Slaves to Darkness

by John French

  ‘Aurelian, Aurelian, Aurelian…’ they sang.

  The ashen petals settled on the ground before their feet as they walked on. A spindle-thin dancer clad in purple spun across their path. A horned mask hid its face, but it held up a hand to them. Lorgar halted, Layak and the rest behind him. The dancer bowed, laughed and then cartwheeled to the side, and behind it the last of the crowd parted like a curtain before a stage.

  A figure lay on a dais before them. It was bloated, its flesh hanging in soft rolls from its torso. Layak could see tiny, podgy hands protruding from the folds of fat. Its lower body was serpentine. Pearlescent scales covered the coiled mass. Scales peeled back to show green eyes. A small head, its features sunken into flesh, sat atop the mass of its body, a long spill of white hair hanging from its scalp. Splashes of blood, and dark liquid that might have been wine, mottled its skin. It shifted as they approached, its bulk bursting cushions. The crowd nearest it was trembling. Some were eating their own flesh. Blood spattered the white stone beneath their feet.

  ‘Lorgarrr…’ it hissed as they approached, the word forming patterns of writhing smoke as it left its lips. Three of the Word Bearers had fallen to their knees, others were swaying like reeds in a breeze.

  It was vile. Layak had looked on the amassed horrors of the warp, had bound them and carried out deeds to earn their favour. But to even look at the heaped mass on the dais was to feel one’s soul stretched and siphoned off, to feel every denied desire rise from the recesses of dreams. He recognised it even though he had never seen it. It was a most sacred abomination, and he had never felt a stronger desire to reduce it to molten fat and burnt skin. It was also not Fulgrim.

  He turned to Lorgar, words forming on his tongue, but the thing on the dais spoke again.

  ‘Welcommme…’ it said, the words shivering through its body. It smiled, pink lips pulling back over bladed teeth red with blood and wine. The tiny hands hanging from its torso flexed. ‘Welcommme… to my cityyy… my realmmm… my worlddd… brother miiine…’

  Lorgar stared at the thing, his face expressionless in its serenity.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘This is not your city, daemon.’ He turned to look around at the whimpering and laughing crowd. ‘Show yourself, Fulgrim.’

  The bloated creature on the dais hissed like a cat, and a rattle-tipped tail rose into the air from its coils.

  ‘It is well, my sweet,’ said a voice like honey. The purple-clad dancer somersaulted forwards, bowed low, then swept the mask from its face and snapped into a perfect high-salute, the arm holding the mask raised above its head, weight balanced on the points of its toes. ‘My brother simply cannot take a joke,’ said Fulgrim and giggled. ‘Not even a small one.’

  The face of the dancer shone with perfection. Every line and feature was the truth that sculptors had reached for in the greatest works of art and failed to grasp. He peeled the velvet from his head, and ice-white hair spilled out, catching in the breeze and billowing out behind him. He glided closer to Lorgar, growing in size with every step so that he stood eye to eye with the primarch of the Word Bearers. A smile hooked the edge of his mouth up over ivory teeth.

  ‘Brother,’ he said. ‘I hope that this will be pleasant.’

  Lorgar remained silent.

  Fulgrim shrugged, the gesture like a ripple of wind.

  ‘Maybe that is too much to hope for.’ He turned away, and Layak caught the flash of a silver dagger in Fulgrim’s hand. He surged forwards, pulling the blade slaves with him…

  But Fulgrim brought the blade down across his own torso. The velvet parted and fell away from alabaster muscle. The daemon primarch stepped out of the fallen suit, and as his bare foot touched stone it changed. Scales spread up his leg, sheathing his flesh as it swelled. His other leg was gone, vanished into the serpent coils that grew beneath him as he slid forwards. A second set of arms reached out from the side of his torso. Rings glittered on the fingers, winking like flaring stars. Fulgrim reached the dais and flowed up its side. The bloated thing squirmed in greeting, uncoiling its bulk and twining­ it around Fulgrim as he embraced it. The thing purred up at the daemon primarch, baring its teeth. Fulgrim ran a hand over its hair.

  ‘There, N’kari, my delight… We will have bliss again once this is done with, but he is family, and that means I should listen to what he says, hmm? At least a little.’

  N’kari… It was not its true name – that was a thing that would have broken reality to speak – but in the realm of the warp it was like a signature drawn in atrocity. Layak had glimpsed it and heard it at the edge of bloody visions, but never seen it before. Now it sat before him. N’kari… Eater of Delight, the Son of Ruin, the Daughter of Delight, one of the Six Courtesans of the Dark Prince.

  Fulgrim settled next to the exalted daemon, their snake bodies intertwining with a sigh, then turned his gaze back on Lorgar. A hush fell over the piazza before flowing out into the city. Screams and songs strangled in throats. Gongs and flutes fell silent.

  ‘So…’ he said, and the smile had gone from his face. ‘What shall we talk about?’

  Argonis

  Argonis entered Perturabo’s audience chamber as the Iron Blood moved to the edge of the Sarum System. A layer of metallic dust covering the floor spoke to the chamber’s abandonment. Argonis had last stood here when the Iron Blood sat in the orbit of Tallarn. Perturabo had not used the chamber since the close of that campaign. He shunned it for its association with humiliation, Argonis suspected, but now it had a new use.

  Volk stood at the foot of the throne, still and silent.

  If it is still Volk, thought Argonis. Either way he wanted to know.

  Argonis had detected no breath or beating hearts as he entered the throne room, and Volk gave no sign of being aware that he was there. Volk did know he was there. Argonis could feel that truth in the prickle of threat running down his spine as he stepped closer to the thing that had been his friend. The Iron Warrior’s body no longer looked like that of a legionary, augmented or not. It no longer looked like anything that had started as human.

  He had… grown. The metal of his armour and augmentations had taken on a smooth, flesh-like texture. Steel sinews stretched between plates. Arms bulged like ripe fruit, skinned in gunmetal. Volk’s head sat in the helmet socket, bare, the remaining flesh pale and threaded with dark veins. The augmetics grafted to his skull after his injury had sunk into the flesh, flowing to match the shape of lost bone so that now two-thirds of his face was a steel skull. His eyes were shut. The closed lids still looked like flesh.

  Argonis looked at him for several minutes. He knew what the Warmaster’s allies were. He had seen Horus unleash those allies in person. He had stood with the Luperci, seen men like Maloghurst and Telekrey rip the life from the living with a word. He knew the name that was given to those allies and knew that it was a truth: daemons. They had brought the creatures of old myth back to destroy the Emperor’s age of illumination. And that did not trouble him. In such a conflict there could be no limits on how war was waged. He did not exist to doubt or question. He was the Warmaster’s will. That was what he had decided after Isstvan, after his moment of weakness. But here he was looking at something that he could not place into that scheme of honour and oaths.

  ‘Volk?’ he said, the word vanishing into the empty dark. ‘Brother, can you hear me?’ No reply came. Volk might have been a statue. Or a corpse. He let out a breath. His hands – always steady – fidgeted to the grip of his pistol. ‘Legion…’ he said, blinking as the word came from his lips. ‘Brotherhood… Loyalty… It’s simple, isn’t it? So simple. Even when you are killing each other, you just redraw the lines. You hold on to the words but give them a different edge. Legion becomes those who follow the Warmaster’s vision. Brother­hood becomes those who have dipped their hands in the same blood. Loyalty becomes…’ His voice trailed off. He had drawn his bolt pistol. It was Martian-made and marked
with the memories of Cthonia. Gang runes glinted in the claws of the eagle that spread its wings in gold on the casing, and a mirror coin had been worked into the pistol butt. It was the weapon of a gang warlord, a mark of status, a tool of execution.

  He hesitated, black gaze fixed on the closed eyes in the steel skull. He raised the pistol. The barrel was level with the closed right eye. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  The eye opened. Argonis’ trigger finger froze. The eye was silver from edge to edge. He fired as Volk’s hand clamped over the pistol barrel. The bolt tore into the palm. Shreds of metal scattered out. Argonis flinched back as shrapnel kissed his face. Volk stepped forwards, still gripping the pistol. His hand was a torn ruin. Blood fell to the floor, hissing from red to chrome. But he did not let go. Tendrils of metal coiled over the pistol. The metal of the housing began to glow red. Argonis let go, hand going to his sword. Volk raised the weapon. His arm was swelling, swallowing the gun like tar swallowing a stone.

  Argonis had his sword free. It lit with a crackle of activating power. Volk looked at the weapon. Lightning danced in the mirrors of his eyes. He raised his hand. The fluid mass was hardening into cold metal. Firing mechanisms grew. Ejection ports opened, and a gun barrel sprouted. Argonis looked into the black circle of the muzzle. It was the perfect diameter for a bolt pistol. He could see rifling spiralling down the inside into the dark beyond. On the casing behind it an eagle in gold flowed into being, then set. Argonis looked beyond the gun, his drawn sword raised but still.

  Volk was staring at him, unreadable. Then his arm snapped back. Argonis watched as the gun welded to his hand broke apart, disassembling and dissolving in a heartbeat. Volk’s empty hand remained. He stepped back into the same position and posture he had been in before. Argonis lowered his sword but kept it lit. Volk’s eyes were still open.

  ‘Did you choose this, brother?’ he asked, surprised as the question came from his mouth. ‘Did you choose to become this?’

  Volk remained silent, then looked up as though he had heard something. He nodded to himself and closed his eyes.

  And the klaxons began to howl.

  Argonis swore and ran for the doors, clamping on his helm as he moved. Data flooded his senses as he reconnected to the strategic feed. It took him five seconds to assimilate the approximation of the situation, and in that time he was already a hundred metres away and sprinting for the strategium. Blast doors peeled open in front of him, and guards and gun pods stood down as they read his clearance.

  ‘How many now?’ he called as he entered the strategium. Perturabo stood at the centre of his curtain of screens and holo-displays.

  ‘Twenty,’ replied Forrix. ‘They have just exited the warp at the system edge. Largest displacement is one-third our mass, but they are coming on fast. Auspex confirms they are at full battle readiness.’

  Of course they are, thought Argonis. The XIII Legion was always battle-ready. He looked at where a smaller tactical image flickered on the officer’s screen. Twenty ships were running through the void, splitting into four clusters as they came on. Names and tactical information scrolled beside the display: Catullus, Agentha-class strike cruiser; Truth of Honour, Credo-class strike corvette; Sword of the Five Hundred, Maegaron-class strike cruiser, and so on, the details plucked from the honour rolls of the Great Crusade.

  Argonis clamped his teeth shut over a rising stream of Cthonian invective. How had the Ultramarines got this far, this fast? They were far beyond the front made by Guilliman’s secondary forces, but the outer edge of the XIII Legion’s battle groups was supposed to be weeks of travel and months of fighting away. But the display did not lie. They were here. By ill luck or design, they were here.

  ‘They will not be able to defeat us,’ said Forrix. ‘The relative force factors are–’

  ‘They do not need to defeat us,’ snapped Argonis. ‘They just need to delay us.’

  The Iron Warrior looked as though he was about to argue.

  ‘It’s a vanguard fleet,’ said Argonis, straightening. The memory of Volk’s cold, calm eyes flashed in his mind. He breathed out. ‘They don’t need to defeat us, because coming just behind them is a full Ultramarines assault fleet.’

  He looked up at Perturabo. The primarch returned his gaze through the holo-projections.

  ‘We know where Angron is,’ said Argonis. ‘The Warmaster’s will is not that we stand and fight here. We should run.’

  Perturabo’s weapon mounts clattered. His eyes were black spheres sparkling with the curtain of raw data falling past him.

  Argonis remembered the flash of reflected lightning in Volk’s eyes.

  ‘Did you choose this, brother?’

  ‘I am the red in your blood and the edge of your blade, Lord of Iron,’ said the memory of the daemon’s voice.

  Perturabo was perfectly still for a second, and then seemed to shiver.

  ‘We run,’ he said.

  Thirteen

  Ekaddon

  The Vengeful Spirit rode a sea of fire. Weapon discharge and muzzle flare hid its hull. Its void shields shattered under incoming fire, the inner layers regenerating as the outers snapped out of being. Around it rode its sisters of war, each ship holding close to its monarch, their batteries firing without cease. Around them their enemies spun. Strobing cords of light linked foes, binding them together, slashing the dark to black tatters.

  The string of defence platforms hanging in the void pulsed fire from a distance, and beyond them the five star fortresses waited for the battle to enter the volume between their guns. Each of them spun in place, crenellated pinwheels set amongst the stars. Their sub-bastions held enough firepower to match a ship of the line. Together they could destroy a fleet. The outer fortress was already firing, batteries of cannons and torpedo racks loosing as they rotated into alignment.

  The Vengeful Spirit and her sisters plunged on into the cauldron of fire between the fortresses. To a mundane understanding it would have seemed foolhardy, but it was a calculated act of aggression. As it came on it dragged the warships with it, hugging them close in an embrace of point-blank weapon fire. From the outside, the target volume was a cauldron of radiation, plasma bloom and debris. That made accurate fire difficult. The scattered ships of both sides were so close that they jumbled together in the reckoning of gunnery systems and targeting cogitators. The Sons of Horus plunged on, accelerating, mauling the ships that came to meet them, closing on the nearest fortress like a knife point forced down into flesh through struggling arms.

  Void battles could be conducted at hyper-range, in calculations and manoeuvres that played out like the ticking of clockwork. This was not a battle of that breed. This was a brawl. Every ship in the battle sphere was taking and giving fire. Hulls split. Gas vented from wounds driven through metres of stone and metal. Fires roared into the blackness before choking off as they consumed the air that fuelled them. Munitions detonated in flowers of nucleonic-blue and fusion-red. And every vessel torn apart as its reactor detonated, every impact of a breaching craft stabbing through adamantium plate, was a flash of silent colour in the mute dark of the night.

  The sounds filling the guts of the Vengeful Spirit came from within not without. Ekaddon’s ears vibrated with the pulse of guns and engines as he moved down the companionway. He had spent most of his life in the void, and much of that time on the Warmaster’s flagship, and could read such sounds as though they were the vessel’s voice. He heard that voice clearly now: the ship was at maximum damage output, its reactors running close to the danger margin, shields collapsing as fast as they were brought back online – but it was exultant, growling its defiance and pleasure at the lives its weapons took.

  ‘Enemy have breached the hull one deck down,’ said Kobarak as they hurried through the pulsing alert light. Ekaddon glanced back at his honour squad’s signals officer. Kobarak’s red eyes returned his look from beneath the studded brow of
his helm.

  ‘Strength?’

  ‘Estimated at fifty, but they are Ninth Legion. Seventeenth Company are moving to counter.’

  Ekaddon felt the muscles in his jaw twitch.

  ‘That will be a fight,’ he said. ‘But not our fight.’ Kobarak did not reply. Like the rest of his command squad the signals specialist knew what they were committing to. Ekaddon had selected all nine with care. They were all blooded warriors of the Cathartidae and wore the coin of that brotherhood on a cord around their sword arms. All owed their place in the Reavers of the First Company to him, and all had killed Legion brothers. Ambition flowed in their blood almost as thickly as the genes of their sire. They were killers who dreamed of being warlords, and they would follow Ekaddon on his path without hesitation.

  The corridor trembled again, and the sound of an explosion rose above the blare of sirens and the clang of their boots on the deck.

  ‘Here,’ said Ekaddon, pausing and yanking up a wide hatch close to the floor. Flakes of rust and dust fell from its edges. The squad moved into position along the corridor walls, weapons covering both directions, pistols drawn. Ekaddon braced to drop through the hatch.

  ‘Halt and identify!’ The call came down the passage behind them and over the vox. Six armoured figures were moving down the corridor in loose battle order, the yellow alert light gleaming from the golden eyes on their pauldrons. ‘Identify,’ came the challenge again. Ekaddon recognised the voice: Hegron, lieutenant of the 17th Company, a capable if straightforward warrior.