Betrayer

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Above them, the dawning sky grew suddenly dark. Something – something vast – made its slow way through the clouds. It set fire to the sky on its way down, pushing the rippling tide of clouds apart.

  ‘No…’ the Word Bearer said. ‘Please, no.’

  Lorgar stood alone atop a Land Raider, the wind picking at the parchments bound to his armour. From his vista, he watched the surrounding city dying purely because three Legions happened to use it as the place they met. Was that fate? The city had been destined to die this very day anyway, but to see an entire population slaughtered purely because they were in the way was…

  A waste? He’d almost considered it a waste. But that wasn’t true, for their screams all melded with the great song. It didn’t matter from whence the blood flowed. Simply by attacking, Guilliman’s sons were bringing the song to its crescendo. It was coming to its apex, carried by the arrhythmic crashing of bolters and the grunts of dying men too proud to scream in pain.

  Lorgar had to find Angron. It would be time soon.

  His brother’s bitterness at Desh’elika Ridge had almost been enough. In the Praxury’s throne room, it had come even closer. Lorgar didn’t know how the final note would sound, but he sensed it coming, the way ozone in the crisp air heralds the coming storm.

  The Ultramarines drop pods were just the first wave. The XIII Legion came down across the city, deploying in force – even mauled by the loss of Calth, they were still numerous enough to fill Nuceria’s heavens.

  Behind them came gunships, drop-ships, heavy landers and the great black tower-ships of the Martian Mechanicum. Contact was sporadic with the void war above, but it was clear the enemy armada had enough strength to rain their troops onto the surface. The Ultramarines knew Angron and Lorgar were here, and they’d come to end both primarchs’ brutal reigns.

  As was their way, the Ultramarines established footholds at defensible positions in the dying city, clearing room for their reinforcements to land. For every one they held, another was overrun by the World Eaters in a storm of roaring axes, or lost to the Word Bearers chanting, implacable advance. The XII Legion crashed against the XIII in rabid packs, showing why Imperial forces had feared to fight alongside them for decades. Uncontrolled, unbound, unrestrained, they butchered their way through Ultramarines strongpoints, enslaved to the joy of battle because of the pain engines in the meat of their minds.

  The XVII Legion also met their enemy cousins, replacing ferocity with spite and hate. The Ultramarines returned it in kind, hungry for vengeance on those who’d defiled Calth and killed its star. Word Bearers units marched, droning black hymns and chanting sermons from the Book of Lorgar, bearing corpse-strewn icons of befouled metal and bleached bones above their regiments.

  The Legio Audax walked through Meahor, jackal-keen on the prowl, ursus claws harpooning tanks and vulcan mega-bolters eviscerating infantry. The inefficiency of the way they made war had never appealed to Lorgar, but he respected his brother’s admiration for the Legio’s savagery. One of their Titans, hunchbacked and hunting, clanked along an adjacent street – from the sounds of human panic, it was wading through the native population. The taller forms of other Titans – Reavers and Warlords – strode at the city’s edge; the Ultramarines were landing their own god-machines, but too few, far too few. Audax was adept in its hunts against larger prey. The Legio loved to play as wolf packs bringing down lone bears.

  Lorgar raised his gaze as the rising sun went black in the sky. Across the city, Word Bearers were looking up in the very same way, with the very same feeling uncurling in their guts. He could sense their despair – a feeling too melancholic and pained to be either fear or anger, but somehow more desperate than both. His sons’ emotions reached him in a bitter wash, making it even harder to look away.

  Such a blow to morale, to see one’s flagship die.

  The vast silhouette of the Fidelitas Lex cut through the clouds, big enough to stain half the sky with its immense gothic darkness, fire-ghosts dancing in its miniscule window ports. For several terrible pregnant seconds, another city hung above Meahor, shuddering on its way east, loud enough to shroud the sounds of thousands and thousands dying in terror. Almost loud enough – Lorgar actually smiled at this – to drown out the warp’s melody.

  Almost.

  The behemoth passed overhead, dead engines like open mouths, debris and crew raining from the falling ship as it rolled in a slow drift towards the open ocean.

  Lorgar watched it trail across the grey skies, and whispered a final farewell. The Lex had served him well, but all things must come to an end. He hoped the Blessed Lady had made it to the escape pods. How bitter it would be to be reborn, only to die in the agony of fire mere weeks later.

  Down it rolled, achingly slow for something of such weight and scale, shrinking towards the horizon but never disappearing. Lorgar knew that a death in gravity’s grip would deny the vessel any last claim to grace, as the weight of its immense engines inevitably dragged the stern down first, colliding with the ocean’s surface far from shore.

  But far enough?

  ‘This is the primarch,’ he said quietly into the Legion’s vox-net, cutting through his warriors’ lamentations. ‘Even in death, the Lex shows her rage. Brace for the coming tidal wave, and remember the Canticles of Mourning. No dirges for those lost in righteous battle. Everyone to higher ground, avoid all battle in the east where the wave will crash. Take the battle to the west.’

  Lorgar dropped from the battle tank’s roof, sheathing his bloodied crozius and ignoring the Ultramarines bodies he crushed underfoot.

  Another drop pod slammed earthwards at the far end of the street. Without even looking, he directed a mixed group of Word Bearers and World Eaters to deal with it, and reached out with his senses, seeking Angron’s presence.

  But the song distracted him. It jarred, leeching at his concentration, pressing at his skin with the same static itch as standing too close to his brother Magnus.

  Lorgar reached out again, seeking the source of the discordant disruption. The answer came at once, because the answer was behind him.

  The answer stood at the far end of the street, clad in bloodstained blue, dropping the corpse of the last Word Bearer from the grip of its oversized power fists. It started running towards him, shouting his name, and Lorgar knew with cold certainty that the reason the song had fallen so catastrophically out of tune was because Fate itself was laughing at him.

  Princeps Ultima Audun Lyrac still felt buffeted in the seat. It wasn’t exactly enough to shake his bones from their sockets – nothing more than a slight tilt side to side with each step Syrgalah took – but it marked him from Keeda and Toth, who both suffered no such discomfort. He kept casting glances to the veteran cockpit crew, soon realising they instinctively leaned left and right in time to the Titan’s tread. A miniscule motion, barely noticeable. That was how in tune they were with Syrgalah, and he felt a stab of admittedly childish jealousy. He doubted they even knew they were doing it.

  He didn’t remark on it, of course. They’d been merciless in their attitudes to his practical inexperience, and though they’d been suitably polite the last month in transit, this was his first walk. He was perspiring freely, the dampness shining on his temples. His back was similarly filmed by greasy perspiration as he tried to recline for the hundredth time in the shivering throne. Interface needles in his skull and spine gave irritated twinges as he shuffled.

  All in all, he was glad he was behind his moderati in their control thrones. The last thing he needed was them seeing how awkward he felt. Syrgalah herself was a presence, a voice and a snarling smile in the back of his head. Her intelligence felt like the embers of a fire, burning slow but too hot to touch. He could sense she wanted to hunt, but was she never satisfied? He’d lost count of how many tanks they’d already destroyed.

  The Titan kept pulling west, as well. It wanted to walk west, kept puls
ing the word west, west, west through his mind, but that was just one of several Ultramarines landing sites. He detected nothing anomalous there. Did Syrgalah sense the coming tidal wave? Even if it struck, she could ride it out. It might reach her waist, at best. Mechanicum calculations had been vox-spurted in a torrent, and the tsunami to come was eminently survivable. The Lex had died well, and they’d all live because of it.

  West, west, west.

  ‘What is it with this city?’ Keeda asked. She asked Toth, Audun noted, not bothering to turn and include him. ‘I thought this world was supposed to be advanced. This looks like they’ve barely pulled themselves out of an iron age. Most of these buildings are stone. Brick and mortar.’

  ‘Weapons.’ Toth sounded distracted. ‘Their weapons are advanced. Not by our standards, of course. Their nautical technology is supposed to be impressive, as well. A coastal people.’

  ‘They didn’t even have satellites.’

  ‘They did.’ Toth held a hand to his earpiece. ‘Just not many.’

  ‘Someone’s been reading the mission briefings.’

  ‘Shut up, Kee.’ Toth spoke without turning around. ‘Sire, Syrgalah is scry-locking onto a heat signature at the city’s edge. She keeps pulling towards it.’

  Audun had to swallow before speaking, and he still worried his voice sounded tremulous.

  ‘I’m sensing it, too. The machine-spirit hungers for whatever prey she scents out there.’

  There was a moment’s silence in the cockpit. Toth said nothing. Keeda busied herself with butchering three Ultramarines Rhinos in a torrent of white-hot bolter shells.

  Audun sucked his lower lip. Was he trying too hard to speak as they did, in the same familiar terms of Titan interface? Were they laughing at him?

  ‘That’s it,’ Toth agreed. ‘That’s the signal I mean. Syrgalah keeps turning to face it.’

  ‘Do we have any ’hounds at the western edge?’

  ‘They’ve reported a coffin-ship. Big enough for three Warlords.’ He lifted a shoulder in a lazy shrug. ‘Nothing we can’t handle, especially if they’re down here without support. I’m getting reports that the Conqueror’s fighters are shooting down every infantry lander they can.’

  Toth sounded at ease, but there it was again: the insistent pull of the Titan leaning to the west. Audun had to make a decision.

  ‘What Legio walks against us? The markings resemble several–’

  ‘Oberon,’ Keeda replied. ‘Orange and black striping, and the sigil of the cleaved crown. It’s the Legio Oberon – whatever dregs survived the Calth muster.’

  Oberon. Oberon. As he silently said the name, Syrgalah gave another tug, wanting to walk west.

  Oberon. An Oberon coffin-ship, ready to unload at the city’s edge. Prey so tempting that the Titan herself wanted to hunt it. Syrgalah sensed an enemy warrior-spirit even from this distance.

  ‘We go west.’ Audun rested his slippery hands on his own control console. ‘Bring four packs with us.’

  ‘Aye, sire,’ replied Toth.

  Audun hesitated, working a quick calculation. ‘Amend my last order, Toth. Bring five packs with us.’

  ‘That’s more than a quarter of Audax.’ Keeda finally turned around, looking both surprised and alarmed.

  ‘You’re right. Make it six. And tell them to converge with all possible speed. We’re going in together.’

  Thirty Warhounds. Would it be enough? Audun Lyrac was certain it would – he was equally certain many of them wouldn’t survive, and prayed to the Omnissiah that he wasn’t about to end his career on his very first walk.

  ‘Toth, I want you to ensure we advance with Legion forces in support, ready to finish the fight once we start it. World Eaters, Word Bearers, I couldn’t care less. But I want legionaries at our feet, ready to strike. Get them to run with us aboard speeders and Rhinos. We’ll only have one shot at this, and it will have to be quick.’

  Toth didn’t turn back, but the smile in his voice was evident.

  ‘You sound like you know what Oberon is bringing to join the fight, princeps.’

  ‘I do. Unless I’m very much mistaken, we are about to meet the Corinthian.’

  Toth and Keeda shared a grin at his proclamation. Audun knew Audax’s history and pedigree better than any soul living, except for perhaps Vel-Kheredar – ‘honours upon his name’. He knew the Legio was founded on the principles of the hunt, of cutting in quick, gutting your enemies, and pulling back before retaliation could fall. He knew Audax crews were raised and trained to work in five-Titan packs to bring down larger prey. It was more than the Legio’s specialty – it was the reason they were halfway to being legendary.

  But he had never, ever seen two people eager at the prospect of facing an Imperator.

  The demigod in gold and blue had the advantage of two weapons, but Lorgar’s crozius gave him a reach that his brother lacked. When they first met, there was no furious trading of frantic blows, nor were there any melodramatic speeches of vengeance avowed. The two primarchs came together once, power fist against war maul, and backed away from the resulting flare of repelling energy fields. Their warriors killed each other around them both, and neither primarch spared their sons a glance.

  Lorgar flicked the clinging lightning from the head of his crozius, shaking his head in slow denial.

  ‘You’re ruining the song. You shouldn’t be here.’

  Roboute Guilliman, Lord of the XIII Legion, stared with eyes ripened by hatred.

  ‘And yet, here I am.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Mark of Calth

  A Redemption Unseen

  Crescendo

  The brothers duelled in the stone street, their boots kicking up clouds of alkaline dust. Gone was any notion of humanity or mercy from either warrior – here, at last, were two men that despised one another, fighting to end each other’s lives.

  In Guilliman’s eyes, Lorgar saw a wealth of purest, depthless hatred. A hatred not formed from one action and one event, but a chemical cauldron of emotion strong enough to twist even the calmest, most composed demigod in the Imperium. Anger flared in those eyes, of course. More than anger, it was rage. Frustration tainted it further; the desperation of not understanding why this was happening, and the ferocity of one who still believes he might find a way to stop it. Hurt – somehow, seeing the hurt in Guilliman’s eyes was worst of all – also poisoned the mix and made it rancid. This wasn’t the pure rage of Corax on the killing fields – the fury of a brother betrayed. This fury was saturated into something much harsher and much more complex. It was the pain of a builder, an architect, a loyal son who had done all that was ever asked of him, and had seen his life’s work die in foolish, spurious futility.

  Lorgar knew that feeling, had known it since he knelt in the ashes of the Perfect City, the entire settlement destroyed by Guilliman’s fleet on the Emperor’s orders. For the first time in all the years of their wildly disparate lives, Lorgar Aurelian and Roboute Guilliman connected as equals.

  To his amazement – the shock leaving him cold-blooded – Lorgar felt ashamed. In his brother’s face he finally saw real hate, and in that moment he learned a lesson that had evaded him all these decades. Guilliman had never hated him before. The Ultramarine had never undermined his efforts; never hidden his sneers while presenting false indifference; never held a secret joy over humbling Lorgar’s religious efforts in Monarchia and the great Crusade beyond.

  Guilliman hadn’t hated him. Not until now. This was hate. This was hatred in totality, fuelled by a fortune of pathos. This was a hatred deserved, and it was a hatred that would see Lorgar dead, with the song unfinished and the False Emperor still enthroned at the head of an empire he didn’t – in his ignorance – deserve to lead.

  The Bearer of the Word felt a sudden, burning need to explain everything, to justify himself, to tell how this was all necessary, all
of it, to enlighten humanity. The rebellion. The war. The Heresy. The truth of reality was foul but it had to be told. Gods were real, and they needed man. The human race could rise in union and immortality as the favoured race of the Pantheon, or die as the eldar died centuries before for the sin of ignorance.

  Between blocking the hammer-blows of his brother’s swinging fists, Lorgar started cursing the warp’s song for distracting him. It played through his skull and before his eyes, insistent and ceaseless. Everything felt significant. Nothing sounded right. Every bell-toll of his crozius crashing against Guilliman’s fists thrummed wrong, confusing the crescendo as it was supposed to be rising.

  Both primarchs fought without heeding their warriors, their godlike movements an inconceivable blur to the Space Marines fighting around them. Here was a record of the very mythical action that the Terran remembrancer order had been founded to document, as two of the Emperor’s sons raised weapons in the embodiment of those most ancient legends: Akillus, Destroyer of the fortress-city Troi; or Gulyat, Giant of the Fillestyne Tribe. None had ever imagined the heroes of this new age would take the field against each other, nor could they have predicted the wellsprings of spite between them.

  ‘Calth.’ The word was a weapon. Guilliman breathed it, infesting it with the same hatred colouring his eyes. ‘Calth. Jursa. Kallas. Corum’s Landing. Ereth Five. Quilkhama. Tycor. Armatura. How many of my worlds, Lorgar? How many?’

  Lorgar parried another swing, spinning his crozius in a heavy retort. Guilliman blocked it as easily as Lorgar had blocked the punch. Their blows rang out across the battle the way temple bells called the faithful to worship.

  ‘Calth,’ Guilliman said again. ‘No words now, “brother”? No reply for what your Legion has done across the Five Hundred Worlds?’