Mark of Calth

by Edited by Laurie Goulding

  The Horus Heresy®

  It is a time of legend.

  The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.

  His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.

  Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.

  Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.

  Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.

  The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.

  The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended. The Age of Darkness has begun.

  It is the doom of empires that they forget, and those that consign their victories and failures alike to oblivion are destined to repeat them forevermore. An empire should honour its history.

  With the treachery of our brothers revealed and the Mark of Calth measured in the beating of loyal, legionary hearts, we gather and collate. Witnesses to the end of a world give us their accounts. Enemies are interrogated. Communiqués, datastreams, status reports – we will read them all. We will scrutinise. We will analyse. We will reach judgement, both upon others and upon ourselves. We will conclude the whole truth of those dark times, even if it takes us a thousand years.

  The XIII Legion has not forgotten – nor will it ever forget – what happened at noble Calth. We fight with the weight of Ultramar’s history upon our shoulders. It is our burden. It is our honour.

  – Roboute Guilliman, In Plenitudine Temporis (In the Fullness of Time), from the General Introduction, ref:71.1

  The chanting of Erebus’s lesser, human priests reached its height as he unwrapped the anathame blade from its blessed shrouding. Reverently the Dark Apostle lifted the weapon – one hand upon the hilt, the other beneath the blade with an open palm so that his flesh would not touch its deadly edge.

  Crafted from neither metal nor stone, it had characteristics of both, and was warm to the touch as though alive. This was the weapon that he had stolen from the interex, the blade that had wounded the Warmaster and turned him to the true way. It was a holy artefact, and key to a plot that spanned tens of thousands of years.

  And now he must violate it.

  He presented the sword to the statues of the four powers that dominated the sacellum space of the Destiny’s Hand. He called out prayers and incantations, saluting the dread lords of the warp, each in turn. A row of eight cult priests bearing censers and icons followed his every move, adding a chorus of their own voices to his supplications. They fell behind Erebus in procession as he walked solemnly to the high altar of the Octed that dominated the nave. The Dark Apostle had little time for common mortals, but these priests were among his most trusted servants.

  What he was doing here was to remain secret until the allotted time. The doors were barred. His bodyguards stood watch outside.

  Before the great brass and iron star had been set an anvil, specially cast and sanctified for the sole purpose of this ritual. Cowled artisans stood in readiness at either side – Guldire, chief among the Dark Apostle’s Warpsmiths, shadowed by his foremost apprentice. They would aid him in this task, directing his blows and channelling away the fell energies that might yet be unleashed.

  The Warpsmiths did not flinch as Erebus pointed the terrible blade at them. He took the hilt in both hands, and raised the anathame, point upwards, to his forehead. With his eyes closed and hushed prayers upon his quick lips, he placed the weapon upon the anvil – the holy weapon that had brought Horus Lupercal into the light.

  The priests downed their icons and doused their torches. They brought out their athames from their sleeves. Their chanting grew deeper.

  Erebus took up a rune-inscribed hammer from the apprentice Warpsmith. The head came to a brutal point, like that of a pick, and it crackled with the subdued energy of a disruption field.

  The Dark Apostle gazed down at the blade for the longest moment. It seemed a sacrilege what he must do, but the weapon had served its purpose.

  In this form, at least.

  He pinned the blade down firmly. Muttering outlawed spells torn from the minds of dead kinebrach metallurgists, he raised the hammer above his head, and brought it down hard. The hammer’s head flared with light as it connected with the anathame’s arcane alloys. There was a mighty bang, and a terrific scream as though the weapon itself cried out in pain, and the priests sank their ritual athames into their own hearts.

  They did this willingly. What Erebus had asked of them was a great honour, the first anointing of a new weapon against the False Emperor. Their blood flowed onto the stone flags as they fell, their souls running joyously into the warp as their hymnal ceased in choking death rattles. He prayed that their weak spirits would prove sufficient offering.

  The sword writhed in his hand; although his eyes did not see it move, he felt it shiver and squirm, as muscular and deadly as a snake.

  He called out in the black speech of the kinebrach, and felt the air shift under the fell burden of the sounds. He brought the hammer down again, and again.

  A crack like thunder. A flash of greenish light.

  Erebus reeled back, the hammer spinning from his hand to land in the pooling blood upon the deck. He nearly went down himself, pushed away by the portion of the weapon’s holy might that he had released. His muscled arm was numb to the shoulder, his hand sparkling with electric agony.

  He approached the anvil again cautiously. The sword rang with a fading note. Next to it lay a finger-length sliver of the blade’s weird alloys. The anathame shimmered with heat haze; it was diminished, yet whole. Erebus felt awe at this god-slayer, this tool of the end times.

  He smiled with satisfaction and looked to his Warpsmiths.

  ‘Take the shard. Place it in the medium.’

  Guldire bowed his hooded head, and deftly plucked the sliver from the anvil with a pair of black iron tongs. It hissed and spat in the chill air. He produced a small jar of blood-grown ruby, filled with a liquid of an even darker red, and in the shard of metal went. The Warpsmith screwed down the vessel’s lid, sealing it with black wax and pressed symbols.

  Erebus rubbed at his shoulder. He ignored his pain. Pain was the least of what would test him in the months and years to come. He picked up the hammer, grasped the hilt of the anathame, and spoke once more the spells of making and unmaking.

  The hammer fell.

  Seven more times did Erebus break the dark blade; seven more slivers he commended to his Warpsmiths, until finally he was done. The sword’s anguish faded.

  The sacellum was silent at last. His ears rang. He lifted his head with effort. Sweat dripped from his face; he was febrile, his arms lea
den.

  ‘It is done,’ he said weakly, though there was much yet to do. The air was tainted – the sacellum practically thrummed with outrage, its animus offended by Erebus’s sacrilege. The universe itself knew that what he had done was an affront to the natural order, and that he had done it for his own gain.

  He revelled in reality’s discomfiture. He was a Dark Apostle, First Chaplain and bearer of the true faith. His was a higher purpose – the will of the gods themselves guided his hand.

  Give me strength now, he thought, to embrace my destiny. Already events were in motion, and the days of the XIII Legion were numbered. He had seen the need to embroider his own goals into Lorgar’s plans. The fracturing of the anathame was but the first step down a longer path.

  His gaze came to rest upon the diminished blade. He would dispose of it, conveying it on as he had originally been instructed.

  ‘Take the shards to the forge,’ he ordered the Warpsmiths. ‘Send for me when they are ready.’

  Within his sanctuary, Quor Vondar, Chief Librarian-sorcerer of the Word Bearers, let his psychic senses unfurl. The crude matter of realspace dropped away, and he gloried in the revealed majesty of the warp.

  Had there been anyone else with him in the small chamber, they would have seen a slow smile spread across his face.

  Here was power, the very realm of the gods. Its tides caressed him, the warmth of its living energies invigorating his body and mind. Fearsome entities stalked the depths, but he paid them no heed; he was the anointed of the Legion, and his faith in the revealed powers of the universe was his shield. These fleshless daemons that swam the sea of souls were lesser servants – they had no souls of their own. They were not so mighty as he.

  Chosen of the gods.

  The weakest among the warp’s denizens bowed to him and sought his favour. They whispered their fealty, they promised great power and insight if only he would set them free. Open your mind! they sang. Let us in! Let us in!

  Quor Vondar did not open his mind. His was not the way of possession, for he was above such crude displays of devotion. Let the Gal Vorbak court the bottom-feeders – he could wield the energies of the warp directly. He could lay waste to his enemies with but a thought. He could channel the might of the gods into a glorious blast of ruin. No, he had no need of what the daemons promised, and he dismissed them with contempt. Their minds slunk back, whimpering, into the undifferentiated roil of the empyrean.

  Oh, how wrong the Emperor was to deny this to his servants. How very, very wrong. The so-called Master of Mankind was a liar, a false prophet, keeping the true nature of power hidden. A paper god, not worthy of the Word Bearers’ worship. He had denied their veneration, Quor Vondar suspected, simply to make them crave his blessing more, forcing the faithful to kneel in the dust of Monarchia. Now the XVII Legion understood, and the power the Emperor sought to keep for himself was theirs instead.

  Fool. He would die. So sure of his sons’ mewling obedience, he was likely still ignorant of the war, gathering apace after Horus’s masterful victories in the Isstvan system. He was blissfully ignorant, but soon he would pay for his selfishness.

  Something disturbed Quor Vondar’s meditation. He sensed no unusual movement in the empyrean, and no warnings were cried by his bound sentinels, but there was… something.

  Muttering cantrips of warding to guard his exit from the warp, he slipped his mind from its unholy communion and opened his eyes.

  He was alone in the sanctuary. The uncanny beings that stood watch over his meditating form remained quiet.

  An unexpected draft caused the candles upon his prayer shrine to flicker. He stood, his brocaded robes whispering, and… there, again. He turned in a circle as he followed the movement, a wave of yellow flames guttering atop those black waxen pillars. Twice it went about his chamber, light glittering insolently off the statuary as if daring him to guess its cause. Still his guardians raised no alarm.

  Now Quor Vondar’s courage shrivelled. He suppressed the urge to cry out, turning the unborn words to a snarl of anger. He crept through the shadowy space, pausing to genuflect before the great Octed. That seemed to calm the disturbance. The movement ceased.

  What could this betoken? Perhaps it was a message, a test from the gods. He liked to think himself so important. Still, perplexed, he turned back to the centre of the room.

  He gasped, his hand catching on his robes as it sought the handle of his dagger.

  In the centre of the room was a knife, plunged into the centre of his warding circle – the very spot where he had been seated until moments ago.

  Quor Vondar hesitated as he approached it. An aura of malice spilled from its black blade. The knife appeared to be of a dark metal, knapped like flint, and yet it had been plunged into the plasteel plates of the deck without breaking. Dark red ribbons inscribed with holy texts trailed from its leather-bound handle.

  Pinned to the floor by its point was a message, handwritten upon rich parchment.

  Quor Vondar recognised the penmanship. It was that of the Dark Apostle Erebus, adviser of Horus, absent from the Word Bearers fleet these past months. Where he had gone, none knew.

  Quor Vondar mastered his unease, grasped the hilt of the knife and drew it easily from the deck. The weapon seemed to tingle in his hand. He plucked the message from the blade and began to read.

  He frowned, and crushed the parchment into a ball.

  ‘Let him summon me,’ the Librarian-sorcerer muttered. ‘We shall see who is the master.’

  Phael Rabor started from his slumber, coming to full wakefulness in less than a heartbeat. Something was amiss. He leapt up from his pallet. He stood unclothed, senses straining, muscles tense and ready for combat.

  His cell was dark. The ship’s engines vibrated almost imperceptibly through the metal beneath his bare feet as it pushed its way through the warp. The drone of machinery within the hull troubled the edges of his augmented hearing, and the scent of unwashed bodies – both legionary and mortal serf – lingered in the corridor outside.

  There was no one there now, yet his feeling of disquiet persisted, a sense of reality off kilter. Rabor made for the switch by his pallet to activate the single ceiling mounted lumen-strip, but something gave him pause and he went to the one by the doorway instead.

  Light filled the chamber, and he found his eye drawn to the other switch.

  Where his hand would have passed, a knife was embedded in the wall. Pushed up the blade, near to the hilt, was a message.

  He snarled.

  ‘Erebus…’

  Davin was as the First Chaplain remembered it, with wide plains running into the red deserts beyond. The Thunderhawk startled great herds of ungulates into stampede as it swept over the savannah.

  ‘Keep low,’ he ordered the pilots. ‘I do not wish to announce my presence.’

  ‘As you wish, Lord Erebus.’

  They were far from the civilisation sheltering in the mountain valleys. Out here on the plains were only the herds and the nomads that hunted them.

  He chose a hollow in the grasslands for their landing site and had them put the gunship down, before gathering his belongings and making for the lower deck. The five warriors of his bodyguard bowed before him as he descended.

  The ship settled into its landing gear and the forward ramp cranked open, letting in rays of dazzling sunlight. Erebus wore no battle-plate, only the rough robes of a mendicant priest. He was an apostle of the truth, and the truth demanded humility, as much as that might chafe at his usual sense of grandeur. Upon his back was a small pack of supplies, enough for a few days – this too was of simple manufacture, rough hessian stitched into the gaps where use and time had frayed it. An athame gleamed at his waist, utilitarian and unadorned. The only item of ostentation about him was the roll of rich velvet he had slung over his shoulder, but this was hidden, covered in grubby sackcloth tied with a co
rd.

  ‘You are to return to the Destiny’s Hand,’ he informed his men. ‘Shipmaster Voregar has orders to rejoin the fleet. Wait for me there.’

  ‘How will you return, lord?’ asked Undil. ‘Will you contact the garrison? We are far from–’

  ‘Do not concern yourself with that, brother-sergeant. I will return before we reach Ultramar.’

  The sergeant paused, uncertain. He bowed again. ‘As you say, my lord.’

  Erebus stepped out onto the dry grass of the savannah. He trudged to a safe distance as the engines of the gunship whined up to full power. The wash of exhaust set fires in the grass.

  He watched as the Thunderhawk banked, aimed its blunt prow at the heavens and rapidly ascended. The echoes of its passage rolled off across the plains, and he was alone. The sough of the wind, the crackle of burning grass and the lowing of panicked animals in the distance took its place.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The air was hot, redolent of parched soil and animals under the smell of smoke. Here, in the Davin system, his greatest plan had been set in motion by the turning of Horus. His return was a homecoming of sorts.

  The flames were spreading in the dry grass, fanned by the wind. Erebus shifted his burden upon his back, and began to walk.

  The chamber was large enough to accommodate more than a hundred legionaries, and yet it struggled to contain the collected egos of the five Word Bearers who now occupied it. They were the greatest of the Legion’s ranks, clad in all their regalia as if for war. Their stares spoke of open distrust; some were as close as blood-kin, but in recent times they had vied hard with one another as the face of the XVII Legion changed, and brotherhood crumbled quickly before ambition’s onslaught.

  Kor Phaeron, with all his grand titles, certainly considered himself to be the head of such a gathering. His arrogance was palpable to the rest; Morpal Cxir, Phael Rabor, Foedral Fell and Hol Beloth all chafed beneath his conceit. He bestowed a smile upon them that was perilously close to a sneer as they gathered around the innermost of the room’s eight concentric tables, each taking their place at a point of the Chaos star set into the granite surface.