Betrayer

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  The Chaplain showed no emotion at all, his austere mask firmly in place. ‘Lord, I have walked the paths of the Ten Thousand Futures. I have seen destinies unfolding where the Angel falls, and others where he fights at our side. If we can engineer events to play out according to those paths…’

  Lorgar’s hood shifted as he shook his head. ‘You aren’t listening, Erebus.’

  ‘I do nothing but listen. I hear the gods as clearly as you do, Aurelian. Or did you forget that?’ He spoke the words softly, even kindly, but they rang out across the basilica with the force of a hammer blow.

  Argel Tal tensed, feeling his lips peeling back from his lengthening teeth. Ceramite wrenched and squealed as ridged rune-carved bones started pushing through the surface of his armour. Great bat’s wings of blue-veined scarlet fleshmetal rose from his shoulder blades, dripping blood-sweat onto the white stone floor.

  ‘You!’ he snarled in two voices, the daemon’s hiss in clear dominance. ‘You dare?’

  Lorgar sighed and raised a hand.

  ‘No. Argel Tal, Raum, both of you, stay your wrath. Please.’

  Wings flexing silently, the lord of the Gal Vorbak glared at Erebus for several heartbeats. Another ugly chuckle from Angron broke the tension.

  ‘As you command, sire,’ Argel Tal replied at last, his voices in uneasy balance. The Change receded with the same protestation of cold metal reshaped against its will.

  ‘I will not argue with you, Erebus. I know you, Kor Phaeron and your old friend Calas Typhon cling to your belief that you were enlightened before all others, and are therefore uniquely placed to steer Fate itself. But I will give you this last coin of advice, to take or leave as you will. You will not enlighten Sanguinius.’

  Lorgar passed a hand through the air before him. An image of a haloed warrior, garbed in blood-bright armour and framed with magnificent wings of the most pristine white, shimmered into existence.

  ‘Look at him and what do you see? An angel. The Angel. In a universe that the Emperor claims is godless – in an Imperium where our civilisation’s wisest and greatest have dismantled all the trappings of religion – Sanguinius is an icon of something that should not exist, glorious and supernatural. My brother knows this. He feels it. He’s too intelligent, too soulful, not to.’

  Lorgar lowered his head, the shadow of his hood darkening his features down to his chin.

  ‘The Emperor, for all his many flaws, knows his sons well. Horus was chosen as Warmaster because he is the best of us. In Horus, all things are found in balance, and yet every facet is raised to excellence. Sanguinius is similar. His virtues eclipse the rest of us, for which of us could match his grace, his compassion, or his understanding of the human condition? And yet our brother is unbalanced. Profoundly so. He represents both the very best and the very worst of what it is to be a primarch. He is the noblest of us but also the most fearful; a glorious creature enslaved by insecurities.’

  Lorgar gestured again and the glowing image of Sanguinius vanished.

  ‘Oh yes, the Angel is righteous and he is strong and he is beautiful in practically every way. But he has a cancerous weakness in his heart – a weakness known to only a few of us. Sanguinius is loyal to our father out of perfect love and perfect nobility, and if that were all, he might still be turned or killed as you so desire, my son. But what you fail to consider is that he is also loyal out of perfect fear. He fears the reason he has wings. He fears what they might represent. He fears something went terribly wrong during his creation and he fears the effects this may have upon his own gene-sons.’

  Angron watched Lorgar with undisguised fascination, the Nail-induced fire in his skull momentarily forgotten. Erebus maintained a resolute silence.

  ‘The insecurity that binds Sanguinius to the Emperor, perhaps more so than any other of our father’s sons, is that he believes he has the most to prove.’

  Lorgar looked down to the smooth, gold-inked skin of his hands and exhaled softly. ‘And yet, in comparison with the rest of us, that simply is not the case.’

  With eyes that glinted from beneath his hood, the lord of the Word Bearers returned his gaze to Erebus. ‘Listen to me now, if never before. You and Kor Phaeron are investing too heavily in fools’ gambits. I know Kor Phaeron sought to illuminate Guilliman rather than slay him as ordered. His failure echoed through the warp: a discordant note in an already less-than-perfect performance. And I know that in making his clumsy attempt at conversion, he lost his chance to land the killing blow. History will repeat itself. Committing everything to Signus Prime will leave you no more victorious than Kor Phaeron at Calth. It is too late to change that now, but then, I’ve warned you of this before. Now go.’

  The Chaplain stood stunned, his face a facade of dignified shock. He bowed low at last, and asked permission to leave.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lorgar softly.

  Erebus turned to go but was halted by the rumbling sneer of Angron’s voice.

  ‘The timing of your arrival was fortuitous, priest.’ The Eater of Worlds almost spat the word. ‘Just in time to miss the fighting. Tell me, are all your prayers and little treacheries making you more preacher than warrior?’

  Erebus walked from the chamber without further comment. Angron watched him leave, his metal teeth glinting in a vicious smile. As the doors closed, Lorgar turned to Argel Tal, meeting his eyes.

  ‘My son. My truest son.’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Erebus will make you an offer soon. I see it in his eyes, and I hear it in his heart, though the details are beyond my ken. Refuse him. No matter the temptation; no matter what redemption his offer might seem to bring – you must refuse him.’

  ‘I will, lord.’

  Lorgar smiled, golden and benevolent. ‘I know you will. Now, back to your duties, my friends. We must make ready to burn this world and move on to the next.’

  Khârn picked his way through the mess of the Conqueror’s bridge. The bodies had been cleared and the stains scrubbed away, but he could still smell their burst flesh, their spilled blood and the refuse-stink of their emptied guts. Death lingered aboard a ship, despite the best efforts of any air-filtration vents. Cables dangled and sparked from the ceiling. Entire banks of screens and consoles were smoking lumps of metal. Las-burns and bullet-holes riddled the floor and walls, punctuated by the deeper craters of bolter fire. These were rarer, for the Ultramarines had been spoiled for choice when it came to targets.

  Lotara was in her throne, above the madness, and Khârn had never seen her so angry. There was something almost predatory in the way she projected her temper as a cold seethe. She didn’t need to say anything. She didn’t even need to scowl. Her mood was apparent from the ice in her eyes and the way she sat back in her throne, staring, staring, staring.

  Khârn halted in his careful tracks when he saw Lhorke standing vigil behind her throne. He ascended the stairs, paying respects to the Dreadnought before the captain.

  ‘Legion Master,’ he said, and felt the strangest compulsion to kneel. Too long spent with the Word Bearers, he told himself. ‘You walk.’

  ‘The captain woke me.’

  ‘I heard about Delvarus and the Triarii.’ He glanced to Lotara, who was watching him. ‘Things have changed since you last walked among us, sir.’

  The Contemptor gave a resonant clunk-clunk of servos locking tight. It sounded like an expression of distaste, though Khârn wasn’t sure how.

  ‘So I see. You’ve been busy, Khârn.’

  This wasn’t the warm-hearted reunion of brother-officers that Khârn had expected. He looked to Lotara.

  ‘Angron is on his way. He asks you to be ready to bombard the planet in twelve hours.’

  She leaned forwards in her throne, eyes wide. ‘Is that a joke? After all this, you want me to do what I should’ve done at the very start?’

  He didn’t feel like going into t
he metaphysical details of pain resonance and the spiritual reflection of emotional torment. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand it; it was that he wasn’t sure he believed any of it.

  ‘Lorgar’s orders.’ He was too weary to even smile. ‘The world bleeds, and all remaining life has gone to ground. He wants to burn them for the sin of cowardice.’ And to squeeze out the last trickles of suffering, he thought.

  ‘Khârn…’ She looked at him, helpless fury in her eyes. ‘What are we doing here? What kind of war is this?’

  He didn’t have an answer for her. Nothing tangible, at least.

  ‘The new kind,’ he said.

  She wasn’t placated. ‘A mad kind. Everything has gone wrong since Isstvan III. Since we sided with Horus.’

  Khârn looked between the captain and the Contemptor, but said nothing.

  The bridge’s port-side doors didn’t grind open on heavy tracks any more, they’d been removed from the wall and taken away for repair. Angron entered with a dusty-looking tech-priest behind him. The robed adept had his hands clasped together in his sleeves as he trailed after the primarch, almost cringing away from the World Eater’s muscled bulk.

  ‘Khârn,’ Angron growled across the debris-strewn chamber. ‘This red-robe has been hunting for you.’

  The primarch left the bowing priest at the violated doors and made his way through the mess that his bridge had become. He gave a short, throaty bark of a laugh at the devastation.

  ‘How did this happen?’

  Lotara rose from her throne, looking down at Angron from the raised central dais. ‘Delvarus and the Triarii made unauthorised planetfall to join the surface attack. We were boarded in their absence.’

  Angron walked over to where Lehralla dangled from her cables, bound to the auspex console. With a gentleness none of his brothers would have believed he possessed, he rested a massive hand on her shoulder.

  ‘You are not hurt?’

  The crippled young woman, surgically implanted onto the table, raked her filthy hair back from her face.

  ‘No, sire,’ she replied, utterly undaunted by the demigod before her.

  Angron gave an ugly grin and looked back over the bridge. ‘And where is Delvarus now?’

  ‘I confined him to his quarters.’

  Clearly amused, the primarch gave a short bark of laughter. ‘I like that.’ He started ascending the dais, facing Lhorke. The Contemptor towered above even the primarch, but nothing – living or dead – could ever make Angron seem small. ‘Lhorke of the War Hounds.’

  ‘Angron of the World Eaters.’

  ‘You look good, old warrior. Still in the outdated colours though, eh?’ Angron rapped his knuckles against the Dreadnought’s ironform where the collared wolf stood proud. In instinctive reaction to his discomfort at being touched, Lhorke’s combi-bolters reloaded with twin metallic rattles.

  ‘Do I owe you thanks for defending my ship?’ the primarch asked.

  ‘I did little. Your gratitude should go to the other first Dreadnoughts, and the two thousand and seventy-one souls that lost their lives in repelling the assault.’

  Angron lifted a scab-knuckled hand to his temple, feeling the dull return of pain. ‘Hnnh. You’re still a miserable bastard, Lhorke.’

  ‘I died. A little too late to change now.’ The Dreadnought forced its ironform into a grinding bow, this one to Lotara, and made its way down the wide steps. ‘I must go. I require maintenance.’

  Angron felt the deck shivering beneath the Contemptor’s tread. He remembered with a keen rush just how it felt to fight such a creation. The Isstvan campaign had been such an educational experience.

  ‘Captain,’ he said. ‘In twelve hours, we’ll bomb Armatura into memory. Salt the earth, Lotara.’

  She looked at him as she reclined in her throne, boots thumping on one armrest.

  ‘As you wish.’

  THIRTEEN

  Bones

  Argel Tal always went alone when he visited her tomb. His bootsteps echoed around the arching chamber, thrown back by the gothic walls with their spines of stone. Life-size statues of the honoured fallen watched him pass by, their wrought-iron faces staring out into the candle-lit half-dark. He knew each of them by name. Several of them were friends and brothers, lost to misfortune or martyrdom.

  He passed one such monument, raised to remember ‘Xaphen of the Gal Vorbak, Chaplain of the Chapter of the Serrated Sun’. The warrior-priest stood with one boot resting on the cracked chestplate of a sculpted Raven Guard, raising a crozius maul to the sky. The Chaplain’s head was lowered, not staring at the legionary he’d killed, but turned to the side with an air of contemplation. In this recreation of dark metal artistry, Xaphen looked almost soulful in regret, which amused Argel Tal no end each time he saw it. His brother had been many things in life, but regretful wasn’t one of them. No more zealous creature had ever worn the Legion’s scarlet. Xaphen had even enjoyed Isstvan, considering it a test of faith. A test he’d relished and passed, according to his own exacting standards.

  The plaque beneath his name read, in jagged Colchisian cuneiform: He walked in the realm where gods and mortals meet.

  Argel Tal reached out as he passed, gently touching his knuckles to his dead brother’s breastplate.

  He repeated the gesture several more times as he passed the statues of Gal Vorbak butchered on Isstvan V. The first Gal Vorbak: the warriors with daemons in their hearts because they mutilated their souls on the first treacherous steps into Hell. Not like the thin-blooded daemon-hosts that he had bred for Lorgar in the years since. They were Gal Vorbak in name and blood, but not in spirit. They’d not walked the Pilgrimage. They came to their power with no comprehension of what it cost to earn.

  When he finally reached her tomb, he crouched before her graven image. Where many other statues were cast in the patina-green of copper or the clean sheen of wrought-iron, she was embodied in pure marble. Her eyes were hidden behind the blindfold she’d only rarely worn, preferring to simply keep her eyes closed once she adapted to sightless life. She stood without the strident, ardent poses displayed by the hundreds of fallen Word Bearers memorialised in the great hall. Instead, she remained a frail, slender thing, dove-white in the gloom, one small hand outstretched to offer comfort to whomever rested before her.

  Cyrene Valantion, the plaque read, Confessor of the Word. Martyred by the Emperor’s own guardians, for the sin of seeing the truth.

  Even on her plinth, she wasn’t as tall as Argel Tal’s full height. His fingertips stroked over her marble hair with the softest brush of ceramite over stone. Not a loving touch, nor a longing one. If anything, it was apologetic.

  As he always did when he visited her, he drew the sword that ended her life – the sword he carried now as his own. And as always, he felt the hot rush of temptation to just break it over his knee and leave it behind. He resisted, for the pain of bearing this blade was a lesson in itself.

  The Hall of Anamnesis – called the Hall of Hindsight by disloyal slaves when no Word Bearers were nearby to overhear – housed the bones of almost a thousand Legion heroes, deep in the core of Fidelitas Lex. Only one statue stood above a defiled stone coffin, and it belonged to the only human interred among nine hundred legionaries.

  They’d taken her bones. Cultists, fanatics, call them what you will; they’d stolen their way into the hall, seizing her bones and claiming her as a saint of the Pantheon. ‘The first martyr’, they called her. Her name was a sainted whisper among the Word Bearers fleet’s vast human population, for the dubious honour of being the first human slain by the Emperor’s minions for praying to the Pantheon.

  As if it were that simple. He rose to his feet, eyes never leaving the statue of the slain girl.

  Argel Tal would never forget her final words. He thought of them often. Not the unfinished letter he found when she was already three days dead, but the ver
y last words to leave her bloody lips. What have they done to you?

  She said it with a smile, the weak smile of a girl who knew she was dying. Her hands had fallen from his helm’s faceplate, leaving smears of blood where she’d been touching the daemonic mask his face had become.

  What have they done to you?

  Who did she mean? The gods? The primarchs, in their desperate civil war? His own brothers?

  What have they done to you?

  Thoughts of Cyrene stirred the beast within. Raum, the second soul inside his body, awakened with a bestial twitch.

  Hunt?

  It spoke in a snake’s licking whisper, the words caressing Argel Tal’s mind.

  No. I am at her tomb. We hunted for days on Armatura. Is your hunger never sated?

  Raum’s derision was weaker than its irritation. You are so maudlin, brother. Wake me when blood must flow.

  He felt the presence curling upon itself, shrinking again. But not slumbering, despite what the daemon claimed. Raum was content to lie in silence, watching through Argel Tal’s eyes.

  The two of them remained as they were for another few minutes. When Argel Tal heard footsteps, Raum uncoiled again in a dangerous writhe, suddenly on edge.

  Someone comes. The Word Bearer felt the daemon reaching out beyond the boundaries of his skull, a hound sniffing for a scent. Ah. It is the Deceiver.

  ‘Hello, Erebus,’ Argel Tal said. He didn’t turn around.

  ‘My boy,’ came the voice from behind. ‘It is good to see you.’

  He is lying.

  I know.

  He fears you will cast him away, as the Lorgar-Father did.

  I know, Raum. I know.

  Erebus stood next to him, joining his vigil over the statue of the martyred girl. ‘What happened on Armatura?’ The First Chaplain’s voice was composed, somehow cold without being hostile. ‘The World Eaters have reported devastating losses, and I hear many of them baying for our Legion’s blood. What went wrong?’

  Argel Tal thumbed his tired eyes. ‘What always goes wrong with the World Eaters? They charged ahead too far, too fast. The Ultramarines and Armaturan Guard forces that sought to flank us instead spilled into the gap between the two Legions, taking the opportunity to divide and conquer. The World Eaters pushed on into a hundred ambushes, while we were locked in a slow advance against the other half of the city’s armies. By the time we broke through, let us just say that Twelfth Legion tempers had prevailed.’