Betrayer

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  She turned her gaze back to the retreating runes of the Ultramarines survivors. ‘They almost had us, though. Engines?’

  ‘Dead, ma’am.’

  ‘Weapons?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Navigation?’

  ‘Dead.’

  Lotara snorted. ‘Lucky for us they’re running, then.’

  ‘Agreed, ma’am.’

  She turned to the oculus, which was marred by several vicious, smoking bolt shell holes, like craters in the reinforced glass. Nuceria’s image wavered, flawed by visual corruption, but the red tempest above Meahor was visible from orbit.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ she asked anyone near enough to hear.

  ‘No idea, ma’am,’ Feyd replied.

  Lotara kept staring, and finally cleared her throat. She spoke in a calm, clear voice, as if nothing untoward had happened recently, or indeed ever before.

  ‘Someone get me a link to the surface,’ she said. ‘I need to speak with Angron.’

  EPILOGUE

  I

  ‘What have you done?’

  It didn’t matter how softly Khârn asked the question, anger was still the emotion that drove it. A cold anger though, rather than the heat of rage. This wasn’t born of the Nails. It was much more personal.

  Lorgar’s newly-claimed reflection chamber aboard the Trisagion was a humble space of bare iron and naked steel, untouched as yet by the personal touches of a soul at home. Khârn knew that in time it would become another library-temple, housing whatever scrolls and tomes the primarch chose to devote himself to. For now, its emptiness made it much less inviting, yet strangely more tolerable. The chamber had no windows, no portals looking out into the warp. Khârn couldn’t tell if that change was significant or not. The primarch was mercurial; guessing his moods and methods was a trial at the best of times.

  Lorgar was robed as he usually was when away from battle. He worked at a writing desk, the scratching of his quill a continuous whisper.

  ‘I did what needed to be done, Khârn.’

  The former equerry stepped forwards. ‘There’s a… a daemon shackled in the Conqueror’s hold.’

  Lorgar still didn’t look up. ‘It is Angron. Nothing more, nothing less.’

  ‘Nothing more?’ Disbelief made him bold. ‘It butchered hundreds of my men before you bound it. It does nothing more than roar down there in the dark, breeding shipquakes. Lotara wants to jettison it into space – several decks around it have turned to human flesh, Lord Aurelian. The walls have started shrieking at us with moving mouths. Our water supplies are turning to blood as soon as they’re reprocessed. Whatever is down there is not “Angron and nothing more”. What did you do?’

  ‘Go down there.’ Lorgar still wrote; scratch-scratch went the quill. ‘See for yourself.’

  ‘What did you do? Answer me.’

  Lorgar raised his head with threatening slowness. His eyes blazed with warp light. Looking into them was like staring into the Sea of Souls itself.

  ‘I saved him, Khârn. It was the only way. I alone sought to save him from the Nails that were killing him by degrees. I alone looked into the ways to free him from an existence of unrivalled agony. And I alone acted to save him.’

  ‘But…’

  Lorgar’s glare silenced him. ‘Go down there and see for yourself. Angron is the future, our future. Humanity’s future. Immortal strength, and an eternity to learn the universe’s secret metaphysics. He didn’t die, Khârn. He ascended.’

  ‘But he’s trapped.’

  ‘For all our safety,’ Lorgar agreed. ‘Ultramar is blighted by the Ruinstorm, cut off from the Imperium. But I know the way back through the fire. We will gather our fleets spread across the Five Hundred Worlds, then we shall rejoin Horus. Has Vel-Kheredar finished forging the blade?’

  ‘He has.’

  ‘Is it all I asked?’ Lorgar asked calmly.

  ‘Its blade is black. It burns with god-runes.’

  ‘Bring it to me, Khârn. I will deliver it to Angron, just as I will release him when the time is right.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Can’t you guess? When we next reach a world that must bleed like never before.’ He smiled, though it was a sad thing to see. ‘Is that so different from how Angron has lived his life these last decades? Summoned only for slaughter?’

  Khârn had no answer to that. No sense arguing with the truth.

  ‘Is he in pain?’

  ‘Yes.’ The primarch went back to his writing. ‘But nothing compared to what has wracked him since his gestation pod first crashed on Nuceria, and the Desh’eans hammered the Nails into his skull.’

  Another silence stretched out between them. Khârn broke it by bowing; his armour joints snarled at the movement.

  ‘I’ll see with my own eyes, then.’ He turned to take his leave, but stopped when Lorgar said his name once more.

  ‘Khârn.’

  The captain glanced back, expecting Lorgar to be occupied with his parchment. Instead, the primarch’s gaze was raw and pained; a dignified, restrained fury.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Would you like to know,’ Lorgar asked softly, ‘who killed Argel Tal?’

  II

  Erebus bowed to the crowd, facing the applause of fists thudding against bare chests. The deactivated crozius in his hand was flecked with blood – first blood – and ever the dignified victor, Erebus offered a hand to help Skane up from the deck. The sergeant took the proferred hand, gripping it with his new augmetic limb.

  ‘A fine bout,’ the First Chaplain said.

  The World Eater still hadn’t had his throat mechanics repaired, leaving him speechless, but he grinned and nodded in place of words, and moved back into the crowd.

  Delvarus stepped forwards. So did Khârn. The crowd, on the edge of cheering at the first warrior, fell silent at the sight of the second. The captain said two words to the Triarii centurion.

  ‘Let me.’

  Delvarus saluted and backed away.

  ‘First blood?’ Erebus asked.

  The axe in Khârn’s hand was Gorechild, toothed by mica-dragons and once thrown from the hands of a primarch. He’d chained it to his bare wrist in imitation of the Nucerian gladiators, whose bones he’d seen and honoured mere days before at Desh’elika Ridge.

  The captain was stripped to the waist, as were all the warriors present.

  ‘Sanguis extremis,’ Khârn said. Some of the crowd breathed in, showing their shock as the humans they once were. Others laughed or cheered. More fists beat against chests.

  Erebus regarded Khârn with cold, composed eyes. Several seconds beat in silence, before the Word Bearer’s lips curled in a soft, indulgent smile.

  ‘Bold, Khârn. Are you s–’

  Gorechild revved for the first time since its rebirth, eating air with the throaty snarl of an apex predator. That interruption was the only answer Khârn would give, and Erebus raised his crozius in reply.

  ‘Come then.’

  Three blows. The first: Khârn smashed the maul aside with the flat of his new axe. The second: he cannoned a headbutt into Erebus’s nose, breaking cartilage with a wet crunch. The third: Gorechild tasted first blood, ripping across the Chaplain’s chest, carving a canyon of flesh over the dense subdermal armour of the warrior’s black carapace torso implant.

  All of this happened in the time it took Erebus to blink. No one could move as fast as Khârn moved. No one human, and nothing mortal. The Chaplain threw himself backwards, crozius up high to guard.

  Khârn walked forwards, gunning Gorechild’s trigger. The crowd was silent now. This was a Khârn they’d never seen – not even on the field of battle.

  Another three blows, delivered with the same blinding speed. Erebus’s maul clang-skidded across the deck; he took a fist to the throat and a boot
to the stomach, knocking him back with enough force to send him crashing onto the bloodstained iron grillework.

  He looked up at Khârn from the ground and saw his death in the World Eater’s eyes. He’d never seen this before, not in any of the paths of possibility. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t end like this. He was Destiny’s Hand.

  Khârn looked down at him, clearly allowing time for the Chaplain to recover his crozius.

  ‘Get up.’

  Erebus rose, his mace in his hands again. He attacked this time, showing the speed and skill that had allowed him to hold his own against Lucius of the Emperor’s Children, and Loken of the old Luna Wolves. His crozius trailed killing lightning, buzzing furiously as it thrummed through empty air again and again. Khârn weaved aside from every blow, quicker than a blink, surely quicker than muscles could ever allow.

  Their weapons crashed together. Khârn had parried the last blow. Erebus expected accusation in the World Eater’s eyes, or surely anger. He saw neither. Worse, he saw a bored indulgence. The captain even sighed.

  Three more blows. Erebus was on the deck before he knew how. Pain flared across his chest, hot and urgent, matching the thick throb of his smashed face. He reached to touch the wound with a hand that was no longer there.

  His hand. His hand was on the deck, several metres away. Blood leaked from the chewed veins nestled in the meat of his severed limb. Turning unbelieving eyes downwards, he saw where his arm now ended at the wrist.

  ‘Going to need an augmetic for that,’ Kargos said from the crowd. Several warriors laughed, but few with any real relish. They were too fascinated by what was unfolding.

  Erebus looked up at Khârn again. He was just waiting.

  ‘Get up.’

  The Chaplain rose. Khârn didn’t wait this time – the blows were bloody blurs of whining motors and tearing chain-teeth. Pain bloomed across Erebus’s body, and he was face-down on the deck again before he’d managed to fully rise from the last time. Even without his armour’s pain nullifiers and chemical stimulants, Erebus suppressed the pain by whisper-chanting a sacred mandala. Khârn interrupted it.

  ‘Get up.’

  Erebus actually tried, but he froze when he felt Gorechild’s teeth against his spine. The idling chainblade was purring and breathing out its promethium fuel-stink, the axe’s stilled teeth kissing Erebus’s vertebrae.

  Never, not even in fragmentary glimpses, had he foreseen this duel.

  It couldn’t end like this. He couldn’t die here. There was so much to do. Signus Prime. Terra herself. In all the Ten Thousand Futures, Erebus had seen himself fighting the Long War to the very last.

  The very same second Erebus reached for the ritual knife at his belt with his remaining hand, Khârn pulled the chainaxe’s trigger.

  There should have been a scream. Everyone expected it. Every warrior present waited to hear the First Chaplain of the Word Bearers shriek as Gorechild bit into his flesh. But there was nothing beyond the rotating whine of an axe blade chewing empty air.

  No one seemed surprised at the display of Word Bearers sorcery. Even fewer were surprised at the cowardice. Khârn turned from the blood marking the deck, leaving the circle without a word.

  III

  An hour later, armed and armoured, Khârn stood ready once more.

  ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  Khârn looked at Kargos by the console. ‘Yes, I do. I’ve done it before. Open up.’

  The Apothecary worked the key controls and the doors swung silently outwards. Beyond them, sticky with drying blood, a set of bone steps went down into the shadows. Another roar, wordless and deep-throated, came echoing up from the gloom.

  Khârn walked forwards and let the darkness fold over him as Kargos swung the doors closed behind him. The first thing he heard was the dead whispering in the dark. The second thing was the beast’s breathing. Even his genhanced eyes couldn’t pierce the absolute lack of light. He walked slowly, drawing no weapon despite the temptation, listening to a daemon breathing in the black.

  ‘Khârn,’ said something unseen, from everywhere and nowhere. Whatever it was, it smelled of fresh graves and funeral pyres, and its teeth were wet.

  ‘Lord?’

  Slow thunder answered. No, a laugh. A chuckle. ‘I am no one’s lord. I never was. Even less so now.’

  Khârn swallowed, still edging through the dark. He heard the thing that had once been his gene-sire licking its maw.

  ‘I want something from you, Khârn.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Hnnh. Take your axe. Take your brothers. Kill three hundred souls on the thrall decks.’

  Khârn stared in the direction where he was sure the monster was at rest. ‘Why, sire? To what purpose?’

  ‘Three hundred of them. Take their skulls.’

  Khârn heard the thing smile, heard the wet peeling of its fanged maw curling into a grin. Something huge, winged, and wreathed in the smoke of dead souls tried to move closer to him, and strained against the rune-etched chains that bound it. He saw its eyes burning in the dark, orbs of ember-fire, the colour of boiling blood.

  ‘Take their skulls, Khârn. Build me a throne.’

  AFTERWORD

  Betrayer wasn’t an easy book to write. To be honest, I say that about everything I write – I’m always jealous of authors who say they find writing easy, because for me it’s always a trial of panic, self-doubt, and terrifying deadlines. But Betrayer, like The First Heretic before it, was a beast of a book. It came in at 117,000 words, and getting every paragraph out of my head was like getting blood from a stone. I don’t write the Traitors more often because I prefer them, or because I think they’re easier. It just comes down to what story you find yourself wanting to tell at the time.

  Still, Betrayer is dense with a lot of heavy stuff. The metaphysics of the warp. Primarchs’ motivations and emotions beneath their classical, traditional exteriors. The physiological and psychological nuances of living with the Butcher’s Nails. Angron’s origin story, the power of denial and the emotional resonance of finally tasting a vengeance denied. Carrying on significant plot threads from The First Heretic, Aurelian, Butcher’s Nails and Know No Fear.

  It all added up, rattling around my skull to the point where (just like with The First Heretic) I couldn’t tell if I was exploring the setting in deep, new ways or… something else. I don’t even know what. Dan (of the Legio Abnetticus – har har) has a great phrase for when writers go supernova: he calls it ‘blowing up on the launch pad.’

  I always think I’m blowing up on the launch pad.

  The World Eaters of Warhammer 40,000 are warriors at the end of a long, agonising journey. They’re devolved, degenerate, berserk brutes glorying in their strength and enslaved by their own allegiance to the Blood God. They stand at two minutes to midnight, when the Age of Man is coming to an end.

  But they weren’t always like that. I wanted to show them on the first steps of that path. Not necessarily at their strongest, but perhaps at their most complex and divided.

  Similar to how the Word Bearers in The First Heretic are a Legion at their lowest ebb, lost and unsure of their role, the World Eaters in Betrayer are on the edge of a transformation. They’ve slipped the Imperium’s leash. They’re free. Angron himself has spent over a century struggling to remain loyal and be a dutiful son, wrestling with occasional lapses in self-control and forever harbouring the seeds of a mournful truth: that he felt betrayed himself.

  I’m a big fan of long-reaching character arcs. In a series like this, you’re not going to get very far without some rich and compelling narrative arcs. Just as Lorgar in The First Heretic was the one primarch to have failed the Emperor and never really reached his potential, we’re seeing through Aurelian, The Butcher’s Nails and now Betrayer that who he was at the Heresy’s beginning isn’t who he’ll be when (to use his own words) ‘t
he final day dawns.’ Angron is running along a similar trajectory. He’s not flawless. He’s not invincible. Like every primarch, he’s a reflection of humanity, with many aspects manifested and magnified – and with all the blessings and curses that come with such a mind. He also has the Nails as his personal cross to bear. Of all the primarchs, Angron is the one thwarted above all others. He’s the one that could never truly become what he might have been. There’s tragedy inherent in his tale.

  He’s largely in control of himself – more or less – at the beginning of Betrayer. As the story develops, he regresses to his even more unstable self, reliving the past as he walks on the world where he was raised.

  By the end? Well…

  He’s changed as much as any primarch now, and more than most. But he still has an arc. Good characters grow and deepen over time. His story isn’t done yet.

  Another trial in any Horus Heresy novel is presenting the antagonists as credible, convincing threats. No one Legion is ‘better’ than any other. Sure, Legions will lose fights. That’s the nature of the game, especially in a book specifically about one of those losses. But I always think the key is to make sure the other side don’t look like chumps. I’m quite lucky in that I don’t have a favourite Legion – I pretty much love them all. That’s great for avoiding bias, but even so, I tried not to make the Space Wolves or the Ultramarines come out like punks purely because Betrayer happened to be about victories for the Word Bearers and World Eaters.

  There are several scenes where I hope that comes across: where the Ultramarines’ discipline wrecks the chaotic (little ‘C’) World Eaters, or where they inflict grievous casualties, and quite literally send Khârn flying, to land on his backside. Same with the Wolves: where Russ and his Legion drive the World Eaters to a bitter stalemate, perhaps losing the battle of pride, but succinctly and effectively winning the war. Going for the throat, if you will. Very wolfy.

  That’s what I mean. You still want the antagonist Legions’ characters to shine through.