Slaves to Darkness

by John French

  This cannot work, said a voice in Layak’s mind, a voice that was at once his own and was not. Lorgar was wrong.

  ‘My Warmaster,’ Lorgar was saying, and Layak saw Horus raise his hand as though in beneficent greeting. The world was fractured, images passing with the stuttering seconds. Lorgar still and Eidolon looking on with cold eyes. Fulgrim looked at Layak, hate burning from the gaze.

  It was now. It would have to be now. One instant. One perfect instant of betrayal.

  Fulgrim would strike. Then Lorgar would open his mind. The blood and bone that Lorgar had salted into the earth in a ritual octed would hear that last votive voice, and the dead souls and lost voices of the warp would rise and drown Horus, and then Lorgar would strike a last, final blow with the words of the gods on his lips. The Sons of Horus on the planet’s surface would be slaughtered by Fulgrim’s children. Those in orbit would be given a choice, rise in glory or die in vain. The other Legions would come, and they would see that the Warmaster had fallen, and they would kneel to the Voice of the Gods.

  ‘You are left with one thing that means that you are not a slave,’ said the remembered voice of Actaea, but for a moment it seemed as though it were real, as though it were speaking the words to him. ‘You have a choice.’

  ‘The gods must triumph, and Horus will not give them victory,’ Lorgar had said. ‘Another must take his place…’

  But if the Warmaster does not fall, said the voice of his thoughts.

  Horus was reaching out, his hand raised as though to bless or embrace Lorgar.

  Layak bowed his head. His will formed and hardened. Fulgrim thrashed against the binding.

  Horus rises.

  The Warmaster’s blow struck Lorgar in the chest, and lifted him off the ground.

  Argonis

  ‘The Warmaster expired as he touched the planet surface,’ said Forrix into the shocked silence. ‘The wounds of Russ overcame him at last.’

  Eyes turned to Argonis. Blackness unfolded in his mind, flowing out through his nerves and stealing the sensation from his limbs.

  This could not be real. After all that had been, this moment could not be real.

  ‘Is it a direct link?’ he asked, his mouth dry. ‘To Lorgar?’

  ‘No, it’s a relayed message packet. There is a communications anomaly blanking communication. This was the only way they could hail us.’

  Argonis felt the black tide in his thoughts shift, briefly frozen senses sharpening. He looked up and met Perturabo’s cold, steady gaze.

  ‘The Vengeful Spirit is in orbit, it must be. Get me a communication link to it.’

  The blue light in the augur officer’s visor pulsed briefly.

  ‘That is not possible, my lord. The only open communication channel is with the Trisagion.’

  Argonis met Perturabo’s gaze again. Silent understanding reflected back from the black mirrors of the primarch’s eyes.

  ‘The daemon spoke true,’ said Argonis. Behind Perturabo, the shadowed bulk of Volk twitched, head rising.

  ‘Treachery,’ said Perturabo, then turned his gaze to Forrix. ‘Accelerate to battle speed. All ships lock first targets to the Third and Seventeenth Legions.’

  ‘And the World Eaters and their lord?’

  ‘Tell them that Horus is betrayed – loose the dogs to their work.’

  Layak

  The world blinked. Light flashed out. Shadows fled.

  Armour cracked. Blood touched the air in pinprick droplets.

  Lorgar tumbled back from Horus’ hand.

  Fulgrim froze. Everything froze. Stillness spread in a blast wave. Lorgar struck the ground. Shattered stone fountained up. Layak watched. The threads of Fulgrim’s name were silent in his mind. His mask was cold against his face.

  Horus lowered his hand. His face was set, features chiselled by shadow. Kibre stood close behind him, Worldbreaker held in both his hands. Lorgar tried to rise to his knees, mouth opening. Horus half turned and took his mace from Kibre. He turned and swung in a single movement. The blow was slow, unhurried, carrying the contempt of a living god touching a mortal. The mace’s power fields were not active, its weight cold. It struck Lorgar in the chest and snapped his head up as he flew back, twisting, blood gasping from between shattered teeth. Horus stood, the mace held casually at his side, his presence towering like a thundercloud, roaring with silence.

  Through the eyes of his mask Layak saw the sight of the Warmaster flicker, blinking between images: a towering figure of black shadow, face lit by ghost-light; a warlord clad in wolfskins, his hands and face red with blood; a king cloaked in sable and crowned with burning laurels; a cloaked prince in pearl-white and gold plate. Each image slid into being and away, each as real as the one that had just passed.

  Lorgar began to rise. His aura was a spinning cloud of wounded-red and fever-yellow. Mocking, impious faces grinned from the ether. Blood was running from the corners of his eyes as he looked at Fulgrim, but the Prince of Pleasure did not move. Fulgrim laughed, and Layak felt the sound as the caress of a thousand razors on the inside of his skull. Lorgar looked at Layak.

  Layak looked back into the eyes of the being that had broken his soul and made him a slave. And shook his head.

  Lorgar’s mouth opened to shout. Layak could feel his lord’s mind reach for the warp, desperate, clawing, screaming.

  Horus stepped forwards. A wave of force flipped Lorgar through the air and onto his back. Layak could see the currents of the ether draining away from around his primarch. His aura was withering to tatters of white shock. But he was still a primarch, his flesh forged by secrets known only to the false god who made him. He forced himself to rise. Horus struck him across the back. Crimson armour cracked, and Lorgar slammed down into the ground. Horus kicked him, once, the movement a ripple of strength and a shrug of mental power. Lorgar flipped over onto his back. Horus lowered Worldbreaker to rest on Lorgar’s chest.

  ‘You injure me, brother,’ said Horus. His voice was low, calm.

  ‘I serve–’

  ‘You are faithless. You covet what is not yours and cannot be yours. You undo all that you have done.’

  Lorgar looked up at the Warmaster.

  For a moment Layak thought he would protest, but then Lorgar stilled, his features hard and calm beneath the running blood.

  ‘You are flawed. You will falter, and the gods will abandon you.’

  ‘But I do not go to make an empire for the gods, brother. I am Warmaster – the gods bow to me, and all will kneel and know that I am their saviour.’

  Lorgar laughed, the sound chill.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, they will not.’

  Horus looked at him for a long moment, then raised Worldbreaker. Cords of telekinetic force pulled Lorgar up. A haze of heat surrounded the primarch.

  ‘You wish to take this power from me…’ said Horus, and reached out with his talon. The blade-fingers were white slits in the world. Lorgar’s mace rose from the ground where it had fallen. Dust fell from its head as it dragged free and arced to fall beneath Lorgar’s feet. ‘Then take it, brother.’

  Lorgar looked at the fallen mace. Layak was still, half his mind willing the primarch to take up the weapon, the rest screaming for him to leave it on the ground. He was breathing hard. His skin was pale, the veins clear and dark beneath.

  ‘In the ashes of Monarchia, did our father give you such a chance?’ said Horus. ‘Come, pick it up. Kill the master you call weak. The gods are watching, Lorgar. I can feel them waiting.’

  Lorgar raised his eyes, straightening. Layak could barely look at Horus now. There was just a void, a screaming wound in reality. He could see the Warmaster though, as if a different image were reaching his mind without his eyes.

  ‘I…’ Lorgar’s voice was a dry rasp. ‘I… pity you.’

  ‘If you will not fight for your beliefs,
’ said Horus, ‘then you will kneel.’ Lorgar bent, invisible forces pulling him down until his forehead touched the blackened marble. Horus raised Worldbreaker above his head.

  Lorgar tensed.

  Horus paused. Layak thought he saw the ghost of an expression flicker across Horus’ face, as though for an instant something drowned had floated to the surface of a storm-churned sea.

  ‘Oh, please kill him,’ said Fulgrim. ‘Please, this is just too wonderfully cruel to be allowed to continue.’

  ‘Silence,’ said Horus, still looking down at Lorgar. Fulgrim’s laughter vanished. Horus lowered his mace. For a second, Layak thought Horus looked as he had when he last stood on this world, not a shadow of power but a warrior who was greater than any man but less than a god: terrifying and noble.

  ‘Go,’ said Horus. Lorgar did not move. Layak saw Falkus Kibre glance at Horus Aximand, puzzlement flashing over their faces. ‘If you enter my presence again, the judgment I withhold shall fall upon you.’ Still, Lorgar did not move. ‘Go!’ roared Horus, and the shout echoed out across the plateau like a peal of thunder.

  Lorgar rose to his feet and looked as though he were going to say something, but then turned away.

  ‘What of his warriors?’ growled Falkus Kibre from next to his lord.

  Horus turned to look at the ranks of crimson legionaries waiting on the plains below. Then he turned and looked at Layak. Behind the Crimson Apostle, the five thousand warriors of the Unspeaking watched. He thought of all that had been done to him, all that had been taken from him, all that he had done and become in the service of gods that he had never chosen.

  Lorgar had turned to look at Layak. Stone dust had smudged parts of the primarch’s crimson armour to grey.

  ‘You are left with one thing that means that you are not a slave – you have a choice.’

  In his mind he let go of the syllables of Fulgrim’s name and felt the bonds holding the daemon’s will break. The Prince of Pleasure gasped, a sound of exultation and pleasure, then lashed forwards, faster than a lightning strike. Blood gushed from Lorgar’s cheek as he fell back to the ground. Fulgrim coiled above him, looking down smiling, raising his clawed hand to lick his brother pri­march’s blood from his clawed fingers.

  ‘You should never let someone else bear a burden you are afraid of, Lorgar,’ said Fulgrim. ‘It has a habit of creating resentment.’

  Layak looked up from Lorgar to Horus.

  Slowly, each limb and joint moving with considered care, Zardu Layak knelt.

  ‘My Warmaster,’ he said. Behind him, thousands of crimson warriors fell to their knees.

  A high, shrill chuckle cut the air as Fulgrim began to laugh.

  Argonis

  ‘Communication blanket cleared,’ shouted the augur officer.

  Argonis turned and looked at the tactical display as it lit with ship identifiers.

  ‘Lord, we have a signal from the surface of Ullanor,’ said Forrix.

  ‘Solutions locked on targets, lord,’ called a cable-encrusted ordnance overseer. ‘Firing by your command.’

  Perturabo looked at Forrix.

  ‘What is the signal?’ asked Perturabo.

  ‘The Trisagion is breaking orbit,’ called the augur officer. ‘It is making full speed for the outer system gulf. We will have lost our firing solution lock on it in nine seconds.’

  Forrix was blinking at the signal readout.

  ‘The signal,’ rasped Perturabo.

  ‘It is…’ Forrix looked up, eye bright. ‘It is the Warmaster.’

  Argonis felt the black tension in his mind release.

  ‘What does he say?’

  The scream of an augur officer cut off any reply. Sparks fountained through the air. Servitors thrashed in their harness.

  The tactical display dissolved into fragments of static and light. The reek of ozone filled Argonis’ mouth. A high, ringing note pierced through his mind, stabbing deeper and deeper, rolling with pain. Alerts began to blare, screaming as forces spun the Iron Blood in the void like a splinter of wood before the storm.

  ‘The last of them comes,’ said a voice that somehow carried through the sound. Argonis forced his head around to see that Volk’s eyes had closed, his body a mass of flowing fluid metal. ‘The Lord of Many Faces sends his son of sons to war.’

  The display snapped back into fidelity. Lines of distortion ran across it. The markers of the Iron Warriors and World Eaters ships were scattered. Those in orbit rolled and pitched against the gravity well, even as he watched. Between and around them spread a rolling mass of boiling light and glittering mist. And from the storm, borne by it and spilling from its fury, came another fleet.

  Ekaddon

  The Sons of Horus fell through Ullanor’s grey sky, hundreds of drop pods and dozens of gunships diving from the edge of the atmosphere to the surface beneath. Thrusters burned rain to steam as they fired. Fire trailed from wings as craft cut from void to air.

  Mag-harnessed within his drop pod, Ekaddon felt the world roar around him. It was treachery. He was dropping into a battle zone, he was sure of it, descending from heaven to make war on another group of brothers who had once been sworn to the same cause. He almost smiled, remembering the first time, the roar in his guts as he went down to slaughter Legion brothers. Now, falling to an unknown fate, the blood of his own kind still fresh on his blade, he was not even surprised. Things spun apart; that was their nature. That was why there were wars and warriors to fight them, why some used power and some were subject to power. For a second, as the force of the fall tried to pull him into unconsciousness, he thought that this moment was inevitable, that it would be the fate of his kind forever more: war and treachery and retribution without cease or need of a reason. Even the Warmaster could not stand in the way of that. It was the tide of fate that dragged them all.

  ‘Thirty seconds to impact,’ droned a servitor voice in his helm.

  Static shrieked in his ear, sudden and loud. Pixelated tactical readouts burst across his helm display.

  ‘…there is…’ he heard Sota-Nul’s wet, rasping voice, chopping through the squall of sound. ‘No threat… fleet… close orbit.’

  ‘Say again, Vengeful Spirit,’ he shouted.

  ‘Ten seconds to impact,’ came the servitor countdown.

  He gripped his weapon and breathed out. Thrusters fired. Force slammed up through the pod, shaking through Ekaddon.

  ‘Five, four, three, two…’

  The drop pod stuck the ground. The jolt of force blinded Ekaddon for a second as blood punched into his eyeballs. Then the outer panels of the pod blew off. The mag-harnesses snapped free, and Ekaddon and his squad were charging clear, pushed by training beyond hesitation. Light poured into his eyes as he emerged. Above them the Imperial Dais rose to meet a sky that was streaked with the fire of falling drop pods and gunships.

  Ekaddon’s charge slowed and then stopped.

  Where he had thought to see battle, stillness filled his eyes. Thunder-diluted silence filled his ears.

  A sea of warriors was looking up at the sky above. Crimson Word Bearers, black and storm-green Sons of Horus, multicoloured Emp­eror’s Children. All were still and all were looking at the heavens. All except Horus. Ringed by his Justaerin, the Warmaster was looking at Ekaddon, eyes boring into him from across the hundred paces that separated them.

  He smiled as more drop pods slammed into the plateau around them, and more warriors bounded out and went still, chainblades chugging to silence, guns lowering.

  ‘Unnecessary,’ said Horus, and his voice carried to Ekaddon, as though the Warmaster were standing next to him. ‘But then again, he might appreciate as grand a welcome as his arrival.’

  Horus looked up, and Ekaddon followed his gaze in time to see the sky turn red. Crimson poured into the heavens like blood poured into milk. Folded clouds took on the tex
ture and colour of flayed muscle. Lightning arced, silver lines remaining after the flash and then cracking open. Huge eyes looked down from above, split pupils rolling in amber irises. The breath in Ekaddon’s mouth tasted of burning cinnamon and spun sugar. As he watched, a funnel of cloud and flame reached from the sky to the earth. On the ground, weapons were rising, shouts of alert and shock were echoing across the static-laced vox-net. Fulgrim had grown, wings and armour congealing over his form, fangs bared as he hissed at the sky. Only Horus stood unmoved, watching the burning tornado descend without expression.

  He raised his talon, and the gesture rippled through the throng, stilling hands on weapons and quieting voices in throats. The fiery column touched the ground. Stone fused beneath it. Warning chimes sounded in Ekaddon’s helm as the heat prickled sweat from his skin. The flames curdled to black smoke, peeling back over figures that stood within the furnace glow, black silhouettes with high-crested helms. The fire drained from the air, shrinking to a narrow column. Nine warriors stood on the blackened ground around the burning pillar. Their armour was crimson, edged by ivory and untouched by the flame that had held them. Serpents and jackals snarled from their shoulders and chests, staring at the world around them with emerald and sapphire eyes. Bladed staffs and curved swords hung in their hands. Guttering flames clung to the cutting edges.

  Ekaddon recognised the colours, the symbols, the serpentine sun that marked their shoulders. But the image could not be. They were dead and gone, their world burned from beneath them, their memory cast into the dark.

  ‘Ghosts…’ he breathed, and heard the word come from the grille of his helm.

  A laugh rose through the air, louder than the roar of the flames.

  Not ghosts,+ said the voice of the flames. The column of flame twisted, forming the contours of muscle, flickering into the image of a towering figure with a single eye of blue fire in its skull.

  ‘Magnus,’ said Horus, still not moving.

  Horus,+ replied the Crimson King.

  ‘What purpose brings you here?’