Slaves to Darkness

by John French

  Layak

  ‘This is it,’ said Fulgrim. He appeared to breathe, nostrils flaring, torso swelling. He raised his four arms, palms open, head thrown back, white mane of hair tumbling back down his shoulders. ‘Ullanor. O what fair mother of honour, O what cradle of glory…’ He let out the breath, and the lids which had hidden his eyes opened. He lowered his arms and his chin, and spat. Rock sizzled and burned where the black phlegm landed. ‘Tastes past its best.’

  Lord Commander Eidolon made a hooting burst of sound that might have been a laugh. Lorgar glanced at the Emperor’s Children officer, then looked away without speaking. Beside Eidolon stood a disordered group of riotously coloured warriors, all of them bearing bulky weapons with wide, grinning barrels and tangles of chromed pipe. They had not questioned the manner of their lord’s return once their ships had exited the warp alongside Lorgar’s fleet. They had just accepted it and celebrated with slaughter. More were still arriving every hour, children returning to their father’s call.

  Layak looked away. One hundred warriors of his own Chapter ringed their position. Other than he and Lorgar himself, the rest remained in orbit while the primarchs came to look at the last place that the Imperium had been unified. Actaea had not been seen since the passage through the warp. Lorgar had not mentioned her absence, and Layak had the feeling that the primarch viewed her as a tool that had done its work, and required no more thought.

  Rain fell from the iron sheet of the sky. He watched the water run from Lorgar’s armour, grey drops on crimson. Ahead the plateau reached away to the horizon, its features beaten flat, its skin carved by rain. The prints of landing craft and war machines still marked the ground. From the air, he had looked down and seen the patterns of the great camps where Legions and armies had landed and been drawn up, their memory still lingering on the grey ground. Water churned at the bottom of shallow gullies between flat expanses of shattered rock. Pools had formed in depressions and reflected the wan daylight back up at the sky above. Small drifts of debris dotted the ground: a neat stack of fuel drums, rusted to a dull orange; the track of a battle tank, lying like a shed snakeskin; the skeleton of some grand marquee, the last of its fabric hanging in sodden tatters from its poles.

  Behind them the Imperial Dais rose to touch the flat, iron sky. Muck streaked the white marble and rimmed the eyes of the statues with gritty shadows. There was no mould growing on the stones, though, despite the damp, and Layak had seen nothing growing on the plateau as they flew across it. Orbital imaging had detected flora and fauna creeping back into some of the temperate equatorial regions, but the work done by war and then the cold hand of the Mechanicum, almost two decades before, held. Ullanor remained a barren land, a grave marker laid at the heart of a dead empire.

  The wind threaded through the dais’ arches and high walkways, keening long shrill notes through the wet air.

  ‘There is no one here,’ gurgled Eidolon.

  ‘All the better if we mean to actually kill our brother once he arrives,’ said Fulgrim.

  Lorgar shot him a look.

  ‘What?’ said Fulgrim with a needle-toothed grin. ‘Did you think I would keep it from my children? Loyalty for them is… personal. I think most of them will rather enjoy murdering Horus. You will, won’t you, my pretty little reborn one?’

  Eidolon growled, and Layak felt the sound somehow shake his flesh inside his armour.

  ‘Ah, pride…’ crooned Fulgrim, ‘what sweetness is thy gift of pain.’

  Eidolon turned away, his movements somehow both uncoordinated and fluid. Layak watched his eyes contract and bulge as he looked across the ground.

  ‘We should prepare before someone else gets here,’ gurgled Eidolon.

  ‘Someone else is here. Look…’ said Lorgar. He raised his hand to point, and the cluster of mortals and demigods turned to look. A figure stood on the lower tiers of the dais. The rain ran from the cold blue of his armour. He did not move as they looked at him. Fulgrim bared his teeth.

  ‘Oh…’ he breathed. ‘I didn’t think that he would be here. How wonderful.’

  ‘Alpha Legion,’ gurgled Eidolon.

  ‘Were you hoping that Horus would arrive before we had the inconvenience of wondering if our other brothers and their sons will back your play for the crown?’

  Lorgar looked at the still figure on the dais.

  ‘Perturabo and Angron will not arrive in time, if both arrive at all. Mortarion has already been ordered to Terra.’

  ‘Are you so sure?’ purred Fulgrim.

  Lorgar did not answer but stepped towards the figure.

  ‘Identify yourself,’ he called.

  ‘I am Alpharius,’ came the reply.

  ‘Of course,’ said Fulgrim with a chuckle. Then he looked at Lorgar and shrugged. ‘But on the other hand, he could be…’

  ‘There are no signs of them on the planet or in orbit,’ hooted Eidolon.

  ‘There wouldn’t be,’ said Lorgar softly, eyes still fixed on the lone figure.

  ‘It could complicate things,’ said Eidolon.

  Lorgar shot a hard look at the former Lord Commander.

  ‘Begin the deployment,’ he said. ‘Everything we have, arrayed in formal order. Weapons loaded and ready.’

  ‘Talking of complications…’ gurgled Eidolon. They all looked at him. ‘Ships have just entered the system and are making fast speed directly for us. We heard them leave the Great Ocean. Such a clamour.’

  ‘Who?’ snapped Layak.

  Eidolon looked at him. Air sacs in the commander’s throat filled and deflated slowly.

  ‘Who else? It is the Vengeful Spirit. The Sons of Horus are here. The Warmaster is here.’

  Layak felt cold circle his gut, though he was not sure why.

  ‘Proceed as planned,’ said Lorgar a second later. ‘Make all the preparations. We cut him down here when he descends to greet us.’

  Layak held the leashes of Fulgrim’s bonds tight until the daemon primarch bowed his head.

  ‘As you will it, brother. As you will it.’

  Lorgar turned away and walked across the grey plain. Layak watched him for a long second, before remembering the figure who had been standing on the dais. He looked up, but the one who had claimed the name Alpharius was nowhere to be seen.

  Eighteen

  Layak

  The black-and-green gunships swept in from beyond the horizon. Stormbirds and Storm Eagles, flanked by interceptors and boxed by strike fighters. Guns rotated in their mounts. Targeting pods swept over the ranked Word Bearers and scattered Emperor’s Children.

  ‘One quick missile and this would all be over,’ hummed one of Eidolon’s honour guard that Layak had not met before, a warrior with a swordsman’s swagger and silver-drowned plate.

  ‘No,’ purred Fulgrim as the aircraft spiralled overhead. ‘No, no, no, my beautiful Telemachon. First, we would not get the missile loose before we became blood slime under those guns, and second, you do not kill a creature like Horus by shooting his transport down. It is unseemly and lacks the required symbolic flourish that my brother sets such store by.’ Fulgrim flicked a needle smile at Lorgar. ‘Isn’t that right, brother-my-delight?’

  ‘Begin the cacophony as soon as he sets down,’ said Lorgar, without looking around. Layak waited for a moment and then breathed the command into Fulgrim.

  ‘As you say,’ hissed the daemon primarch. ‘It will be done. Eidolon, set my sons to singing.’

  ‘A pleasure,’ the Lord Commander gurgled, and hissed a command into the vox.

  A Stormbird burst from above the dais. It was black, its fuselage darkened by soot. Red, slit eyes gleamed on its wings and cheeks, each one set in an eight-pointed gold star. Thrusters rotated down its fuselage, slamming it to stationary in mid-air. It descended. Coils of dust rose in the downwash.

  High above the surface of the world,
Layak knew that the Emp­eror’s Children would be beginning their first task in this murder. In the bowels of ships, the flesh of thousands of slaves began to feel the caress of a myriad of tools as their blood flooded with sensation enhancers. Sounds rose from them, each mouth an instrument in a symphony of agony. Machines of silver and chromed steel caught the sound, split it, channelled it through pipes and through devices made to designs that had broken the minds of their makers. The sounds stretched, feeding back on themselves, so that the screams of the slaves began to shatter their skulls and vibrate the flesh from their bones. Mists of pain began to form in the warp around them as their souls were stretched between living and dying. The sound-smiths listened to the deluge of noise in their amplification cradles, the colour of their armour swirling in time to its texture. Then, when it had reached the edge of perfection, they released it. Vox-shunts began to burn out as the cacophony spread across the orbital vox.

  Fifty yards from Layak, the gunship touched the soil of Ullanor. Hatches opened. Warriors in jet-black armour poured from within, flowing out into a wide circle.

  Eidolon shifted stance, head cocked as though listening. The sacs on his neck rippled and pulsed.

  ‘Our ships are reading a large force of ships approaching from sunward,’ he hooted, turning to look at the two primarchs.

  Fulgrim’s smile broadened.

  ‘My guess would be that it is one or more of our esteemed brothers.’

  ‘They will not be able to hear or see what happens here,’ said Lorgar, his voice as devoid of emotion as his expression. ‘Identify them, and send the signal as prepared. It will be truth soon enough.’

  They looked back to the black gunship as the nose ramp opened. Three figures came from the gunship’s mouth: Kibre in polished jet, his eyes moving over the surroundings; Aximand in sea-green, his flayed and re-stitched face set in an expression like thunder; and last the figure of Tormageddon, its face hidden by a horned helm, its aura a black banner dragged behind it. Layak could feel the emotions bubbling and fizzing into the ether from the two mortal warlords, like lightning searching for a path to the ground. They would have given him pause, if it had not been for the figure who came after them.

  Horus, Warmaster of the Imperium, Anointed of the Pantheon, stepped into the light.

  Argonis

  ‘Approaching auspex range,’ came the shout of the augur officer from behind Argonis. The man was a human, but his flesh was lost beneath a tangle of cables, and the upper part of his face was a blank, riveted mask of iron. A blue slit of light pulsed across where his eyes would have been. ‘Multiple ships in close and high orbit – I read twelve ships in a diffuse picket sphere.’

  ‘Augurs to maximum,’ said Perturabo. ‘Mark every vessel. Switch power to weapons once we have targets locked. Set assault launch readiness.’

  Argonis could almost feel the menace of the words take flight in the air. He watched as the data curtains rippled with tides of change. Curt shouts cut through the gloom of the chamber. Perturabo was a statue at its centre, the silent unblinking bulk of Volk at his shoulder. The fleets had come out of the warp on the further side of Ullanor’s sun and had crossed the system, keeping it between them and the target planet, and after that directly behind them so that the star’s radiation would confuse all but the most direct and focused sensors. That had tried the patience of the World Eaters, but they had followed. Now they were coming into sensor range of Ullanor’s orbits.

  ‘You think this paranoia, son of Horus?’ said Forrix from beside him.

  Argonis did not reply.

  ‘You go to your Warmaster with your swords drawn,’ he said, at last. Repeating his objection to Perturabo’s order when it had first been given.

  ‘That is the thing about war, don’t you find? You never know when you will have to fight.’ Forrix paused, eyes moving over his own data screens. ‘Or whom.’

  The Iron Blood shivered as hundreds of breeches slammed shut over their shells. Fumes of gas swirled over plasma turrets as they vented coolant into cold vacuum. Before it, the orb of Ullanor hung, swirled grey and white with cloud, its moons great pearls around its neck. In the blackness of its orbit, ships hung as pinpricks of reflected sunlight.

  ‘Initial vessel identification reads primary Legion vessels,’ came the call of an auspex officer, but Argonis knew that Perturabo would have read the data seconds before. ‘Two main strength forces of the Third and Seventeenth Legions, and a smaller force of the Sixteenth in closer orbit. Engine signatures indicate at least two Gloriana-class vessels.’

  Argonis frowned at the tactical readouts.

  ‘We should be able to hail and read their identifications.’

  ‘Vox-links are blanked out,’ said the auspex officer.

  ‘What–’ he began to ask.

  ‘Screaming,’ said Forrix, glancing up. ‘Every channel is filled with screaming.’

  ‘The World Eaters are building up to full attack speed,’ called an Iron Warriors bridge officer.

  ‘Good,’ said Perturabo.

  Argonis strode forwards. The Iron Circle twitched towards him but stilled as Perturabo turned to look at him.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Prudence,’ said the Lord of Iron.

  ‘The Warmaster–’

  ‘Has yet to speak his own will,’ said Perturabo. His dark eyes flashed. ‘Those are Third Legion vessels in the void. The last time I saw them it was in the wake of treachery.’ He tapped the layered plates of his armour. ‘A lesson taught in blood is remembered in iron.’

  ‘Lord,’ called Forrix, the dry control in his voice cracking. ‘We have a signal…’

  ‘From the Vengeful Spirit?’

  Forrix shook his head

  ‘It is from the Trisagion, from Lorgar…’

  Something moved in the mirror-dark of Perturabo’s eyes, and then he looked up at Forrix.

  ‘What does it say?’

  Forrix’s face was white in the cold light of data readouts.

  ‘The Warmaster is dead.’

  Ekaddon

  ‘What do you mean you cannot reach the surface?’ snarled Ekaddon. Sota-Nul’s robes shivered in what might have passed for a shrug. Behind him the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit sang to a sudden swirl of alertness.

  ‘The full spectrum of our communications is filled with high-power distortion patterns, which arose as soon as the Warmaster’s Stormbird was on the planetary surface. We cannot break through directly, and it will take time to sift-phase the distortion out. That will take a primary estimate of thirty-one minutes. Until then its occlusive effect is rated at ninety-nine point eight-two-five…’

  ‘Use the astropaths.’

  ‘The distortion extends into the etheric. It is creating a total spectrum nullification. Transcendent. Occult. Profane. It is total.’

  His mind was racing. What was happening could only mean one thing: betrayal.

  ‘What about the rest of the fleet?’

  ‘The blanket distortion of our communications has not altered in the eighteen seconds since I last explained its effects.’

  Ekaddon bit back a rebuke.

  ‘What is its source?’ he asked, forcing calm into his voice.

  ‘Uncertain. The distortion is spilling into this vessel’s sensors.’

  Ekaddon bared his teeth and drew breath for a flow of Cthonian invective.

  ‘But…’ said Sota-Nul. ‘I could hazard a guess.’

  He looked at the clusters of lights inside her black cowl. Tech-priests did not guess. Sota-Nul’s voice had held an undoubtable note of pleasure as she spoke.

  ‘Guess?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, turning and gliding across to the centre of the chamber and looking up to where the arc of Ullanor sliced across the view beyond the crystal dome above. Glimmers of light shone against the grey planet and th
e black void, each one another vessel. ‘If I were to indulge a guess I would say its source was the Third Legion.’

  Ekaddon felt his blood freeze cold in his flesh. Then he was moving, running for the doors.

  ‘All units, prepare for immediate planetstrike.’

  Layak

  ‘Lorgar,’ said Horus as he walked from the gunship. Kibre followed in his wake, the mace Worldbreaker held before him. But for all the Widowmaker’s transhuman power, he was a mote of fire dragged behind a comet.

  Horus Lupercal filled Layak’s sight, pulling in his senses, shredding every other detail so that he and only he filled the world.

  Armour of night…

  Cloak of spilling fire…

  Blades of starlight…

  The sight struck like a physical blow. Layak felt his mind turning and turning again, tumbling like leaves caught in a blast wave. Darkness snapped and coiled in the Warmaster’s shadow. The ground beneath his tread became black glass, became a cracked mirror, became obsidian. His face was shining, the features like a burn left on the retina and mind.

  The throng of warriors gathered behind Lorgar and Fulgrim shrank back, Emperor’s Children and Word Bearers alike falling to their knees.

  ‘Stand,’ said Horus, and the word pulled the warriors to their feet.

  Fulgrim slid to the side, bowing his head, his white hair falling across his face. Layak could feel the tethers he had bound to the daemon primarch’s soul dig deep as it screamed to be released. Lorgar had bowed his head, his hands rested on the grip of his mace, its head resting at his feet.

  ‘Brother,’ said Horus.

  Lorgar was looking up, a tranquil smile on his face.

  Layak spun a fragment of will in his mind. Fulgrim’s hands ghosted to the handles of his swords. The air around the dais was taut. The mask was flaying his face, spikes burrowing into his flesh, as though it were trying to dig itself through his skull. Behind them the ranked warriors stood beneath the grey sky. Rain was dancing on the black armour of the Justaerin, droplets exploding in silver shards.