Lion El'Jonson- Lord of the First - David Guymer

by Warhammer 40K

  Working his jaw, the las-burn almost completely healed, Stenius strode up to the section chief.

  'You requested my presence, lieutenant.’

  The officer turned in her chair. Unease crimped her features. The simpler, lazier interpretation was that the woman suffered a flutter of common transhuman-phobia at his approach. But Stenius was a veteran of the First. He saw lies in the plainest motives. He saw lies and was neither surprised nor disappointed when he did. A third of the chairs around her stood empty. They had belonged to people who had been put down by the Legion and no one would tell her why. No memory of the khrave and what they had almost accomplished was to exist, not even in the minds of those who had been there. Such was the order of the Lion.

  Stenius would have been suspicious too under those circumstances. But then Stenius was suspicious as a matter of principle.

  'Long-range auguries have picked up a translation spike from the Mandeville point, galactic north,’ she said, after only a moment's pause. 'Auto-hails declare her the Wrath's Descent.'

  'That's Master Alajos' ship.'

  'I have an incoming vox-hail waiting, sir.’

  'Put him through.'

  She pushed a button.

  Static buzzed through augmitter pads mounted on bracing columns around the deck. They projected inwards from the four corners, recreating the sense of being at the centre of whatever it was that the system broadcasted. The static subsided but did not disappear altogether. Gifted with acute Space Marine hearing, Stenius was soon able to discern that it was no longer static he was hearing. It was the fragmentary pick-up from a damaged ship. Snarled up in the transmission were sparks, sprinklers, alerting systems. A constant dull whine was almost certainly the sound of an adamantium saw cutting through a collapsed bulkhead.

  'Master?' said Stenius. 'This is Stenius. Castellan of the Invincible Reason.'

  'This is Alajos.' The vox-reply was thick with pain indicators, slurred by a cocktail of accelerated healing factors and an extended lack of sleep. ‘In command of the Ninth Order. Where is Master Duriel?'

  'A long story.'

  'Perhaps one day I will get to hear it.'

  'Perhaps,' said Stenius.

  'It was quite the fight we have been through, brother.'

  'Do not allow your warriors to get comfortable. The Lion is already pulling our forces back from Muspel and preparing his ships for departure. The 517th Expedition has been redirected here to restore compliance, and an auxilia garrison can hold what is left of the capital city until they arrive.'

  ‘I need at least two weeks' layover to conduct repairs on our battle systems.'

  'The Lion has given his orders.'

  Alajos sighed. ’We will make ready. Loyalty and honour, brother.'

  'Loyalty and honour.' The master of the Ninth Order cut the transmission.

  The section chief signaled for Stenius' attention.

  'I have more incoming vox-hails wailing, sir.'

  'From the Ninth?'

  'No, sir.'

  Stenius looked over her head, scanning the officer's entire suite of readouts and diagnostics with a few flicks of the eyes. Several independent battlegroups were in the process of translating in-system, one after the other. Given the vagaries of warp travel and relativistic time in as disturbed a region as the Ghoul Stars, their timing was remarkable. It looked as though the entire Fourth Expedition Fleet, broken up by the Lion prior to the formation of the 2003rd and the course to Muspel, was returning to muster. Stenius marked from memory the transponder returns that were missing. The majority of those present corresponded to vessels that were battered and burning, limping on minimal drive from the system heliosphere.

  He paused, considering the events the Lion had put in play since then, and smiled.

  'Sir?' said the chief.

  'Answer the nearest ship.'

  She reached out and pushed her button.

  'Chaplain Nemiel aboard the Black Talon, this is Stenius...'

  II

  It was dark.

  The absence was a deeper one than of mere light. It was something fundamental, even spiritual. The shadows had no depth. The bare stone beneath his armoured knees had no texture. The incense bowls and scented candles set up around the rose-shaped chamber performed a jaded dance, their aromas bland and indistinct. The breeze that ruffled the hood drawn over the supplicant's face was barely a physical sensation at all. More like a glimpse of breezes long since deceased. A remembrance of breezes yet to be. Were he to close his eyes, he might find himself upon a high, half-remembered wall, the scent of pine strong, the rustling of dark trees eager.

  But his eyes were open. His world was dark. The rustling was not that of trees but of a circle of grim and hooded knights.

  He did not know them.

  'Where am I?'

  'You are back aboard the ship, brother.'

  'Were we victorious?'

  He did not recall a specific battle, but he remembered there had been one. And he was a warrior. That there had been a battle in his near past felt like a given. He remembered light, a hard, stinging light, a fire that had burned in his mind.

  'We are the First,' said the knight nearest to him. His aura was dim. The echo of his destiny was a whisper on the ghost of a forest breeze. He wore a silver and nacre talisman above his robes. 'We are always victorious, even if no other knows of it but us.'

  He looked down. A clean white surplice brushed the flagstones between his bent knees. He was still looking at them as a tall knight stepped through the circle that surrounded him. The warrior affixed a silver laurel to his pauldron. It bore no emblems or words.

  He looked up.

  'What is this, brother?'

  'It is just that the deeds of past heroes be honoured, however dim in the memory their battles have become,' the knight spoke, his voice deep and immediately enthralling. The passage from the Meditations was familiar, but he could not say when or from whom he had first learned it. 'For while men are temporal and destined to be forgotten, their deeds are manifestations of courage, and that lives on in all who follow, so long as one man remembers them.' The supplicant frowned.

  He remembered the descent to Muspel. The landing on Uncus. He remembered holding a weapon. He remembered...

  'What did I do to earn this honour?'

  The knight removed his hood.

  'Your duty,' said the Lion.

  IMPERATOR SOMNIUM

  'It is a pity that your campaigns kept you from the Triumph,' said the Emperor. 'Your presence was missed by your brothers. Horus in particular spoke to me of his regret.'

  'He knows that I would have attended had I been able,' the Lion replied, a tone far sharper than any he had ever before employed in the presence of his father.

  'You are troubled,' said the Emperor.

  ‘The Imperium celebrates, but its Triumph is empty. The galaxy is not won because Horus has his great victory.'

  'Recall my words to you - Ullanor is just another victory

  'Then why the pageantry?'

  'Some men demand such pomp. They cannot accept the end of one era and the commencement of another without an occasion by which to mark it and give it meaning. Laurels must be given, honours and fair titles invented so that they may be bestowed upon favoured generals. Some men need recognition.' The shadows around the Emperor's throne deepened. But beneath the layers of obfuscation, deep within the myriad guises of that singularly unfathomable being, the Lion felt the Emperor behold His firstborn son.

  'Some men,' the Emperor continued, 'do not.'

  About the Author

  David Guymer is the author of the Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, and the Horus Heresy novella Dreadwing. His work for Warhammer 40,000 includes The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written the novels Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods and The Court of the Blind King, the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fi
st of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned and the Gotrek audio dramas Realmslayer and Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.

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