Age of Darkness

by Christian Dunn

  Through what remained of his vision, he saw his liege lord standing once more. The Lion, a bleeding statue, advanced on Curze with sword in hand. In turn, Curze readied his claws. Several of the talon-blades were broken, scattered over the ground. They came together yet again, weapons sparking and flaring.

  Corswain’s muscles ached with the sudden influx of chemical stimulants as his armour’s internal systems sought to keep him alive. He doubted it would work for long. Something dense and heavy hung in his chest, turning each breath into breathing fire. Something had burst within him, he was certain of it. Acidic spittle ran from his lips, pooling at his sealed collar. He’d drown in his own blood and spit if he didn’t get his helm off soon, or at least unseal the mouth-grille.

  A figure obstructed his view of the primarchs. A figure with a spear in its hands.

  ‘Not much left of you, is there?’ Sevatar chuckled in a low, crackling vox-voice.

  ‘The moons are crying,’ Corswain breathed, and crashed down to his knees. His fading eye stared skywards, watching as the moons wept fire.

  XVI

  The first drop-pod hammered home into a gravel slope, sending ashy stones spraying out in a burst of debris. Heat-shielding on its black hull glowed from the atmospheric descent, while the whining turbines hissed with vented steam. Sealant bolts popped with gunshot cracks, and the pod’s sides opened with all the crude grace of a mechanical flower. The Dark Angels emerged with their bolters up and firing.

  The second landed cleaner, followed by the third and fourth. All three struck home across the crater, spilling their knights onto the construction site.

  ‘How quickly the tide turns.’ Corswain was grinning bloodily behind his helm now. The shadows vanished. Sevatar and Sheng fled as abruptly as they’d descended.

  Rattling like hailstones, more drop-pods fell from above. Some were blackened by allegiance, others by the atmospheric fire. Both fleets in orbit disgorged warriors onto the surface, even as they were surely battling in the void. Here on the ground, Corswain could barely see anything at all. He heard the Legions meeting in the skidding clashes of chainblades on ceramite, and the insistent crash of bolters, but saw precious little. With the hand that still obeyed him, he dragged his helmet off, wincing as the cold night air hit his savaged face.

  The Lion was in similar ruin, surrounded by his black-clad warriors. Blood sheeted down the back of his head, a liquid cloak down his shoulders. Corswain had no idea how he still lived with so little of his skull intact.

  Curze laughed – at least, he began to – before his own warriors began to drag him back just as the Angels dragged the Lion. The two primarchs staggered back from one another, cursing each other above their sons’ heads, both hindered by weakened limbs and grievous wounds that made the air stink with their genetically divine blood.

  The great sword impaled the ground as it fell from the Angel Lord’s grip, while Curze could no longer lift his claws.

  Corswain felt himself sliding back down to the ground despite his attempt at moving to the primarch’s side. Strong hands pulled at him, hauling him up, forcing him to do what his muscles wouldn’t allow. He turned his head, seeing with his good eye.

  ‘Alajos,’ he said.

  ‘The captain is dead, Your Grace. It is I, Sergeant Tragan.’

  ‘Sevatar is here. Watch for him. He is here, I swear it. He killed Alajos. I saw it happen.’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace. Come... this way. Thunderhawks are inbound.’ Across the vox, he yelled to every surviving soul, ‘First Legion, fall back!’

  Corswain limped in his brother’s arms, vaguely wondering if he was dying. It felt like it, though never having died before, it was a guess.

  ‘You’re not dying, Your Grace,’ Sergeant Tragan laughed now. Corswain hadn’t realised he was murmuring out loud.

  His last vision was of the primarchs, both near driven to their knees, surrounded by growing phalanxes of their armoured sons. Curze reached his claws for the Lion, snarling and cursing, too weak to resist his Legion dragging him from the field. The Lion’s reaction was a foul mirror, made all the more hideous because of the warlord’s majesty. He screamed oaths from his bleeding, angelic face, pulled back from the battle by his own sons.

  Above the battle, he heard Sevatar’s cry. ‘Death to the False Emperor! Death to his Angels in Black!’ His skin crawled in the wake of those words. Such conviction. Such hate.

  ‘The Thramas Crusade,’ Corswain sighed. ‘They are right, all of them. This war is just beginning.’

  ‘Your Grace?’

  ‘My sword,’ Corswain reached a hand out, as if he could touch the opposing groups of warriors.

  ‘Where is it, Your Grace?’

  ‘Gone,’ Corswain closed his remaining eye. ‘I left it in a primarch’s spine.’

  XVII

  The beast never dies in his dreams.

  He watches it slink through the trees, keeping its sinuous body low to the ground, its movements fluid enough to be sickening and boneless. Its ears rake back flat against its head, while its clawed paws are silent on the deep snow. The creature hunts, eager but passionless, its dead cat’s eyes glinting with emotionless hunger.

  The boy takes the shot, and the shell goes wide.

  With the cold air split by the crack of gunfire, the beast twists in the snow, ghost-light on the ground as it snarls at its attacker. Quivering black spines rise from the denser white fur at its back and neck, an instinctive defensive response. A tail lashes behind the beast in threatening rhythm, coiling and thrashing in time with the boy’s own heartbeat.

  For a moment he sees what the elder knights all claimed to see – a sight he’d always believed to be the lies of ageing warriors girding their fading legends with false poetry.

  Yet there it is in the beast’s black eyes, something beneath the raw desire to survive. Recognition stares back at him: a crude intelligence, malicious despite its feral simplicity. The moment shatters as the creature vents its anger. Something between a lion’s burbling snarl and a bear’s hoarse roar rings out in the cold air between them.

  The boy fires again. Three more shots echo through the forest, disturbing the snow bundled on branches above. Shivering fingers seek to reload the primitive pistol, but his aim was true and his father’s pistol sang its killing song. The beast limps now, dragging itself closer in a grotesque, mangled run.

  He feels the chunky shells scatter from his grip, spilling out onto the snow. It’s too cold to reload with his fingers numbed to raw senselessness. He drops the pistol, too. Not from fear or pain, but because he needs two hands for what will come next.

  Steel whispers as it slides from his sheath, a sword almost as long as the boy is tall, clutched in two shivering hands. As the beast stalks closer, he sees the malign hunger in its eyes cool to a feral wariness. It’s dying, but that only makes it bolder. Its foul sentience knows it no longer has anything to lose. It hunts now out of malice alone.

  Flakes of snow drift onto the blade, freezing into diamonds wedded to the steel.

  ‘Come on,’ the boy breathes the whispered words. ‘Come on...’

  The beast leaps, striking his chest with the force of a stallion’s kick, and he’s down on his back. The beast weighs as much as a warhorse, its twitching bulk pressing down on the boy’s slender body. The ache in his chest is a dull, creaking crackle, as if his lungs are filled with dry leaves. He knows his ribs are shattered, but there’s almost no pain at all. Steaming blood courses down the blade and onto his hands.

  Finally, the beast ceases its shaking. The boy gathers his strength and counts to three, rolling the stinking creature onto its side. The spines still quiver and leak clear fluid. He’s careful not to touch those.

  The sword in his hands is bonded to his fingers by a coating of the beast’s cooling blood. He lets the blade fall into the snow, and draws the serrated skinning knife f
rom his boot. Birds sing in the branches above, though birdsong on Caliban is never beautiful. Raptors cry challenges at one another, while carrion birds caw for corpse-meat.

  Slowly, everything starts to whiten, to fade away as other, truer sounds begin infiltrating his thoughts: the sound of a ticking fan blade in a labouring air filtrator; boot-steps on the deck above; the omnipresent rumble of live engines.

  At last, he opens his eyes.

  Both of them. Both work. He looks at the harsh illumination globes above, smelling the sharp disinfectant smell of the medicae chambers.

  With a pained grunt, Corswain rises and says, ‘Water.’

  XVIII

  His mind wandered during the morning vigil. As Corswain knelt with his brothers, his muscles still stiff with aches and discoloured by bruises, he found the serenity of purposes ever more difficult to attain. His head remained bowed against the hilt of his sword, and he gave all the appearance of another knight in dutiful reflection of the coming crusade. In truth, he dwelled in memories. His thoughts flew back to a world that hated him.

  Tsagualsa.

  The name brought a sneer to his lips, hidden by the hood that cast his features into shadow. Tsagualsa, a dead world the Night Lords claimed as their own; a world where primarchs had been reduced to screaming brothers, and the foundations of a fortress would one day rise to become an enemy stronghold.

  Tragan called to him once the reverence ended. The other knights filed from the chamber of reflection, their white surplice robes not enough the cover the battle scarring that ravaged every suit of black armour.

  ‘Your Grace,’ Tragan greeted him as he limped closer.

  Corswain smiled in reply. ‘You do not need to call me that any more, captain. Is something amiss?’

  Tragan, like his brothers, wore his full armour beneath a clean surplice. The hood was down, revealing his strong, aquiline features for all to see.

  ‘The Lion summons us,’ he said.

  Corswain would‘ve checked his weapons, had they still been at his side. Instead, he nodded. ‘Very well.’

  XIX

  The lord of the First Legion sat as he so often sat these nights, leaning back in his ornate throne of ivory and obsidian. His elbows rested upon the throne’s sculpted arms, while his fingers were steepled before his face, just barely touching his lips. Unblinking eyes, the brutal green of Caliban’s forests, stared dead ahead, watching the flickering hololith of embattled stars.

  Tragan and Corswain approached the throne as one. In a display far from perfect unity, the captain drew his blade and knelt before his liege, while Corswain went down slower – his body still sore, muscles still at odds with his desires. The Lion watched their obeisance with impassive eyes. When he spoke, his voice was the grind of thunder at the horizon – it could never be mistaken for human, and the pale scar across his tanned throat didn’t help humanise his tone.

  ‘Rise.’

  They rose as commanded. Corswain stood with muscles taut, arms crossed over his breastplate, his armour enlivened by the thick, white fur pelt draping down his back. The skinned beast’s fanged head draped over his shoulder guard, forming the cloak’s binding.

  ‘You summoned us, my liege?’

  ‘I did.’ The Lion remained seated with his fingers steepled before his lips. ‘We have made contact with Imperial forces.’

  ‘Orders?’ Corswain asked, feeling his heart beat faster. ‘A summons?’

  ‘Neither. We will not abandon the Thramas Crusade until these systems are ours. The Imperium lives and dies by what we do here in the deepest reaches. Defending Terra means nothing if the rest of the empire is ash.’

  ‘I do not understand, sire. What force has made contact with us?’

  The Lion shook his crowned head again, watching the hololith. His eyes reflected bright clusters of stars and worlds, while his voice was uncharacteristically soft.

  ‘We have made contact with several of my brothers and their Legions,’ he said, ‘for the first time since we parted company with the Wolves.’

  ‘Is it the Wolf King, sire?’ Corswain made no effort to disguise his reluctance. The Angels and the Wolves had hardly parted on brotherly terms.

  ‘No, Cor. The hail comes from Guilliman and our cousins within the Thirteenth Legion. Knowing we have been unable to reach Terra, it seems the Lord of Ultramar wishes us at his side instead.’

  Before the warriors could reply, the Lion narrowed his Calibanite eyes. ‘Unending Imperial ambition has not bred warriors with the warm hearts of men, but angels with the cold hearts of weapons.’ He rose from his throne, circling the hololithic table, watching the worlds turn about their suns.

  ‘My sons,’ he smiled, though it was utterly without warmth. ‘It seems Horus is not the only soul to believe he is heir to the empire.’

  About The Authors

  Graham McNeill

  Hailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill worked for over six years as a Games Developer in Games Workshop’s Design Studio before taking the plunge to become a full-time writer. Graham’s written a host of SF and Fantasy novels and comics, as well as a number of side projects that keep him busy and (mostly) out of trouble. His Horus Heresy novel, A Thousand Sons, was a New York Times bestseller and his Time of Legends novel, Empire, won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award. Graham lives and works in Nottingham and you can keep up to date with where he’ll be and what he’s working on by visiting his website.

  Join the ranks of the 4th Company at

  www.grahammcneill.com

  James Swallow

  James Swallow is an award-winning New York Times bestselling author whose stories from the dark worlds of Warhammer 40,000 include the Horus Heresy novels Nemesis and The Flight of the Eisenstein, along with Faith & Fire, the Blood Angels books Deus Encarmine, Deus Sanguinius, Red Fury and Black Tide; his short fiction has appeared in Inferno!, What Price Victory, Legends of the Space Marines, Tales of Heresy and The Book of Blood, along with the audiobook tales Heart of Rage, Oath of Moment and the forthcoming Legion of One. Swallow’s other credits include the non-fiction book Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher, writing for Star Trek Voyager, and scripts for videogames and audio dramas.

  He lives in London, and is currently working on his next book.

  Nick Kyme

  Nick Kyme is a writer and editor. He lives in Nottingham where he began a career at Games Workshop on White Dwarf magazine. Now Black Library’s Senior Range Editor, Nick’s writing credits include the Warhammer 40,000 Tome of Fire trilogy featuring the Salamanders, his Warhammer Fantasy-based dwarf novels and several short stories.

  Read his blog at www.nickkyme.com

  John French

  John French is a writer and freelance games designer from Nottingham. His work can be seen in the Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch roleplay games and scattered through a number of other books including the award nominated Disciples of the Dark Gods. When he is not thinking of ways that dark and corrupting beings can destroy reality and space, John enjoys talking about why it would be a good idea, and making it so with his own Traitor Legions on the gaming table… that and drinking good wine.

  Chris Wraight

  Chris Wraight is a writer of fantasy and science fiction, whose first novel was published in 2008. Since then, he’s published books set in the Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40,000 and Stargate: Atlantis universes. He doesn’t own a cat, dog, or augmented hamster (which technically disqualifies him from writing for Black Library), but would quite like to own a tortoise one day. He’s based in a leafy bit of south-west England, and when not struggling to meet deadlines enjoys running through scenic parts of it.

  Gav Thorpe

  Prior to becoming a freelance writer, Gav Thorpe worked for Games Workshop as lead background designer, overseeing and contributing to the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 worlds. He has written numerous novel
s and short stories set in the fictional worlds of Games Workshop, including the Time of Legends ‘The Sundering’ series, the seminal Dark Angels novel Angels of Darkness, and the Last Chancers omnibus. He lives in Nottingham, UK, with his mechanical hamster, Dennis.

  Dan Abnett

  Dan Abnett is a novelist and award-winning comic book writer. He has written over thirty-five novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies and, with Mike Lee, the Darkblade cycle. His novels Horus Rising and Legion (both for the Black Library) and his Torchwood novel Border Princes (for the BBC) were all bestsellers. His novel Triumff, for Angry Robot, was published in 2009 and nominated for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent. Dan’s blog and website can be found at

  www.danabnett.com

  Follow him on Twitter @VincentAbnett

  Rob Sanders

  Rob Sanders is a freelance writer, who spends his nights creating dark visions for regular visitors to the 41st millennium to relive in the privacy of their own nightmares.

  By contrast, as Head of English at a local secondary school, he spends his days beating (not literally) the same creativity out of the next generation in order to cripple any chance of future competition. He lives off the beaten track in the small city of Lincoln, UK. His first fiction was published

  in Inferno! magazine.

  Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Aaron Dembski-Bowden is a British author with his beginnings in the videogame and RPG industries. He’s been a deeply entrenched fan of Warhammer 40,000 ever since he first ruined his copy of Space Crusade by painting the models with all the skill expected of an overexcited nine-year-old. He lives and works in Northern Ireland with his fiancée Katie, hiding from the world in the middle of nowhere. His hobbies generally revolve around reading anything within reach, and helping people spell his surname.