On Caliban, the austere primarch known as the Lion grew to lead a glorious crusade of knightly orders against the tainted beasts of his home world’s forests. On Fenris, legends have the Primarch Leman Russ first raised by the vicious wolves of that icy world, then reaching his majority to lead the barbarous warrior clans as their greatest high king.
On a nameless world, its title long-lost to the mists of time, the Primarch Angron reached adulthood as a pit slave, shackled by the lords of his apparently civilised planet, forever twisted by the experiences of his bloodthirsty maturation.
For better or worse, fate had each Imperial son raised by others, shaped by instructors, guides, mentors, friends and enemies. Only one primarch grew up alone, hidden from the eyes of humanity, guided by no hand and taught by no elder.
He would come, in time, to be known by the name his father had chosen for him: Konrad Curze. To the people of Nostramo, the world forever wrapped in nightfall’s embrace, he was—at least at first—altogether less human. Never did the primarch bear a human name there.
The child survived by living feral in the shadows of humanity’s towers. He scavenged in the alleys and streets of Nostramo Quintus, the planetary capital, a sprawling metropolis that covered a sizeable portion of the northern hemisphere. Crime here, as it was across all Nostramo, was as rife as life itself. With no moral compass beyond the evidence of his own eyes, the young primarch began the work that would shape his existence.
The seed of his endeavour was humble enough at first, at least by the standards of Imperial justice. Street-level criminals; the murderers, the rapists, the thugs, gangers and muggers that populated the dark avenues of Nostramo Quintus soon began to whisper a name that flowed from their lips with fearful tremors. The Night Haunter.
He would kill them. Barely into his teens, the boy would witness an act of violence or crime, and he would leap from the shadows, feral and enraged, butchering those who preyed upon their fellow humans. This was how the nascent core of his humanity sought to enforce order upon his surroundings.
Fear, primal and true, was something the young god understood all too well. He saw its uses and applications, and he saw how those in the thrall of terror were so much more pliant and obedient. In those black streets, he learned the lesson that would shape his Legion. Humanity did not need kindness, indulgence or trust in order to progress. People did not comply with law and live lives of order out of altruism or shared ideology.
They obeyed society’s tenets because they were afraid. To break the law invited justice. Within justice was punishment.
He became that punishment. He became the threat of justice. Known criminals were left for all to see come the weak dawn: crucified and disembowelled, chained to the walls of public building and the ornate doors of the wealthiest gang leaders and syndicate bosses. Always, he would leave their faces untouched, twisted with the silent and fixed scream of an agonising death, for he knew the dead gazes of the slain triggered a deeper empathy and realisation within the hearts of those who met their glazed stares.
Years passed, and many more died. Soon enough, the Night Haunter was reaching his pale, grasping hands into the higher tiers of society, beating, strangling and slaughtering the ringleaders, the organisers, the officials at the core of the city’s corruption. The fear that so thickly saturated the streets soon choked the halls of the wealthy and powerful.
The rule of law reigned. Victory and compliance through the threat of punishment. Order through fear.
It is said in the records of the VIII Legion that when the Emperor came to Nostramo, he spoke these words to his long-lost son:
“Konrad Curze, be at peace, for I have arrived and intend to take you home.”
The primarch’s reply is also recorded. “That is not my name, Father. I am Night Haunter.”
Perhaps the sons of Konrad Curze, had their sire been raised upon another world and learned different lessons, would have been more typical Astartes, and the VIII Legion a far cry from the driven creatures they were at the edge of the forty-first millennium. But the sons of the Night Haunter learned every lesson their gene-father did, carrying the same truths with them down the centuries.
“Soul Hunter,” the primarch had once said to Talos.
“My lord?” he had answered, unable as ever to meet his father’s direct gaze. He concentrated on the Night Haunter’s midnight war-plate, decorated by lightning bolts painted by the finest tech-artisans of Mars, and bearing the skulls of so many fallen foes on chains like hanging fruit.
“Soon, Soul Hunter.”
The melancholic tone of his lord’s voice was not new. The whispered reverence was. Surprise made Talos raise his eyes to his father’s face, gaunt and nearly lipless, the pale, dull grey of sunrise on a dead world.
“Lord?”
“Soon. We ran from the hounds my father set at our heels, and vindication must be bought with blood.”
“Vindication is always bought with blood, lord.”
“This time, the blood-price will be mine to pay. And willingly, my son. Death is nothing compared to vindication. Die with the truth on your lips, and your life’s echo will never fade.”
His father spoke on, but Talos heard none of it. The words were like a blade of cold fire in his gut.
“You will die,” he breathed. “I knew this would come, my lord.”
“Because you have seen it,” the primarch grinned. As always, the smile was without any mirth. The Night Haunter had never, to Talos’ knowledge, displayed any human emotion approaching genuine humour. He was amused by nothing. He enjoyed nothing. Even the bloodiest moments of war set his features in a grim mask of concentration and infrequent disgust. Battle-lust seemed beyond him, or he had transcended its feverish joys.
This was the result of sacrificing one’s humanity for the good of the Imperium’s people. And he would be repaid for his great sacrifice—repaid by the Emperor’s assassins seeking his lifeblood.
“Yes, lord,” Talos replied, his mouth drying, his deep voice like a child’s compared to the throaty ramble of his father’s. “I have seen it. How did you know?”
“I hear your dreams,” the primarch replied. “We share a curse, you and I. The curse of foreknowledge. You are like me, Soul Hunter.”
It didn’t feel like an honour. Despite feeling no greater kinship with the primarch than in that moment, there was no honour, just a sense of vulnerability that threatened to eclipse even his awe at standing in the shadow of his godlike gene-sire. They would share words only once more before the Night Haunter greeted his death, and without it being spoken, Talos knew this, too.
What brought these thoughts flooding back to his mind now? The rush of instinct, the thrill of the hunt? Galvanised, Talos broke into a run. Eurydice’s life rune pulsed on his retinas like the unstable ticking of a broken engine. She was wounded, that much was clear. Her implantation was crude and functional, revealing little of specifics. He heard Eurydice’s muffled breathing the heightened heartbeats of her captors, and exaggerated his footfalls so they would know he approached.
Then, when he judged the moment right, when he could hear them whispering their fears to one another, the hunter ghosted into the shadows, turning his tread soft, standing in wait.
One of the mortals walked past the Night Lord’s hiding place between two man-sized capacitor cylinders, his skin reeking of grime and terror-sweat. Talos resisted the urge to lick his lips.
“Greetings,” he said in a low, smiling voice.
The shotgun bucked and blasted noise into the silence. The convict had fired his weapon in panic even before he turned. He had less than a heartbeat of looking into the blackness, seeing a pair of arched red eyes glaring, before Talos was on him.
His death was regrettably quick, and Talos mourned the chance to make it last. The corpse, its neck snapped, fell to the metal decking with a crumpling thud. The Night Lord was already gone.
“Edsan?” someone called. “Edsan?”
“He’s
dead,” said a voice behind him. Mirrick managed a breathless, wordless grunt of surprise before his head left his shoulders. Talos ignored the tumbling body, but caught the head before it fell.
Gripping it by its lank, greasy hair, he moved on through the darkness. In his gauntleted fist, the head still twitched with facial tics for several moments.
The third to die was Sheevern.
Sheevern had remained with the woman, standing over her with a power maul in his hands. Like most of the prisoners, he’d acquired the weapon from an enforcer guard in the riot. Unlike most of the prisoners, he was innocent of the crimes he’d been incarcerated for.
Sheevern was no heretic. He was serving his sentence for ties to a deviant ruling cult from a world that had forsworn the Dictate Imperialis, and broken from Imperial rule. As a politician in the regime, he had been charged with heresy when the Imperium of Man came to take the world back from the grasp of the tainted rulers, despite the fact that he’d argued against secession from the Throne. He found it bitterly ironic to be serving a life sentence for heresy, when he’d spent a good twenty years in office, secretly indulging his true lusts and urges without any of his actions coming to the light. The blood of five women and two young men was on his hands. Sheevern regretted nothing. He didn’t believe he had anything to regret.
“Indriga?” he called out. No answer. By his feet, the woman whisper-laughed again. He thudded a boot into her side, feeling something—a rib or two, maybe—snap under his kick. “Shut the hell up.”
His ears itched. A buzzing, like a swarm of insects, was irritating his senses. “What the hell is that sound?” he muttered, clutching the maul tighter in his thin-fingered hands.
It was the thrum of live mark IV Astartes war-plate. Talos emerged from the darkness ahead of him, illuminated only by the dim glow of Sheevern’s personal lamp pack.
“Catch,” the Night Lord said. Despite the growl of his helm’s vox speakers, he sounded almost amiable.
On instinct, Sheevern caught what was thrown. He cradled it one-handed for a moment before dropping it with a gasp. His hand and arm were warm with blood. Mirrick’s head banged on the gantry floor.
“Wait,” Sheevern begged the resolving shape. “I didn’t touch her!” he lied. Eurydice’s bare foot hit the back of his knee as she lashed out in a furious kick.
Sheevern stumbled, righting himself just in time to meet the Night Lord’s bolter hitting his face. The muzzle of the oversized weapon hammered into his panting mouth, making shards of his teeth, the cold metal forcing its way to the back of his throat. He barely had time to squeal a muffled protest before the bolter bucked and sheared the chubby former politician’s head clean off.
Talos backhanded the headless body aside and stared down at Eurydice. She was battered and bruised, her clothing torn, one eye swollen shut. She still looked a lot better than Septimus had, though. Nothing here wouldn’t heal, at least in regards to the physical damage she’d sustained.
“We are leaving,” said Talos.
“There’s one more,” she said faintly through slug-fat lips. “The big one.”
“We are still leaving,” he said, reaching down for her.
With the Navigator over his shoulder and his bolter clutched in his free hand, Talos made his way back through the generatorium chamber.
“This is Indriga,” the convict spoke into a hand vox. He crouched in the darkness under the foundation support girders of a silent generator tower, his words emerging as a sneering whisper. He wasn’t made to hide. It took all of his willpower not to get out there and brain the armoured monster that was making its escape.
“Speak,” replied a sibilant male voice.
“Lord Ruven,” the prisoner said, “he came for the witch.”
“This leads me to wonder, however, why you are still alive.”
The words were stuck in Indriga’s throat for several seconds. “I hid, lord.”
“Has he gone?”
“He’s leaving now.” A pause. “He took the witch.”
“What do you mean he took her? Why would he take a corpse?”
Indriga swallowed, and the sound travelled down the vox. Ruven growled a sigh.
“We brought her with us,” Indriga said. “We wanted to—”
“Enough. Your mortal urges are meaningless to me. You failed to comply with the most basic orders, Indriga. And now, you will die for it.”
“Lord…”
“I would start running, if I were you.”
Indriga lowered the hand vox, his lip curling in disgust as he heard the armoured killer’s footsteps drawing near again. Evidently, he was coming back to finish the job.
Must’ve heard me whispering…
Indriga needed to see. He clicked the shotgun’s under-slung lamp active, and leapt from his hiding place with the beam of light like a lance before him.
The towering armoured form swivelled in the half-dark, no doubt protecting the witch he was carrying. Indriga’s shotgun barked once, twice, a third time and a fourth, each impact blasting a hail of shot that cracked and clattered against the ceramite war-plate.
Talos turned in the second Indriga’s shotgun clicked dry. Eurydice, over his left shoulder, had been shielded from harm when he’d spun to avoid the gunfire. The massive bolter fired once, aimed low, and the bolt pounded into Indriga’s stomach. It detonated a moment later, leaving the convict in pieces across the walkway. The largest piece, consisting of Indriga’s chest, arms and howling face, remained alive for twelve agonising seconds. Talos ignored its shrieks, reaching for the hand vox the dying prisoner had dropped.
“Prophet,” said the voice on the other end of the channel.
“Ruven,” Talos said softly, “my brother. It has been a while, brother. I should have recognised your unsubtle handiwork when your four ‘gods’ babbled without sense for so long.”
“Ruven of the Black Legion now, and Eyes of the Warmaster. I assure you, Talos, you do not know of what you speak.”
“The Exalted says the same. I am weary of the protests of the corrupt and the ruined. The Warmaster has betrayed the other Legions before, but this is crude and brazen, even for him.”
“So you say, brother. You have no proof beyond a cracked breastplate that he was even involved. And who would care? The Exalted? He is Abaddon’s creature, and always has been. One squad of the Night Lords walking into an obvious trap is no concern for the coming crusade.”
At Talos’ feet, Indriga breathed his last. The silence was unwelcome, for the idiot’s howls had been curiously pleasant.
“Your thuggish little cultist is dead,” Talos said as he moved away.
“I will hardly be weeping over that. Tell me, why was it so easy to refuse the Four Powers? Did they offer nothing that tempted you? Even for a moment?”
“The purpose of luring me to the planet’s surface escapes me, brother,” Talos said, looking down at the human wreckage. “You must have known I would never leave the Legion.”
“The VIII Legion is weak. The Exalted seeks to discard you; you have little love for your brothers; and above all—Abaddon himself takes an interest in you. Does that mean nothing to you? How can this be so?”
Talos was already moving, cradling Eurydice as he walked.
“I am going to kill you when next I see you, Ruven.”
The Night Lord had foreseen the Navigator’s importance, and almost lost her only days later. This foolish venture had also almost cost him Septimus. Might yet still cost him Septimus, if he didn’t survive the restorative surgeries.
Carelessness. Carelessness beyond reckoning.
“Mark my words, Ruven. Whether you are the Despoiler’s pet or not, I will cut you down.”
“Why did you refuse the Powers? Answer me, Talos.”
“Because I am my father’s son.” Talos cast the hand vox aside and kept walking.
“It was good to speak with you again, my brother. I missed your simple sincerity and literal nature. Talos? Talos?”
/>
Talos felt Eurydice stir as he ascended the stairs to the next level. “Thank you,” she said softly.
He had no answer to that. The words were too unfamiliar.
THE OLD WAR
PART TWO
“There will come a time when our Legion is shattered across the stars.
When the powers we spurn become allies to which many turn.
The paths of your future are closed to me,
And they are yours to walk alone.
But I know this.
The war that fires our blood now will still rage in ten thousand years.
Bleed the Imperium. Tear it down, tear it apart. Show no mercy.
But watch yourselves. There is no traitors’ unity in the Old War.
Trust your Legion brothers. And trust no one else!”
—The Primarch Konrad Curze.
XI
THREE WEEKS LATER
The slave listened at the door.
From within, he heard sounds of movement, dully penetrating the metal. With a hand he was still not used to using, he pressed the entrance key, triggering a toneless chime within the room. Footsteps came closer, and the door opened on hissing gears, sliding to the left. In the doorway stood another slave.
“Septimus,” said the room’s occupant with a smile.
“Octavia,” he replied. “It’s time.”
“I’m ready.”
The two Legion serfs walked down the darkened halls of the Covenant of Blood’s mortal decks, where the illumination strips along the ceilings were forever tuned to twilight. It was enough to see by, even for those unused to a sunless life, but it would hardly pass for twilight on most worlds.
Octavia still found herself glancing at him every few moments when they were together. The surgeries were still fresh, his skin still adapting, and where his augmetics met flesh, the telltale redness of fading inflammation was still in evidence. His left eye, the one he’d lost to the convicts that stormed the Thunderhawk, was now a violet lens set in a bronze mounting that reached out to cover his temple and cheekbone.
[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter Page 18
