by Nick Kyme
‘Imagine, sire, did they fight in your home with grenades? Explosive weapons, small enough to hold in the hand and throw?’
‘High-rider weapons,’ snarled Angron. ‘Not fit for a warrior on the hot dust.’
‘But imagine, primarch, some,’ he searched for the word Angron had used, ‘some paperskin who takes a grenade and simply grips it in his fist until it explodes. Imagine how it would destroy the hand, shatter the arm, ruin the body! Wherever the Emperor met one of their columns head on it shattered like that. He didn’t repel them, sire. Didn’t defeat them. He ruined them. Assault after assault, not even Perturabo when he came down to the lines for the final—’
‘You’ve said that name already,’ boomed Angron from behind him. ‘Who is he?’
‘Forgive me, sire. Another primarch. One of the first we found. I was new to the War Hounds when the message went through the fleets, and I almost didn’t understand what it meant. Not until I saw the Iron Warriors and how they reacted. The very air seemed to change around them. They and we and the Ultramarines, we were travelling together. We envied them. They had found their blood-sire and their general. Now we have found ours.’
‘Another. Another one.’ Kharn risked a look around and up. Angron was standing still, hands pressed to his face again, teeth grinding as he concentrated. ‘Another one of me?’
‘Not like you, primarch. A brother to you. Made for conquest and kingship as you are. The Iron Warriors, they’re his Legion now.’
‘Brave fighters?’
‘Brave enough,’ Kharn answered, ‘with a wall to sit on or a trench to stand in.’
‘Walls.’ Angron growled the word. ‘Walls can be broken.’
‘So we tell them, sire. Perhaps you can—’
‘Walls,’ Angron cut him off. ‘When we first broke out of the caves and walked on stone, not dust, we were nearly trapped within walls. We had the weapons we’d drawn one another’s blood with and they were ready for a change of flavour. The high-riders laughed, the way they always laughed as they looked down on us on the dust, and they called out taunts the way they goaded us when we fought.’
Angron whipped his fists through the air as though he were batting at insects. ‘Sent their voices through the maggot-eyes they watched us with. Voices, voices. “Oh, do oblige, wonderful Angron!”‘ Angron’s voice was suddenly, eerily imitating a higher, softly accented, singsong voice. ‘“We wagered you’d take a wound from a dozen enemies, surely a single wound, won’t you oblige and bleed for us?”‘
His tone shifted and he imitated another. ‘“My son is watching with me, Angron, what’s wrong with you? Fight harder, give him something to cheer!” The eyes, the voices. The Butcher’s Nails in my head… hot… smoke… in my thoughts…’A wolfish look stole over Angron’s face. ‘It was good to fight without the eyes and the voices. They tried to trap us but we wouldn’t stop for them. Every line they formed we rushed before they were in formation. They were everywhere but we were fast.’
Angron was suiting actions to words, loping back and forth, smashing and lunging and ripping at imaginary enemies.
‘Jochura with his laugh and his chains. Cromach, he fought with a brazier-glaive. Hah! I gave him the first black twist in his rope, and he and I burned the watchtowers at Hozzean together. Klester riding her shriekspear through the air, you should have seen her, Kharn, so fast, and ohh…’ Angron was clutching at the metal tracery poking out through his mane. ‘Fast we moved, fast, not hanging between walls, entrapment is death, fast, trust and discipline… Never rest, always forwards, hunger for the enemy, that’s what they taught us… Uhh, my brothers and sisters, oh, if we had known how it would end, we didn’t know!’ Angron fell to his knees and howled. ‘All that valour! The eaters of cities, they called us! All the mountain fastnesses, burning like beacons! All the Great Coast painted in blood! We devoured Hozzean with flames! Meahor! Ull-Chaim!’ Weeping and roaring, he leapt to his feet, oblivious to Kharn looking on.
‘We broke them at the river before Ull-Chaim! Hung half a thousand high-riders and kin-guard from the vine bridges! The princelings’ heads floating on the river, down to the lowlands as our heralds! The silver lace from their skulls, ahh, ripped from their skulls, wrapped on my fists!’
The furnace rage was back. Kharn thought to shuffle away, and dismissed the idea. He would not hide from Angron any more than he would fight him. And Angron would find him anywhere in this room anyway. And no sooner had he finished that thought than he had been wrenched from the ground by each arm and swung over the primarch’s head to be slammed into the floor. Stone cracked under him.
‘They paid! They paid! We made them pay!’ Angron kicked Kharn across the floor, bellowing. ‘Paid for my brothers and sisters! Who will pay?’
Dizzy, fainting, Kharn felt himself picked up and slammed down again, kicked again, grabbed by the neck.
‘Pay, War Hound! Pay! Fight me!’ Something – fist? Foot? – crashed into his chest and Kharn sprawled on the floor, choking. ‘Get up and fight!’
The end of it, then, Kharn thought. Well, I carried my embassy as well as a War Hound could. He tried to rise and couldn’t, so he lay full-length on his back and spoke weakly into the air.
‘You are my primarch and my general, Lord Angron. I swore that I would seek you out and follow you, and I will not fight you. And if I must die, then yours is the hand I will die by. I am Kharn and I am loyal to your will.’
While he waited, he faded from consciousness then jerked back as his system shifted itself to rouse him and the pain of his injuries sharpened. He could not see or hear Angron, but he could feel the stone floor underneath him and the cool air in his lungs. When it came, Angron’s voice was frighteningly close, almost by his ear.
‘You are warriors, Kharn,’ the primarch said. ‘I know warriors when I see them.’ Kharn tried to answer but pain rippled through his neck and chest when he tried to speak.
‘This… Emperor,’ Angron said, palpably struggling to keep his voice level. ‘He is the one you swore to?’
‘We swore to each other,’ Kharn managed to get out, ‘in his name and on his banner.’ His breath took a long time to come. ‘That we would not… raise a hand against you.’
Angron said nothing for a time. Kharn’s consciousness had begun to flicker again by the time he spoke.
‘Such devotion… from such warriors…’ His voice tailed off, faded and returned. His hands were pressed to his head again. ‘A man who can… a man… to whom… your oaths… for him you would…’
Minutes passed. Angron’s voice came again.
‘This room. I can leave it?’ It took Kharn a moment to work out how to answer.
‘This is the flagship of the War Hounds. Our greatest vessel. It is the instrument of your will and yours to command, primarch, as are we.’
For a long time there was no answer, just quiet and dark, and just as Kharn was starting to feel his consciousness go again he felt himself lifted, slowly and gently now, and carried through the dark.
THEY HAD LOOKED at one another when the booming knock came on the doors, unsure of what to do, but only for a moment. Then Dreagher worked the openers, and when the locks clanked and the portals groaned open he was there. The War Hounds gasped and moved back as the giant shadow on the steps grew, advanced, came into the light. With his right hand the primarch supported Kharn, battered and hanging barely conscious.
Angron stood, wary, wound tight as a bowstring, his free hand opening and closing. His breath rumbled in his throat. For long minutes each War Hound in turn blanched under the primarch’s gaze, until Kharn managed to lift his head and speak.
‘Salute your primarch, War Hounds. Salute he who shed blood on the hot dust and made the high-riders pay for their arrogance. Salute your blood-sire and the general of the XII. Salute the one whose soldiers were named the Eaters of Cities. Salute him, Astartes!’
And the War Hounds answered him. Hands and voices lifted in salute and axe-heads were crashed a
gainst the floor. Gathering around Angron, he towering silently at their centre, they shouted and saluted again, and again, and Kharn found the strength and voice to stagger to join the circle and add his shouts to theirs.
‘Primarch,’ said Angron. His voice was a murmur, but it cut the War Hounds’ voices straight to silence. ‘I am a general again.’
‘Primarch!’ shouted Dreagher in response, ‘General! Your warriors were the eaters of cities, lord, but with you to command us the War Hounds will be the eaters of worlds!’
For a moment Angron swayed, his eyes and fists closed. But then he looked at Dreagher, from there to Kharn. And he smiled.
‘World Eaters,’ he said, slowly, tasting the sounds. ‘World Eaters. So you shall be, then, little brothers. You’ll learn to cut the rope. We shall bleed, and be brothers.’ This time they all met his eyes. Slowly, one of Angron’s great fists came up to return their salutes.
‘Come with me, then, World Eaters. Come down into my chamber and we will speak.’ Angron turned on his heel and walked back into his chamber.
Silently, supporting Kharn in their midst, the World Eaters followed their primarch down into that darkness that stank of blood.
