know. You did well, my sons.’

  Beta-Garmon had eaten their strength for months, grinding down armour and gorging on bodies and bullets. The forces still loyal to the Emperor had fought with a ferocity and strength that had spilled more blood in that one system than had been shed in the last five years of the Great Crusade. There had been no choice, though, not for the Emperor’s forces and not for the Warmaster. Beta-Garmon was the gate to the Segmentum Solar. Charted warp routes converged and expanded from the system like the threads of a web. Through it, fleets of ships could run into the reaches of stars around Terra. It was not the only gate to the Solar Domain, but it was the only one that mattered.

  At last the deadlock had broken. Horus had taken to the field. With him was a spear tip of the Legion’s finest. Darkness and fire had followed them, as though they were the shadow cast by the Warmaster’s presence. Maloghurst had remained, as he did so often now, with the Vengeful Spirit and the endless balances of power, now both occult and temporal, that allowed the wheels of Horus’ war machine to turn. He had not needed to see his lord walk amongst the slaughter, nor see those who faced him fall.

  And all had happened as had been ordained. Their enemies had fallen, and the battle, so long unresolved, had swung.

  Until Horus, striding through ashes and blood – the god of the empire he would win by war – had fallen.

  Fallen without a blow being taken.

  And his sons had taken him, as they had once before, bleeding from the battlefield.

  Maloghurst was the first to raise his head to look at the enthroned Warmaster. A high, keening pain filled his skull. His eyes tried to focus. He felt blood on his teeth.

  He dropped his gaze. The pain dimmed but did not vanish.

  ‘Sire, what is your will?’

  ‘Time,’ Horus rasped, and Maloghurst felt the pain that it cost his Warmaster to speak. ‘Time has run too far. Send for them. We… we must gather before…’ Horus’ eyes closed, agony radiating from him like heat from a suddenly blazing fire. Maloghurst clamped his teeth shut. Bubbles of migraine colour foamed across his vision. Horus was unmoving on his throne. Shadows flickered across the walls and floor of the throne room, as though light were shining from the Warmaster. But there was no light.

  Maloghurst forced himself to stand. He tried to raise his head but could not. Aximand was already on his feet, backing away. Tormageddon was shimmering, the substance of its body dissolving and reforming like a grainy pict-image. Kibre remained kneeling at the foot of the throne, his fingers digging into the stone to hold himself in place.

  ‘Go…’ said Horus, his voice sounding as though it were carried from far away. ‘Summon them… My brothers…’

  ‘Sire,’ said Maloghurst, his voice shuddering as tidal waves of pain battered through him.

  ‘Ullanor,’ said Horus. ‘Ullanor…’

  And then he was silent. His eyes shut. The shadows stilled, and the Warmaster sat bleeding and pale on his throne.

  Layak

  Screams cloaked the Trisagion as it rode the tides of the warp. Thirty-two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-eight humans hung from nails driven into the outside of its hull. All of them had been alive when the ship had passed from the cold of real space into the embrace of the Realm of Gods. They were still alive now after a fashion, their deaths stretched into an eternal cacophony of suffering. Daemons swarmed over them, clinging to the hull, lapping agony and delirium from the humans as their souls and bodies were torn apart. Seen from above, the Trisagion’s spear-blade hull seemed to wear a shifting skin of chitin and wet flesh. Torch towers burned above it, red flames billowing in slow rhythm with the screams of torment and the cries of the feeding daemons.

  Beauty, whispered the voice in Layak’s skull. Truth…

  He nodded.

  ‘Glory to the Eternal Four, for They are All,’ he said aloud, continuing the litany that he had been speaking without pause since the Trisagion breached the veil into the Sacred Realm. ‘Glory to the Eightfold Truth, for it is Eternal. Glory to the First Circle of servants, for they are most high…’

  He sat at the centre of a black glass floor, before the crystal window of the tower’s viewport. The smoke of burning incense breathed around him from censers swung by eight shrouded figures. Beneath their robes each of the supplicants was a riot of mutated and mortified flesh, but in the presence of the Crimson Apostle they hid their blessings. All of them had sacrificed their sight and hearing to serve him. To attend Zardu Layak, First Chaplain of the Unspeaking, the one who is both revelation and s
acrifice, was a blessing beyond imagining. To see his unmasked face and hear his private words would be beyond their souls to bear.

  Further back, beside the single door out of the tower sanctum, stood two hunched figures. Red velvet swathed them from head to foot and spilled onto the floor around them. They did not move, but a candle made of human fat, blood and bone ash hung in the air before each one. Sigils marked the black tallow, weeping clear tears onto the floor beneath the shrouded giants.

  He approaches, he thought, and knew it to be true even as the thought whispered through him.

  He rose from where he sat. He wore no robe or armour. In these moments of contemplation Layak always chose to remember that he was flesh. Smooth muscle flowed as he stood. Branded words covered his skin from neck to toes. Five hundred and twelve languages marked him. All were from cultures that had been dead for thousands of years, some human, some alien. Layak spoke every one.

  He brought his hands up to his face, covering his eyes for a second.

  ‘Ush-na-cathal,’ he said. He felt the call hiss into the Sacred Realm, and heard an answer. Gossamer figures of black smoke congealed around him, indistinct, like sketches painted on parchment with water and ink. The shadows of faces formed in the coiling throng, screaming with silent agony, spitting hate, weeping. Whispers filled his mind.

  Who are you?

  +I do not want to die…+

  Who are you?

  +Oh, please have mercy…+

  Who are you?

  +Betrayer of oaths…+

  Who are you?

  +You are defiler of all that once you held sacred…+

  Who are you?

  +Why are you doing this?…+

  ‘Us-ka-thed,’ he commanded. The smoke figures reached out with ghostly fingers. Their touch slid over his skin. Ice-cold fire burned through his flesh.

  +We know you, Nameless One…+ hissed the voices in his skull.

  +We remember…+

  +The dead remember…+

  Layak held his mouth shut. The agony was a supernova at the core of his being. It felt like burning, like iron nails being hammered into bone. It felt like rebirth and revelation.

  Armour formed over his skin. The shape of ceramite plates, of pauldrons and gauntlets, wove into existence as the shades wrapped him. Circuitry and fibre bundles came into being and meshed with his nerves. At last he stood clad in grey, the ashen plates of his armour covering all but his head.

  ‘Hess-ne,’ he spoke.

  The shades faded, hissing hate and spite as they slid back out into the infinity of the Sacred Realm. The blessed agony he had endured faded from his flesh, and he bowed his head in thanks for its blessing. Last of all, he turned and stepped to the side of the room where his mask-helm looked down from his weapons rack. Its face snarled at him with frozen rage. Twin rows of three eyes ran down the bronze cheeks, each eye burning like a furnace coal. Its mouth was a wide pit of sharp silver. Two shards of obsidian rose in horns from its brows. It had been a gift from the first of the Gal-Vorbak, and he wore it always except in brief moments of solitary contemplation. Layak reached out and took it, feeling its malice tingle with the taste of blood on his tongue.

  Carefully he settled the mask-helm over his head. The hooks of its inner face bit into his cheeks. The breather-pipes connected with his armour of their own accord. Incense-laced smoke filled his next breath. Whirls of Colchisian runes spun in his eyes. Colours and dimensions that mortals could not see repainted the room around him.

  He is here, came the thought. He turned and knelt as the doors into the tower sanctuary opened. The red-swathed figures turned, their shrouds rippling as they knelt. The robed supplicants could neither hear the door opening nor see who stepped through, but the presence of that being was enough to send them falling prostrate.

  Lorgar Aurelian stood upon the threshold for a moment. His skin was dusted with golden powder, his cheeks and scalp painted with vertical lines of cuneiform. Crimson robes hung over his unarmoured flesh. But for his size, he would have looked like a priest from the dust planet that had raised him.

  Presence radiated from him. This was not the rage that had haloed the now-exalted Prince of Blood, or the raw etheric power of Magnus. To stand close to Lorgar Aurelian was to want to hear him speak, to feel deep emotions stir at his smallest gesture, to feel one’s soul both cower and exult.

  Except that Layak felt nothing, just the hooks on the mask he wore cutting his face.

  ‘Your beatitude,’ he said.

  ‘Rise, my son,’ said Lorgar. ‘I ask your forgiveness for disturbing your observance.’

  ‘Where you walk, truth and transcendence follow,’ said Layak. ‘To receive you in this moment is to exchange a holy task for one greater.’

  Lorgar bowed his head in acknowledgement, eyelids closing briefly.

  ‘In two hours, we will emerge at the edge of Beta-Garmon, and there we will find the Warmaster. Messages fly by the lips of the god-made to my other brothers. He calls us together, to stand together one last time, as we once did at the feet of our father.’

  Lorgar paused then walked to the crystal viewport, through which the nausea-light of the warp danced. For a second Layak wondered what the eyes of his primarch saw. The Sacred Realm was a mirror to souls, and what it showed was different to every mind that dared look upon it. Layak only saw the ghosts when he looked at the warp. He had long ago given up wondering why.

  ‘We answer the Warmaster’s summons and are blessed to do so,’ said Layak.

  ‘No,’ said Lorgar. ‘The message has not yet reached us, and will not arrive until after we are already at Horus’ side. That does not matter, nor is it why we go. We enter the crucible, my son. From here the outcome of all will follow. Time and destiny draw to a point, and the wheel of the universe waits to turn around it. This has been revealed. It is written in the voices of the storm and the blood of the dying. The fate of all is waiting to be born. Divine victory lies before us, before all humanity.’ Lorgar tuned his gaze on Layak. Reflections of screaming ghosts danced in his eyes. ‘Do you understand?’

  Layak bowed his head at the words, feeling his thoughts shake.

  ‘Most sacred lord, how may I serve?’

  Lorgar turned away again, and Layak felt the fire-glow of his primarch cool, as though it had been cast into shadow.

  ‘I hear the music of eternity, my son. Horus…’ He said the name slowly. ‘Something is… happening to Horus.’

  Volk

  ‘Commander, the flight is cleared to begin final launch preparations.’

  Volk did not answer the human serf. The words that the man spoke were a formality that he knew so well, their rhythms were like the beating of his hearts. He kept his gaze on the machine that lay on the rockcrete apron in front of him. Its burnished metal skin gleamed in the red glow of the hangar cavern. Yellow-and-black chevrons marked its tail fins and wing tips.

  ‘From Iron cometh Strength. From Strength cometh Will…’ said Volk, and watched the words spread in white clouds in front of him. The engines in his strike fighter lit. The air began to sing. ‘From Will cometh Faith…’

  A servitor began to unplug cables from sockets in the back of his armour. A tech-priest in purple-and-copper robes moved around the strike fighter, oil flicking from its brass fingers. An adept followed in the priest’s wake, pulling arming tapers from weapons and closing access panels.

  ‘From Faith cometh Honour.’

  Volk stepped towards his craft, moving slowly in his power-starved armour. He pulled himself up into the cockpit. The sockets in the back of his armour connected to the fighter’s systems.

  ‘From Honour cometh Iron.’

  The strike fighter woke fully. Volk felt the nerve connection tingle up the sockets in his spine. Muscles and bones ached as the sensation of iron and weapons blended with flesh. He breathed out as he felt the engine power surge down his back and the armed weapons prickle his fingers. It felt like becoming whole.

  The strik
e fighter had a number. That was the way amongst the IV Legion. Other Legions daubed their aircraft with names, like fools hanging bells from their ears. The Iron Warriors did not, and though the Lightning Crow had been Volk’s for four decades of war, its only honour was to bear the number after its unit designation: 786-1-1. The first craft of the first squadron of the 786th Grand Flight. What remained of it, at least.

  ‘This is the Unbreakable Litany, and may it forever be so.’

  Volk unfastened the helmet from his thigh and clamped it on his head. The canopy began to hinge closed above. Yellow light started to blink through the hangar cavern. Alert klaxons warred with the rising chorus of engines.

  He closed his eyes. The silver augmetic eyeball that had filled his right socket for the last three decades unfolded a crude topography of green lines across his sight. He opened his eyes. The green projection and the physical world meshed. Status runes began to flash across his cockpit systems.

  ‘All flight units,’ he said, keying his vox. ‘Flight readiness complete. On the count, brothers.’

  Numerals cycled down at the edge of his vision. The metal cavern wall began to slide down into the floor as the outer blast doors opened. Pulses of red light flared in the dark opening beyond as the light of battle beckoned. Snow and ash billowed in. Volk fed power to his craft’s thrusters. 786-1-1 rose from the cavern floor. It rocked in the gusting wind. Volk compensated without needing to think.

  Across the cavern, sixty-four other war machines began to lift from their stations – trios of Xiphon interceptors, Fire Raptors and Lightning Crows, all of them liveried in bare steel. It was still enough to be called a Grand Flight. Just enough. All of them would go into the air light by half of the payload required for the mission. Their ammo hoppers were almost empty, their lascannon capacitors barely charged, their fuel at the lowest margin possible for mission completion. Less than a decade before, going to war like this would have been unthinkable. Not now, though… Now they were warriors starving for the means to make war.

  ‘786-1-2 standing by,’ said the voice of Zarrak over the vox. Volk keyed a non-verbal acknowledgement to his wingman.