[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden - (ebook by Undead)

  Excerpted from his work, The Tenebrous Path

  Ten thousand years ago, before humanity was riven by the betrayal of Horus the Chosen, 10th Company returned home to Nostramo.

  10th Company, 12th, and 16th—three battle companies returning from the Great Crusade to be honoured by their home world.

  The Night Lords were never like their brother Legions. They came from a world without warrior traditions stretching back through the centuries. The fortitude that girded them for the rigours of the Emperor’s Great Crusade was born of a world that knew fear, knew blood, and knew murder—more than any other globe in the Emperor’s grip. The people of Nostramo knew these aspects as a natural part of life. The acceptance of such darkness bred a Legion colder than any other; a Legion willing to discard its humanity in service to the Throne.

  And this is exactly what it did.

  This was an age when the Night Lords were the emergent Imperium’s most powerful threat. A world resisting the Imperial Truth could be conquered by the drudging half-mechanical Iron Hands or the massed precision of the ever-loyal Ultramarines. It could be brought to compliance by the howling hordes of the Luna Wolves—who would one day become the Black Legion—or the avenging wrath of the Blood Angels.

  Or it could suffer the crippling evisceration of society offered by the untender talons of the Night Haunter’s chosen sons.

  Fear was their weapon. As the end of the Great Crusade neared, even as the Night Haunter’s brother primarchs looked askance at their moribund, wayward kinsman, the Night Lords were the Emperor’s most potent weapon. Entire worlds would surrender their arms as their scanners revealed that the Astartes vessels that had translated into orbit bore the runic symbols of the VIII Legion. In these waning years, the Night Lords encountered less and less resistance, as deviant societies abandoned their defiance rather than die under the claws of the most feared Imperial Legion.

  Their reputation was hard-won through hundreds of campaigns, unleashing their specific brand of terror upon those they conquered. It was never enough to take a world in the Emperor’s name. To cement the Master of Mankind’s rule, populations must be utterly quelled into obedience. Obedience through fear. A Night Lords strike force would ravage the heart of a world’s leadership, crucifying the bodies of its rulers on public address pict-screens, burning the monument-houses to the planet’s false gods, and systematically peeling back a society’s skin to expose the weaknesses beneath. In their wake, shattered populations lived the lives of loyal, silent Imperial citizens, never even whispering a word of rebellion.

  And as the years passed, resistance faded.

  The gene-forged warriors of the Night Lords grew discontent with this. Not only discontent, but bored. When the order came from Terra—the insane demand that the Night Lords and their primarch father return to suffer the chastisement of the Emperor—discontent and boredom faded to be replaced by the birth of a new emotion. The Night Lords grew bitter.

  They, who had whored their humanity away in the fires of the Emperor’s wars.

  They, who had allowed themselves to be moulded into the Imperium’s truest weapon of terror.

  They were to pay for these deeds, like sinners kneeling before an angry god?

  Indignity. Madness. Blasphemy.

  The last Night Lords to set foot upon the surface of Nostramo were the warriors of 10th, 12th and 16th Companies. A homecoming of special rarity, for few Astartes ever saw their home worlds again, and Nostramo was hardly renowned for doing honour to its sons fighting away in the Emperor’s wars.

  The parade was modest, but sincere. A gesture from the captain leading the three companies, as the expeditionary battlefleet refuelled and made repairs in the docks above Nostramo. Fifty Astartes from each company would make planetfall and march down the main avenue of Nostramo Quintus, leading from the spaceport.

  Talos remembered thinking even at the time it was a strangely emotional gesture. Yet he’d descended to the surface in Blackened, along with the other nine Astartes of the full-strength First Claw.

  “I do not understand,” he’d said to Brother-Sergeant Vandred, who was still decades away from becoming the Exalted, and still months away from becoming 10th Captain.

  “What is there to understand, Brother-Apothecary?”

  “This descent. The reception on the surface. I do not understand why the 10th Captain has ordered it.”

  “Because he is a sentimental fool,” Vandred replied. Grunts of agreement sounded from the others, including Xarl. Talos said no more, but remained sure there was more to it than something so simple and senseless.

  There was, of course. He wouldn’t find out what for many months.

  During the parade itself—which was almost alarmingly populous—Talos clutched his bolter to his chest and marched bare-headed with his brothers. The experience was dazzling, though almost without sound at first. Little cheering took place, but the clapping soon became thunderous. The ambivalent people of Nostramo, in the actual presence of the Night Haunter’s sons, cast aside their apathy and welcomed their champions home.

  It was not humbling. Talos was more confused than anything else.

  Were these people so ardent in their love for the Imperium that they welcomed the Emperor’s chosen born from their own world? He had spent his youth on this world, hiding and running and stealing and killing in the black backstreets of its cities. The Imperium had always been a distant, ignorable thing at best.

  Had so much really changed in a mere two decades? Surely not.

  So why were they all here? Perhaps curiosity had dragged them from their habs, and the uniqueness of the moment was breeding the excitement now.

  Perhaps, he realised with a bolt of guilty unease through his spine, the people thought they had returned permanently. Returned to reinstitute the cleansing laws laid down by the now-distant Night Haunter.

  Throne… That was it. That was why they were glad to see them. In the absence of their lost primarch ruler, the populace hoped for the Haunter’s sons to return and take up his duties. The primarch’s lessons were being unlearned, the imprint of his silent crusade on society was a thing of the past. Talos had lived here himself, barely believing the world had once been a bastion of control and order under a gene-god’s rule.

  Now it became humbling. To feel the weight of terrible expectation willed from the crowd. To know they were destined for crushing disappointment.

  It became worse when the crowd started shouting names. Not insults, real names. It wasn’t en masse, but individuals in the groups lining the avenue shouted names at the Astartes, for reasons Talos couldn’t quite guess. Were they yelling their own names, to receive some kind of blessing? Were they screaming the names of sons taken by the Astartes, hoping those very same warriors now walked this wide street?

  Few moments in life had been as difficult for Talos as this. To feel himself so separated from the life he once led, that he couldn’t even guess what other humans were thinking.

  The thin line of enforcers keeping the crowds back broke in several places. Small-arms fire banged out, putting down the few members of the mobbing crowd that sought to walk with the Astartes. Only a handful made it to the ranks of marching warriors. They weaved this way and that, looking lost, looking drunk, staring up like frightened, fevered animals into the faces of the walking warriors.

  A middle-aged man scrabbled at Talos’ chestplate with dirty fingernails.

  “Sorion?” he asked. Before Talos could answer, the man fled, repeating the same whispered question to one of the Astartes two rows behind.

  At no point did the Legion stop marching. Pistol-fire broke out as the enforcers, in expensive business suits, took out one of the mortals in the avenue that strayed far enough from the Astartes to guarantee a kill-shot without hitting one of the armoured giants. None of the enforcers wished to risk his own death by missing and hitting the revered armour of the Night Haunter’s sons.

  An elderly woman harassed Xarl. She was barely over
half of his height.

  “Where is he?” she shrieked, wasted hands scratching at the marching warrior’s armour. “Xarl! Where is he? Answer me!”

  Talos could read the discomfort in his brother’s face as Xarl marched on. The old woman, beneath her mop of wild white hair, saw him paying attention. Talos immediately faced forward again, feeling the old woman clawing at his unmoving arm with her weak grip.

  “Look at me!” she pleaded. “Look at me!”

  Talos didn’t. He marched on. Weeping wailing after him, the old woman fell behind. “Look at me! It’s you! Talos! Look at me!”

  An enforcer’s gunshot ended her demands. Talos hated himself for feeling relief.

  Five hours later, back aboard Blackened, Xarl had sat next to him on the restraint couches.

  Never before—and never again—would Talos see his brother’s face marked by such hesitancy.

  “That wasn’t easy for any of us. But you did well, brother.”

  “What did I do so differently?”

  Xarl swallowed. Something seemed to dawn behind his eyes. “That woman. The one from the crowd. You… didn’t recognise her?”

  Talos tilted his head, watching Xarl carefully. “I barely saw her.”

  “She said your name,” Xarl pressed. “You truly didn’t recognise her?”

  “They were reading our names off our armour scrolls,” Talos narrowed his eyes. “She said your name as well.”

  Xarl rose to his feet, making to move away. Talos rose with him, gauntlet clamped on his brother’s shoulder guard.

  “Speak, Xarl.”

  “She wasn’t reading our names. She knew us, brother. She recognised us, even after twenty years and the changes wrought by the gene-seed. Throne, Talos… You must have recognised her.”

  “I didn’t. I swear. I saw only an old woman.”

  Xarl shrugged off Talos’ grip. He didn’t turn around. His words echoed with the same finality as the gunshot that had silenced the old woman’s pleas.

  “The old woman,” Xarl said slowly. “She was your mother.”

  These thoughts echoed in Talos’ mind now, on the return to orbit from the war-torn surface of Crythe. The memories, which so safely hid within his unconscious at all times, broke through the surface now.

  The mood aboard the transport was grim, despite the victory First and Seventh Claws had just achieved. The death of a Titan, even a Warhound-class Titan, a lesser cousin of the city-crushing Warlords and Imperators… This deed would be etched onto their war-plate, and machined onto the armour plating of Storm’s Eye. Nostraman runes would tell the tale of their triumph until the night when their bodies lay cold and Legion brothers came to scavenge the relic armour.

  But the mood remained dark. Victory at such a savage cost was barely a victory at all. Talos recalled similar words written by the war-sage Malcharion, in the years after the Haunter’s assassination.

  And with that thought, with that connection made, Talos’ roiling mind—already lost in the coldest, deepest and most furious pits of memory—turned blacker still.

  Assassination. Murder. Blasphemy.

  The last time he had wept was on that night, that night of wrenching agony, standing with thousands of his brothers and watching the traitorous whore leave the fortress-monastery, her gloved hands clutching their father’s head by its lank, black hair.

  Hours before, Talos had shared his last words with his gene-sire.

  “My life,” the primarch had said, head bowed before a gathering of his captains and chosen, “has meant nothing.”

  The bowed god weathered the shouted denials of his favoured sons, who all fell silent as he spoke again. “Nothing. Yet, I will amend that with my death.”

  “How, lord? What glory will your sacrifice bring to us?” These words from the Talonmaster. Zso Sahaal. First Captain.

  The same questions were uttered from a dozen lips.

  “We cannot prosecute the crusade against the Imperium without you,” declared Vandred, not yet the Exalted, not yet Captain of the 10th, but already considered so gifted by the Haunter in matters of void war.

  The Night Haunter smiled, somehow without animating his face beyond warping the blue veins beneath his cheeks.

  “Our crusade of vengeance against the Imperium, against my father’s false ascension to godhood, spins upon a fulcrum. Every life we take, every soul that screams in our wake—the Tightness of what we do hangs upon a single aspect of balance. Name that aspect. Name it, any of you, you who are my chosen.”

  “I will,” said a voice from the loose crowd.

  The Haunter nodded. “Speak, Captain of the 10th.” At those words, Talos glanced at his own captain. So did Vandred.

  Brother-Captain Malcharion stepped forward, leaving the ranks of the company leaders, to stand one step closer to his primarch.

  The Tightness of our crusade is justified because the Imperium is founded upon a lie. The Emperor is wrong in all he does, and the Imperial Truth his preachers propagate is flawed and blinding. He will never bring order and law to mankind. He will damn it through ignorance.

  “And,” Malcharion nodded his head, mimicking the primarch’s earlier bow, “his hypocrisy must be answered with revenge. We are right because he wronged us. We bleed his flawed empire because we see the truth, the decay beneath the skin. Our vengeance is righteous. It is justice for his scorn of the VIII Legion.”

  Malcharion was taller than many Astartes, his bare head showing seven implanted silver rivets around his right eyebrow, each one a mark of honour meaning nothing to any outside the Legion. A ferocious fighter, an inspiring leader, and already composing works of great tactical and meditative value. It was all too easy to see why the Night Haunter favoured him with captaincy of the 10th Company.

  “All true,” the father said to his sons. “But what is the Emperor learning by our defiance? What do the High Lords of Terra learn as we slaughter the citizens of their void-kingdom?”

  “Nothing,” said a voice. Talos swallowed as he realised it was his own. Every unhelmed face turned to look at him, including the primarch’s.

  “Nothing,” the Night Haunter said, closing his black eyes. “Nothing at all. Righteousness is useless, if we alone know we’re right.”

  He had told them before. Told them his intent. Yet this cold, ironclad confession still undermined the inner preparations each one had made to deal with the death of their gene-sire. All the questions previously quelled broke loose, and the grim acceptances paved over doubts were shattered.

  Here was the chance to argue. To defy. To challenge fate. Voices rose in protest.

  “It is written,” the Night Haunter murmured. His whispered words were always enough to bring his sons to silence. “I feel your defiance, my Night Lords. But it is written. And more than that, even were this a destiny to be battled and resisted, it is right that I die.”

  Talos watched the sire of the VIII Legion, his own black eyes narrowed.

  “Soul Hunter,” the Night Haunter said suddenly, gesturing with a hand that resembled a marble claw. “I see understanding dawn in your eyes.”

  “No, lord,” he said. Talos felt several of the captains and chosen eyeing him, hostile as ever at the way their primarch singled him out for the honour of such a deed name.

  “Speak, Soul Hunter. The others understand, but I hear your thoughts. You have framed it in words better than any other. Even our honourable and verbose Malcharion.”

  Malcharion nodded in respect to Talos, and the gesture gave him impetus to speak.

  “This is not entirely about the Legion.”

  “Continue.” Again, the marble claw invited more.

  “This is a lesson from a son to his father, just as you instruct us in the principles to continue this crusade, you will show your own father, who watches all from the Golden Throne, that you will die for your beliefs. Your sacrifice will echo in your father’s heart forever. You believe your martyrdom will set a fiercer example than your life.”

/>   “Because…?” The Night Haunter smiled again, a fanged smirk that had nothing to do with delight.

  Talos drew a breath to speak the words he’d seen in his dreams. The words his gene-sire would speak before the assassin’s blade fell.

  “Because death is nothing compared to vindication.”

  “Sixty seconds to dock,” Septimus said in muted tones.

  Talos would not be jarred from his reverie. Deeper. Deeper. Away from the sight and scent of damaged power armour and bleeding skin, away from the pitted and cracked hull of both the transport and Storm’s Eye gripped within the carrying claws. Away from the two squads of men with their annihilated numbers, their tainted souls, and their bitter victory. Deeper.

  “Nostramo was blighted,” the primarch said.

  It would be the final time Talos spoke to his father. Konrad Curze held his son’s helm, turning it over in his hands, white fingertips tracing the Nostraman rune upon its ceramite forehead.

  “Soul Hunter,” he whispered the name. “Soon, in the nights to come, you will earn the name I have already given you.”

  Talos did not know what to say, so he said nothing at all. Around them, the black stone chamber of the Haunter’s throne room remained silent but for the sounds of their armour reflecting off the walls.

  “Our home world,” the primarch said, “was more than blighted. It was ruined. You know why I killed our world, Talos. You sense the honourless, murderous nature of the Legion now.”

  “Many sense it, lord.” Talos drew in the ice-cold air. His breath steamed out. “But we are a weapon against the Imperium. And we are righteous in our vengeance.”

  “Nostramo had to die.” The primarch continued as if Talos had said nothing. “I tried to tell my brothers. I told them of Nostramo’s backslide into lawlessness and cruelty. The recruitment had to halt. My Legion was poisoning itself from within. The planet had to die. It had forgotten the lessons I taught with blood and pain and fear.”

  The Night Haunter stared past Talos, at the black wall of his chamber. A thin trickle of saliva made its way down his chin from the corner of his mouth. The sight made Talos’ main heart beat faster. It was not fear. That would be impossible, for he was Astartes. It was… unease. Unease at seeing his primarch so unstable.