Khârn: Eater of Worlds

by Anthony Reynolds

  ‘Do it then,’ snarled Ruokh. He leaned forward onto the blade, making it press in deeper. His blood began to flow more freely. ‘I’m already a dead man. It’s only a matter of years at best before rad-sickness finally claims me. Finish me off now if you’ve already condemned me.’

  With a look of disgust, Dreagher eased the pressure off his knife. ‘No,’ he said. He sheathed his blade. ‘That would be too easy.’

  ‘Then let me face Baruda,’ said Ruokh.

  ‘No,’ said Dreagher again. He stepped back, away from the Destroyer.

  Two warriors entered the cell, heavy spiked chains in their hands.

  ‘What is this?’ snarled Ruokh.

  ‘We are all degenerating, Ruokh, but you are falling faster than most. You can no longer be trusted,’ said Dreagher, turning his gaze on the Destroyer, his face grim. ‘Your place is with the Caedere now.’

  There were cells, deeper within the ship, where the most uncontrollable World Eaters, those completely lost to the Nails, were confined.

  Though too dangerous and unpredictable to be allowed free-roam of the ship, in battle they were terrifying shock troops. Set loose against an enemy, the berserkers were nigh unstoppable. These were the Caedere. The Red Butchers.

  ‘Baruda will not accept this,’ said Ruokh. ‘I can hear him now. “Blood for blood”, that’s what he’ll say. He’ll demand it. Let me face him.’

  ‘I will not see more Legion blood spilled on your account,’ snarled Dreagher, reiterating his stance.

  ‘I’ll face him,’ said a voice.

  Egil Galerius eased through the press of World Eaters.

  ‘What?’ said Dreagher. The Nails were pounding in his head. He didn’t immediately comprehend what the swordsman was saying.

  ‘You don’t want him to spill more Twelfth Legion blood,’ said the swordsman, ‘but your Chaplain desires there to be a reckoning. Let me fight as his champion, and let honour be met.’

  Ruokh had become still. Dreagher’s face was dark. Brond appraised the Emperor’s Children legionary, taking in every detail of his immaculate appearance.

  ‘You were one of Fulgrim’s Palatine Blades, were you not?’ said Brond.

  ‘I still am,’ said Galerius.

  ‘Are you good?’

  Galerius’s amethyst eyes gleamed. ‘Yes.’

  Ruokh’s face twisted into a savage, toothy grin. ‘Let me kill him. Baruda’s Brazen Lord cares not whose blood is spilled. Make him agree to it.’

  Brond glanced over at Dreagher and shrugged. ‘It’s an option. Would Baruda agree?’

  Dreagher’s face was grim. The Nails were punishing him. He could not think.

  ‘No,’ he said, finally. It was an effort simply to form words. ‘Baruda is too proud. Even if he did accept, I would not. I will not give him the satisfaction,’ he said, nodding towards Ruokh.

  Galerius’s smile slipped off his face, leaving it stony and cold. Without a word he spun and walked away.

  ‘You should have let me kill the preening peacock,’ said Ruokh, once he was gone. ‘I’ve always wanted to kill one of the Third Legion.’

  ‘You’re a savage, Ruokh,’ said Dreagher.

  Ruokh’s sneer left his face.

  ‘We are all slipping towards the precipice, you as much as any of us,’ he said. ‘I simply do not fight it.’

  ‘And that is why you can no longer be trusted.’

  ‘You struggle and agonise and torture yourself trying to remain in control, Dreagher, but you must know you will fail in the end. What’s the point? Why choose to put yourself through that? The Nails take us to a purer place. Angron knew this. He would never have chosen to have his implants removed, even if that had been an option. The Nails gave him focus. They give us focus.’

  ‘In combat they give us an edge, but they rob us of strategy, of tactics, or coordination, of control–’

  ‘Control,’ sneered Ruokh. ‘Your need for control will be your undoing, brother. Mark my words.’

  ‘They rob us of our humanity.’

  ‘We are not human,’ said Ruokh, slowly. ‘We have no humanity to lose.’

  ‘If I released all those who have fallen too far to the Nails, what would happen?’ said Dreagher. ‘It would be a massacre. You are not as far gone as most of them, not yet – but you will be soon.’

  ‘As will you,’ said Ruokh. ‘As will every one of us. Will you lock up every legionary on board this vessel? In time, you will need to.’

  ‘If that is what it takes,’ said Dreagher.

  ‘And what about you? You cannot control the Nails. You could snap, as easily as any of us. What then?’

  ‘Then I’ll be locked up,’ snarled Dreagher.

  Ruokh laughed at that. ‘Ah, the proud and mighty Ninth Company, with every legionary locked in a cell, imprisoned by sub-human by-blows. You’d turn this into a prison ship,’ he said. ‘You know what your problem is, Dreagher?’

  ‘Somehow I feel you are about to tell me.’

  Ruokh leant forward, straining against the arms holding him. ‘You hate the Nails,’ he hissed, ‘but the Nails are the Legion. You are fighting the wrong war, brother.’

  Dreagher stared at him for a moment. Then he turned away. ‘Chain him,’ he said, and he marched from the cell.

  Dreagher stalked the corridors and halls of the Defiant, lost in his thoughts. Invariably, his path brought him back where it always did.

  He rounded the corner and paused momentarily before continuing on more slowly.

  Egil Galerius of the III Legion bowed his head at the approach of the World Eaters captain. Dreagher’s eye twitched. Somehow it felt as though Galerius was mocking him, even in that moment of respect. His eyes were involuntarily drawn to the four scars radiating out from the Palatine Blade’s lips. He stared for a moment, then nodded curtly back and moved to stand beside the warrior.

  Together, they looked through the glass at the enthroned figure of Khârn, who remained, as ever, utterly motionless. The floor before the window was strewn with the skulls, weapons, armour fragments and helmets of fallen comrades and noted enemies.

  ‘His exploits were well known among the Third Legion,’ said Galerius. ‘I would like to have faced him in the training cages.’

  ‘No,’ said Dreagher. ‘You wouldn’t.’

  Galerius stared at him, his amethyst eyes glinting, his cold, white face set in arrogant disdain.

  ‘I duelled with Sevatar, First Captain of the Night Lords, and Lucius of my own Legion. I crossed blades with Sigismund of the Imperial Fists and lived to speak of it. With respect, I do not believe that I would have anything to fear by crossing blades with your Khârn.’

  ‘Then you are a fool,’ said Dreagher.

  Galerius sniffed and turned away, returning his gaze to Khârn. ‘We’ll never know,’ he said. ‘I understand that it is unlikely he will ever wake.’

  ‘He will,’ said Dreagher.

  One of Galerius’s slender eyebrows arched upwards, like a feline languidly stretching its back.

  ‘Blind faith is not a trait that I would ever have associated with the Twelfth Legion,’ he said, ‘and yet is seems that it is to be found everywhere amongst your ranks these days.’

  ‘It is not faith,’ said Dreagher. ‘He’s alive. I don’t know how – he was dead when we found him, half-buried in a pile of Imperial Fists – but he is alive.’

  ‘It is not much of a life,’ said Galerius. ‘But then he is with his Legion. That is something. As far as I know, I am the last of mine.’

  Galerius dropped to one knee and picked up a skull that had been left there as an offering. It had been blackened in a fire, though its forehead had been cleaned of ash and soot. A design had been traced in blood there, brown and flaking – a stylised skull motif.

  It was crude and almost childishly simplis
tic, little more than a triangle with a line across its top and lines off the bottom for teeth. This was the mark of one of the Ruinous Powers; the same mark that Baruda wore upon his forehead, painted in his own blood each day.

  Galerius turned the skull, presenting the symbol to Dreagher.

  ‘Are you sure it is not faith that you cling to?’ he said.

  ‘I have to believe that Khârn will come back to us,’ said Dreagher. ‘I have to. He was dead. I saw his body. He had no life signals. None. There has to be a reason why he came back.’

  Galerius shrugged, and placed the skull back where it had been. He ran his fingertips across the shoulder plate of an Imperial Fist, its surface cratered with bolt damage.

  ‘Not everything has a reason,’ he said. ‘Some things just are.’

  ‘I cannot believe that,’ said Dreagher. ‘There is a reason why his heart started beating again.’

  ‘You don’t believe in faith, but you believe there must be a reason for seemingly random events. That sounds like a contradiction to me.’

  ‘I don’t see it that way.’

  Galerius shrugged, as if the conversation was beginning to bore him.

  ‘Perhaps the warp wants him alive,’ he said. ‘What is it Lorgar’s zealots call it? The Primordial Truth? Perhaps the gods of the aether intervened to keep him alive. Perhaps he has a destiny to fulfil.’

  ‘That is not a comforting thought,’ said Dreagher.

  ‘We both know that those powers are real, though. We have both seen evidence of it. I daresay we have both worshipped them, in our own way.’

  Dreagher stared at him, a look of distaste on his face.

  ‘I pray to no gods,’ he said. ‘What you speak of are daemons. They can be powerful, but they are not gods.’

  Galerius did not seem concerned by Dreagher’s glare. He shrugged.

  ‘Semantics,’ he said. ‘And whether you pray to them or not, you worship them with your actions, regardless. You feed them with your anger, your hatred, your rage, just as the Third Legion feeds them with excess.’

  ‘Most within the Twelfth would say that yours has become a Legion of sadists and hedonists.’

  ‘And most within the Third would say that yours has become a Legion of mindless berserkers.’

  ‘There is truth in both those statements.’

  Galerius smiled. ‘There is. But fine. Put aside any talk of gods and daemons. Perhaps the most obvious truth is that Khârn is not really alive at all.’

  Dreagher stared back at him, his expression hard.

  ‘Oh, technically he is alive, of course,’ said Galerius. ‘His lungs expand and contract, delivering oxygen into his bloodstream which is continuing to be pumped through his veins by his primary heart. The mechanics of life are being maintained. But what is life if there is no mind? No soul? Khârn may technically be alive, but his consciousness is clearly not here. There is no brain activity barring that needed to maintain the body’s most basic functions. He does not dream. There is nothing there.’

  Galerius licked his lips, warming to his topic – or perhaps enjoying the fact that he was clearly goading Dreagher. ‘He’s just a shell. An empty shell of meat.’

  Dreagher clenched his fists.

  ‘Careful,’ he growled.

  ‘I mean no disrespect, obviously,’ said Galerius, though his mocking eyes said otherwise. ‘It would be my assumption that the one you knew as Khârn is long dead. I would not waste your time hoping that he will rise up and become the saviour of your Legion.’

  Dreagher had turned back towards the motionless figure of Khârn. His face was set. Hard. Uncompromising. And angry – it was rare to see one of the XII that did not look angry.

  Galerius sighed, and stood up.

  ‘I am not trying to antagonise you, World Eater. I’m merely thinking aloud,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you are right and there is a reason why he did not stay dead. Why not? Far stranger things than that have happened in the last decades.’

  Dreagher did not respond. Galerius shrugged again, and turned to leave the World Eaters captain to his thoughts.

  ‘I am not a fool, Galerius,’ Dreagher said in a low voice.

  Galerius looked back at him. ‘I have never thought you were.’

  ‘I know that you are probably right. All that’s left of him is a vacant shell.’

  Galerius waited for him to continue.

  ‘If he doesn’t wake, the Legion is lost,’ said Dreagher. ‘Already we are splintering. Already there are those who are looking to carve their own path, go in their own direction. Argus Brond, for one. We’ll all go our separate ways, becoming scattered warbands, condemned to die a slow death. Without the primarch there is a power vacuum that cannot be filled. Oh, there are those who would fill it – they are already making their play for power – but there is no one, no one, who can unite the Legion.’

  ‘Except Khârn.’

  ‘Except Khârn,’ said Dreagher, nodding. ‘The Legion would rally behind him. Without question.’

  ‘You don’t actually believe this will happen,’ said Galerius, realisation dawning on him. It was a statement, not a question.

  Dreagher glanced over at Galerius. He sighed.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But I cling to the hope that I am wrong, because if not, then my Legion is already dead.’

  In truth, Dreagher had tried everything to rouse Khârn. Electro-shock therapy. Adrenaline injections administered directly into his primary heart. Neural pulses fired into his cortical implants. He’d even tried more esoteric methods. Speaking to him. Pleading with him. Curling Khârn’s pliant fingers around the haft of Gorechild. He’d even spilt his own blood and dripped it onto Khârn’s lips, praying to the Blood Father for some reaction. Nothing.

  ‘Perhaps I am a fool,’ said Dreagher.

  ‘No,’ said Galerius. ‘I have a similar hope that I will be reunited with my Legion. Without that hope,’ he said, ‘there is no reason to go on.’

  ‘I did not thank you for intervening and saving Skoral,’ said Dreagher.

  ‘You’re very protective of this mortal,’ said Galerius.

  ‘She is the closest to an Apothecary that we have,’ said Dreagher. ‘Tell me, why did you offer to fight for Baruda?’

  ‘Truly?’ said Galerius. ‘I’m bored. A duel would be a worthy distraction.’

  Dreagher looked at the III Legion swordsman. A harsh laugh barked from his throat.

  Galerius grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Even that simple movement was artful and languid.

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  They were interrupted by a chime from Dreagher’s gorget vox. Dreagher turned away.

  ‘Flag-captain,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘You need to be up here, Dreagher,’ came the reply. ‘You need to be up here now.’

  Chapter 5

  Flag-Captain Aorek Stirzaker was old even by Legion reckoning. For one not of the Legiones Astartes, he was positively ancient.

  His face was long and narrow, and the outline of his skull was clearly visible beneath age-mottled, paper-thin skin. His flesh hung off his bones like crumpled cloth draped over a frame of sticks, and his birth-eyes, which had long ago failed him, filled with cataracts and cancers, had been replaced with emotionless deep-set silver synth-orbs.

  He looked like nothing more than a cadaver that had been restored to a mockery of life. Nevertheless, his mind was a razor, his devotion to the Ninth Company fierce, and his nature as bellicose and proud as the machine-spirit of his battleship, the Defiant.

  No longer able to walk – an Ultramarines blade had severed his spine during the void battle above the war-world of Armatura – he was now permanently rigged into his command throne.

  Hard-wired into the ship’s systems, he felt what the Defiant felt – savage joy as broadsides were unleashed, pain as
enemy lance strikes punched through armour plating. He felt the living warp probing at his Geller field, seeking any weak spots, the sensation a strange prickling upon his skin. He felt the Legion serfs and the World Eaters themselves moving through his corridors, like blood pumping through his veins.

  The bridge of the Defiant was deeply shadowed. He preferred it that way. He found the dimness calming, and knew from experience that the stark white light of lumen strips put the World Eaters on edge. Nor was there any starlight to be seen beyond the bridge’s oculus viewscreens – the blast shutters were down and secured, lest the sight of the living aether drive his crew to madness.

  In the gloom, the strategium’s officers, distaff and servitors went about their work with quiet efficiency, faces lit by glowing screens.

  Stirzaker slowly turned his head at the approach of the two World Eaters captains. Raised upon his command throne, he looked down upon them. Some of their kind did not like that – a mortal looking down on them.

  The World Eaters nodded to him. That was about as much respect as any World Eater paid to any being. He inclined his head in return, the movement slow, hampered by the calcification of his joints. He was of comparable age to these two, though it would not be known by looking at them. Of Argus Brond he knew little, but Dreagher he knew well. The Defiant had borne the Ninth into battle since its completion in Andromache’s shipyards.

  ‘Aorek,’ said Dreagher. ‘What is it that you see?’

  As ever, he was straight to the point. Stirzaker liked that. He was too old for wasted words.

  ‘See for yourself,’ he said. He rotated his command throne with a mind impulse, and gestured with one gnarled claw of a hand. A three-dimensional projection crackled into life in the air between him and the World Eaters. It was rendered in grainy blue-grey light, and flickered with heavy distortion and interference.

  Faces could be seen in the crackling white static surges. They appeared only for a fraction of a second at a time, but they left an indelible imprint on the mind. They were distorted, twisted and screaming. They were not of human origin.

  Stirzaker paid them no mind. He was long used to the snarling denizens of the aether. He felt them scratching upon his Geller field even now, straining to get in.