The Crimson King

by Graham McNeill

  ‘What is your name?’ repeated Ahriman.

  Reluctantly, the man’s eyes returned to looking up at him and he replied, ‘Hawser, lord. Kasper Hawser, conservator, assigned to–’

  ‘Is that a joke?’ asked Hathor Maat.

  ‘What?’ asked the man.

  ‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’

  ‘I don’t understand, lord.’

  ‘You told us your name,’ pressed Hathor Maat with exasperation. ‘Was it supposed to be a joke? Is it some nickname?’

  ‘I don’t understand. That’s my name. Why would you think it’s a joke?’

  ‘Kasper Hawser?’ said Ahriman, again feeling that this name should have significance to him beyond the obvious. ‘You don’t understand the reference?’

  The man called Hawser shook his head. ‘No one’s ever…’

  Ahriman turned his head and glanced at his companions before fixing his attention squarely on Hawser. ‘Clear the area.’

  Hawser nodded and eased past Ahriman.

  ‘Once the security of this area can be guaranteed,’ said Ahriman, ‘your team may be permitted to resume its duties. You will evacuate to the safe zone and await notification.’

  Hawser nodded, fleeing past Tolbek and Hathor Maat to rejoin his comrades. When the man was gone, an invisible weight seemed to lift from Ahriman’s shoulders, as if a moment of great import had passed before him in a fogged mirror. He’d sensed some connection between them, but no matter how he reached for it, the truth slithered from his grasp.

  A moment of silence stretched as the three adepts of the Thousand Sons stared up at the towering statues before them, each finding different meaning in the stylised expressions carved in the stone by ancient hands.

  ‘So we’re here,’ said Tolbek. ‘Now what?’

  Ahriman nodded towards the statues.

  ‘These conservators dared not damage these statues to learn what lay behind them and what they were protecting,’ he said. ‘We will not make that same mistake.’

  ‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’ asked Hathor Maat.

  Ahriman nodded and raised his hands. Aether-light ignited.

  ‘How are your Raptora powers?’

  Every one of the Vorax and Ursarax opened fire at the same instant. A blitzing storm of lightning and volkite filled the arena, each automaton’s aim perfectly aligned to pass through where the shard of Magnus stood or harmlessly out of their circle if it were somehow to miss.

  A heartbeat later, Bjarki dropped to one knee and slammed his fist against the ground. Fault-lines shot from the point of impact and a deafening shock wave buckled the air as a freezing pyre engulfed Magnus in a geyser of razored ice shards.

  The primarch reeled, and his bellow of agony was music to Promus’ ears. The weapons fire of the cybernetics was a distraction only – a sleight of hand to obscure the true assault. Bjarki’s ice was blinding, and Promus charged through the coruscating psychic storm towards Magnus. Needles of ice sliced the surface of his plate.

  His auto-senses were hazed with frost and storm-light, but he needed no mortal senses to see the Crimson King. The primarch’s soul-shard was a twisting titan of blinding illumination, the phosphorous silhouette of a giant.

  Promus leapt and slashed his sword in a high, decapitating strike. A risky cut, but one that could end this fight before it truly began.

  His searing blade cut the ice-filled air.

  Magnus swayed aside, a fractional movement that would have been impossible for a being of flesh and blood, but this was no mortal opponent. Promus’ blade passed a hair’s breadth from Magnus’ neck. The primarch spun on his heel as Promus landed, ducking to hammer his elbow into the Librarian’s flank.

  Burnished war-plate splintered under the awful force. Ribs broke and Promus felt bone fragments gouge the toughened meat of his lungs. The impact drove the breath from him, but he rode the blow and brought his sword back down in a lightning-fast reverse stroke.

  Magnus parried it with his khopesh, hooking his blade’s haft under Promus’ guard to hammer its pommel into the former Ultramarine’s chin.

  Promus’ head snapped back, his body tracing a perfect parabola as he flew through the air. Sinews strained to breaking point as his helmet split down its centre line. The crystalline matrix in his psy-hood shattered. He slammed into the sands, his vision a mire of static and fractured warning icons.

  Promus blinked away the savage pain and reached up to tear off his ruined helm. The heat of Aghoru assailed him, even over the freezing residue of Bjarki’s power. Cold filled him and he heard Wolves howling.

  Ultramarian discipline asserted itself and he pushed himself to his feet. Gunfire and the clash of steel filled the arena. The actinic bite of the immaterium slithered over his skin.

  Bjarki’s warriors and Yasu Nagasena circled Magnus, like pack predators who, having run their prey to ground, were revelling in the last moment before the kill. That the Wolves allowed a mortal to fight alongside them was surprising. That he yet lived was doubly so.

  They rushed the primarch en masse, going at him with no urge to duel or trade barbs, but simply to kill. Only Nagasena fought with finesse, but even his attacks were the purest expressions of simplicity and directness.

  Magnus reeled under their brutal ferocity.

  Light spilled from where each weapon struck, but none could land a killing blow. Magnus struck out and Svafnir Rackwulf went down on one knee, blood sheeting from his left leg. A bone-crunching boot to the chest hurled him back ten metres, his barbed harpoon spinning from his grip.

  Bjarki fought with his frost blade and winter’s lightning at his fingertips. Forking blasts punched into Magnus, splitting flares of warp essence into vapour. Gierlothnir Helblind swung his great axe two-handed like a veteran headsman.

  Where the Wolves were pack predators, Nagasena was a striking snake, darting in to attack with pinpoint accuracy and blows that would slay a mortal thrice over.

  Magnus fought each in turn, spinning, blocking and attacking like the Avenging Son himself. The primarch caught the haft of Helblind’s descending weapon in one hand and jerked it forwards.

  He pulled Helblind off balance, but the Wolf refused to relinquish his weapon. Magnus hacked his khopesh down. Promus threw himself into the fight as Magnus’ blade clove into Helblind’s chest. Searing electrical fire blazed from the wound and the Fenrisian roared in anger.

  Even as he fell, he cursed Magnus.

  ‘No!’ yelled Bjarki and Magnus laughed at his pain.

  Bjarki, Nagasena and Promus stood alone before the Crimson King, and the former Ultramarine realised how grossly they had underestimated the primarch’s martial prowess. So much was made of his scholarly devotion to learning that they had forgotten the Lord of Prospero was still a warrior of sublime and terrible wrath.

  Magnus read the realisation in his eyes and grinned.

  ‘Is this how you thought this would end?’ said Magnus.

  Promus drew upon the iron discipline of Macragge and allowed the searing energies of the warp into his body.

  ‘This isn’t ended,’ he said, thrusting his sword into the sky. A whipping, crackling arc of vivid blue energy lanced from the heavens towards his blade, the power to slay daemons and rip the fabric of space-time asunder.

  The energy never reached him.

  It bent aside at the last instant, drawn into Magnus’ outstretched fist.

  ‘You are a fool if you think you can best me in a contest of psychic mastery, Dio Promus,’ said Magnus, his body a lightning rod at the heart of a storm. The primarch thrust his fist at Promus and the Librarian’s war-plate split as enormous, crushing energies seized it. His plastron buckled as it compressed.

  Bjarki and Nagasena renewed their attack. The Sigillite’s man rolled left, slashing his blade at the primarch’s hamstrings. Bja
rki arced behind Magnus and called the powers of Fenris to his sword. It blazed with the coldest fires imaginable.

  ‘For the Spear Inviter!’ he yelled and thrust his sword hard and straight into Magnus’ back. The blade burst from the centre of the primarch’s chest and an eruption of prismatic light filled the arena. Magnus spun and brought his khopesh down in a brutal arc towards the Rune Priest’s skull.

  Bjarki roared and bared his fangs in the face of death.

  And a pair of smoking wolves, one tar-black and the other snowdrift-white, unfolded from the air beside him. They leapt at the descending blade, ripping Magnus’ arm backwards. They savaged the primarch of the Thousand Sons, clawing and tearing and biting. Light burned from Magnus’ wounds, but he spoke a word of power and the twin wolves exploded into cindered ash.

  ‘Time to end this farce,’ said Magnus, his body erupting in a burst of aether-fire. He thrust his arms out to the side, and a detonation of kinetic force billowed outwards in an irresistible psychic shock wave.

  It threw Promus, Nagasena and Bjarki backwards like leaves in a hurricane. Promus hit the ground hard, twenty metres from the primarch. Behind him, the two magos of the Mechanicum watched the fight in the shadow of Olgyr Widdowsyn and the remembrancer, Lemuel Gaumon. He saw Sister Caesaria speak briefly to the Wolf, before she turned and rushed towards the battle.

  He shook his head, trying to push himself upright.

  ‘Magos!’ he shouted. ‘Shoot! Throne, shoot!’

  Magnus laughed and Promus felt the heat of the primarch’s boot pin him to the earth. ‘You brought automata because you thought they would be the perfect soldiers to fight me? They are loyal to a fault, yes, but you forget one thing. No matter how much you surround them with iron, steel and plastic, there remains a kernel of human weakness at their core.’

  Promus twisted to look over his shoulder at the painted battle-automata. Crackling, blood-red fire flickered around each cybernetic warrior as it turned and brought its guns to bear on their once-masters.

  ‘Fire,’ said Magnus.

  The Thousand Sons plunged into the heart of the mountain, following a snaking path as it wound its way downwards for hundreds of metres. The thought that he trod pathways not known to mortals for over thirty millennia was intoxicating to Ahriman, and even the thought of the destruction of priceless statuary behind them did not trouble him overmuch.

  ‘You are sure he is down here?’ said Hathor Maat.

  ‘I am,’ said Ahriman with more certainty than he felt.

  ‘You said that about Kamiti Sona,’ pointed out Tolbek, though there was none of the bellicosity normally present in his remark.

  ‘We found Mistress Shivani there. She was a link in the chain that has led us to this place. Surely you can see the cosmic resonance in that, Tolbek?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ sighed Tolbek, the fire from his palms casting a flickering orange glow onto the walls. ‘I know you all think the Pyrae are simpletons because our powers are used for destruction more often than not. Yes, we are a simple, direct Fellowship, but we are Thousand Sons, and Masters Memphia and Cythega wrought no fools when they established our cult. I understand that nothing of our journey will be easy, but it vexes me not to see the path.’

  ‘Trust me, brother, it vexes the Corvidae more.’

  Tolbek grunted with laughter, a sound so incongruous that it brought them all up short. A sense of brotherhood swept through Ahriman, a feeling he had not truly felt since before the Council of Nikaea.

  It seemed his brothers felt that same confraternity, even the normally viperous Hathor Maat.

  ‘We are a fine host, are we not?’ said the adept of the Pavoni. ‘We were made brothers by gene-wrights, wrought into warriors by necessity and made companions by the vagaries of betrayal. Who among us would ever have seen fit to put us together as the saviours of the Legion?’

  ‘Our father did,’ said Ahriman, holding his hand out to Hathor Maat. ‘And I would have it no other way. We are all here, brothers, our fates forever bound until our deaths. I would die for any of you.’

  Hathor Maat ignored Ahriman’s proffered hand and simply said, ‘And I for you all, brothers.’

  ‘As would I,’ said Tolbek.

  With their brotherhood renewed, the legionaries pressed onwards. Ahriman ran his fingers along the moist walls, cut with angular letters of ancient provenance. Mere graffiti, or the writings of a wandering king? More pressingly, Ahriman sought an answer to why he had felt the need to speak words of brotherhood he did not feel. Power was at work here, but it was a subtle power, smoothing out the rougher edges of their abrasive psyches.

  He tried not to let hope get ahead of him, remembering his disappointment when the mission to Kamiti Sona had not yielded a fragment of their gene-sire.

  ‘A question occurs,’ said Hathor Maat, breaking his train of thought.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Does anyone know exactly when our father and Perturabo came this way? They explored these mountains together, did they not? Searching for the very place in which we walk.’

  ‘They did,’ agreed Ahriman. ‘The primarch never told me the exact dates, only that it was in the aftermath of the Yeselti refinery fields burning. The fires spread to the mountain and the entire range burned for decades.’

  ‘Then could we wait here?’ asked Hathor Maat. ‘Perhaps we might warn them both of what is to come.’

  ‘And they would believe us?’ said Tolbek.

  ‘If anyone might it would be them.’

  Ahriman halted and shook his head. ‘The Corvidae once held great conclaves to debate such matters, asking whether it was possible or even desirable to change the past. Or, even if it was possible, could anyone ever know it had happened or would they simply assimilate the new timeline as their own? Those who believed it possible spoke of the great travellers, Titor and Ambersen, and the great disasters of the past they were said to have averted. Their opponents spoke of how the actions attributed to those travellers almost always resulted in timelines more chaotic than those they were said to have replaced. Besides, Magnus already tried to warn the Emperor of Horus Lupercal’s betrayal, and that brought the Sixth to Prospero as our executioners. No, Sanakht, if an earlier incarnation of our father is close by, we should not seek him out. The consequences are never worth what transient benefit we might think to gain.’

  Hathor Maat nodded, but Ahriman saw the notion of seeking to alter the future’s path still held appeal for the warrior.

  They delved into the mountain for another hour before finally reaching its deepest vault, a hexagonal library chamber with every wall aside from the one they had entered filled with bookshelves that groaned with the weight of the knowledge carried upon them.

  At the exact centre of the chamber, heaped with books and scrolls, was a circular table. A man was reading there, and he looked up in welcome as the three legionaries entered.

  His robe was crimson, edged in gold and with a coif of silver mail at his shoulders. His features were handsome, those of a great king, and his raven hair was pulled into a long scalp lock that fell to the small of his back. A long, braided beard hung from his chin, bound by three copper rings.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Ahriman as the man carefully closed his book and put it face down on the table. He held a hand out to a chair opposite him, a chair Ahriman swore hadn’t been there only moments before.

  ‘I am King Kadmus,’ said the man. ‘Mistress Shivani warned me you would be coming, Ahzek Ahriman.’

  Lemuel had once endured an electrical storm on the Azaka-Tonnerre ferro-plains of Nordafrik, travelling east with a convoy of desperate people on the trail of an elusive sangoma said to have miraculous powers…

  A sudden darkening of the sky had been the first warning. A gathering expeditionary fleet passing overhead in low orbit, its sheer mass of steel disrupting already volatile atmospherics
with electromagnetic squalls. The convoy’s mounted guides scattered, putting as much distance between the metal-rich environment of the convoy and themselves as possible.

  Deafening peals of thunder shook the earth and a heartbeat later the storm raced in on stalking legs of lightning. It filled the air with light and fury. The first vehicles were incinerated in a blinding flash of magnesium-bright light. Explosions marched down the convoy as fuel cells detonated and external promethium tanks exploded in whooshing plumes of fire. Screams of panic were drowned out by relentless whipcracks of lightning.

  Lemuel and his fellow pilgrims ran for cover, but the storm was unrelenting and there was no shelter to be found. Nine hours later, Lemuel and two others crawled out from under a pyre of blackened corpses.

  He had relived that night a thousand times in his dreams.

  Never had he thought he would re-experience it.

  Olgyr Widdowsyn lay sprawled atop him, the sheer mass of the Space Wolf’s body pinning him in place. He didn’t know if the warrior was alive or dead. The last thing Lemuel had seen was Widdowsyn’s smoking war-plate as it barrelled into him and sheets of blazing lightning erupting from the cybernetics.

  He’d hit the ground hard, crying out in pain and terror as the braces supporting his legs buckled under the legionary’s weight. He was lying on his front, struggling for breath. Lemuel couldn’t see what was happening.

  Why had the automata opened fire on them?

  He heard roars of pain and the awful stench of roasting flesh. Lemuel wept as he felt the crushing claustrophobia of being pinned beneath the dying bodies on Azaka-Tonnerre.

  His breath came in shallow hikes, his lungs unable to inflate. Olgyr Widdowsyn was slowly crushing the life out of him. He struggled to pull himself free, but Widdowsyn was hundreds of kilos of dead weight. He heard someone call his name and looked up.

  Grey fog hazed his eyes, his vision narrowing to a spot of light in the far distance.