The Dark King and The Lightning Tower

by Dan Abnett

  Dorn sighed. 'And the hatred planted in those you leave alive will pass from one generation to the next until this world is engulfed in a war the cause of which none of those fighting will remember. It will never end, don't you see that? Hate only breeds hate and the Imperium cannot be built upon such bloody foundations.'

  'All empires are forged in blood,' said Curze. 'To pretend otherwise is naïve. The rule of law cannot be maintained by the blind hope that human nature is inherently good. Haven't we seen enough to know that ultimately the mass of humanity must be forced to into compliance?'

  'I cannot believe I am hearing this,' said Dorn. 'What has got into you, Curze?'

  'Nothing that has not always been there, Dorn,' said Curze, striding away from the mighty golden figure and hauling one of the few remaining prisoners upright In the front of his tunic. He scooped up a fallen bolter and thrust the heavy gun into the prisoner's trembling hands.

  Curze leaned down and said, 'Go ahead. Kill me.'

  The terrified man shook his head, the oversized weapon shaking in his hands as though his limbs were palsied.

  'No?' said Curze. 'Why not?'

  The prisoner tried to speak, but so awed by the terrifying proximity of the primarch that his words were unintelligible.

  'Are you afraid you will be killed?'

  The man nodded and Curze addressed his warriors, 'No one harms this man. No matter what happens, he is not to be punished.'

  Curze had turned and walked back towards Dorn with his arms stretched out to either side of him and presenting his back to the prisoner.

  No sooner had he turned away from the armed man than the gun had been raised and the hard crack of a bolter shot split the air. Sparks flew as the explosive shell ricocheted from Curze's armour and he spun on his heel to smash the prisoner's skull to splinters with his fist.

  The headless corpse swayed for a moment before dropping slowly to its knees and pitching onto its chest.

  'You see,' said Curze, his fingers dripping blood and bone fragments.

  'And what was that supposed to prove?' asked Dorn, his features curled in distaste.

  'That any chance mortals get they will choose the path of dissent. When he thought he would be punished, he dared not shoot, but the moment he believed himself free from consequence, he acted.'

  'That was an unworthy deed,' said Dorn and Curze had turned away from him before he could elaborate, but the Imperial Fists' primarch caught his arm. 'Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. Leave this planet. Now.'

  Dorn's eyes were hard as granite and Curze knew enough of his brother's resolve to realise he had pushed him far enough. 'When this campaign is won, you and I will have words, Curze. You have crossed the line and I will no longer countenance your barbarous methods of war. Your way is not the way of the Imperium.'

  'I think you might be right…' whispered Curze.

  And he had led his warriors from the field of battle, their dark armour rendering them as shadows in the ruins.

  He wondered what might have happened had he taken the debate to its logical conclusion.

  Curze shied away from the violence inherent in such a line of reasoning and ran a hand through his dark hair, feeling like a caged animal as the door to his chamber - his prison - slid open and a warrior in gleaming, midnight-blue armour entered. Through the door, he could see the purple-armoured figures of Fulgrim's Phoenix Guard, their golden halberds and copper scale cloaks glittering in the wan light of the starfort.

  Dorn and Fulgrim were taking no chances with his confinement.

  The newcomer's head was shaven bald, pale and angular, with hooded eyes of jet beneath a prominent brown and pugnacious jawline.

  Curze nodded in acknowledgement at the sight of his equerry, Captain Shang, and beckoned him in with an impatient wave of his hand.

  'What news?' asked Curze as Shang bowed curtly before him.

  Shang said, 'The Master of the Fists recovers, my lord. A lesser being than a primarch would be dead thrice over with the wounds you dealt him.'

  Curze returned his gaze to the tracts of stars beyond the skin of the starfort, all too aware of the severity of Dorn's wounds, having clawed them with his bare hands and teeth.

  'Then I must await the judgement of my peers, is that it?'

  'With respect, my lord, you did draw the blood of a brother Primarch.'

  'And for that they will demand blood in return, no doubt…'

  He remembered Dorn coming to his chambers, enraged by the slaughters on Cheraut and incensed at what Fulgrim had told him - secrets Curze had told Fulgrim in confidence some days earlier. The fit had come upon Curze as the Phoenician had told him tales of Chemos, pitching him to the floor and wracking his mind with terrifying visions of a nightmare future of death and unremitting darkness.

  Moved by Fulgrim's apparent concern, Curze had confided in his old tutor, telling him of the visions that had plagued him since his earliest days on Nostramo.

  A galaxy at war.

  Astartes turning on one another.

  Death awaiting him at his father's hands…

  Fulgrim's pale, aquiline features had remained stoic, but Curze had seen the unease that flickered in his eyes. He had hoped Fulgrim would keep his confession in confidence, but when Dorn had appeared at his door, he knew he was betrayed.

  In truth he had little memory of what had occurred after Dorn's storming accusations of insult to the Emperor… the present had faded and the future had seized his mind with agonising visions of a galaxy locked in a cycle of unending war where the alien, the mutant and the rebel arose to feast on the rotting carcass of the Imperium.

  This then was the future the Emperor was creating? This was the ultimate destiny of a galaxy where the fear of punishment was not the agent of control. This was the inevitable result of allowing weak men to craft the destiny of Mankind and Curze knew that, of all the primarchs, only one had the force of will required to mould the new Imperium from the soft clay of its present form.

  'The time has come to forge our own path, Shang,' said Curze.

  'Then this is the moment you foresaw?'

  'Yes. My brothers will seize this opportunity to be rid of us.'

  'I believe you are correct,' agreed Shang. 'My sources tell me there is talk, and not idle talk, of recalling the legion to Terra to account for our methods of war.'

  'I knew it. Since they cannot kill me, the cowards choose to strike at me through my Legion. You see, Shang? They have been waiting for this opportunity for decades. They are weak fools who have not the stomach to do what must be done, but I do, oh yes, I do indeed.'

  'Then what is our course, my lord?' asked Shang.

  'Fulgrim and Dorn may have betrayed me, but we are not without friends amongst the other Legions,' said Curze. 'But first we must put our own house in order. Tell me, what news of Nostramo?'

  'It is as we feared, my lord,' said Shang. 'The regime of Administrator-regent Balthius has failed. Corruption is rife, criminals govern from the ruined spires of Nostramo Quintus and lawlessness is endemic.'

  'Then I have no time to waste while small minded fools decide my fate as though I am a lowly menial to be chastised.'

  'What are your orders, my lord?' asked Shang.

  'Ready our ships, captain,' said Curze. 'We return to Nostramo.'

  'But you have been ordered to remain in seclusion, my lord,' pointed out Shang. 'Lord Fulgrim's praetorians and Dorn's Templars guard your chambers.'

  Curze grinned crookedly and said, 'Leave them to me…'

  Curze lifted the last piece of his armour from the shadowed alcove and raised it above his head. He turned towards the door of his chamber and lowered his helmet until the skull-faced visor connected to his gorget with a hiss of pressurisation. His vision shifted subtly and his perceptions broadened as he blended with the shadows of the dimly lit chamber.

  He slowed his breathing and stretched out his senses, the darkness a second home to h
im after so many years spent in its embrace as a predator on the weak and guilty. He felt a moment's regret that it had come to this, but he quashed such notions viciously. Doubt, regret and hesitancy were weaknesses others might suffer from, but not Konrad Curze.

  His breathing deepened and the tenebrous chamber came alive to him.

  Curze felt power in the darkness; the cold intellect of hunters and creatures of the night that killed beneath its cloak. Lethal instincts honed on a thousand battlefields were now heightened to undreamed of levels and would now serve him equally well on this one.

  He spread his arms wide and a ripple of psychic force pulsed like the blast wave of an explosion with Curze at its epicentre. The hanging glow strips filling the chamber exploded in quick succession, detonating one after another in showers of pellucid sparks. Broken glass tinkled musically to the steel deck in a glass rain.

  Sputtering power cables swayed from the ceiling, hissing and fizzing like angry snakes as electric discharge strobed blue across the room.

  Hostile red warning lights blinked. Cold light eased inside as the door opened and a handful of armoured warriors stood silhouetted.

  Curze leapt straight up, gripping the open lattice structure of the nearest column and swinging himself up into the deeper darkness of the chamber before the light could reach him. His legs swung around the column and he climbed higher as the warriors spread out with their halberds extended before them.

  He heard them call his name, their voices echoing in the darkness.

  A twist of muscle and he was airborne, a glimmering shadow of dead stars and extinction. The warriors below would have the senses of their battle plate lo penetrate the darkness, but they paled in comparison to those of the Night Lords' primarch. Where others saw only light and dark, Curze saw all the myriad hues and shades that were invisible to those who had not become one with its fuliginous depths,

  One of the Phoenix Guard stood directly beneath him, scanning the chamber for its captive occupant, unaware that his doom lurked in the shadows above.

  Curze spun around the column, looping lower with each revolution and holding his hand out like an axe blade. The warrior died with his head sliced cleanly from his shoulders, the iron flesh of the primarch smashing through his armoured gorget. No sooner was the blow delivered than Curze was in motion, swooping through the darkness like a shadow.

  Cries of alarm echoed as his gaolers realised he was amongst them, stabbing beams of helmet lamps crisscrossing madly as they sought to pinpoint his location. With skill borne of decades spent as a murderous hunter of men, Curze ghosted invisibly between the beams of light.

  Another warrior fell with his torso ripped open, blood squirting from torn arteries like ruptured pressure hoses. Gunfire split the darkness, starbursts of muzzle flashes, as the warriors opened fire on their unseen attacker. None came close, for wherever they fired, Curze was already far from harm's way, spinning through the air like a malignant phantom and twisting between the bolts and wildly slashing blades.

  One of Dorn's Templars backed towards a pool of light and Curze slid through the darkness towards him, moving impossibly silently for an armoured warrior. A sensation unlike anything he had felt previously danced in his blood and Curze savoured it as he understood it for what it was.

  Contrary to Guilliman's rash pronouncement, it seemed Astartes could know fear…

  This fear - such as it was - was something to be treasured. Mortal fear was a rancid, sweaty thing, but this… this was caged lightning in the marrow.

  Curze pounced towards the armoured Templar, one of Dorn's best and bravest.

  Veteran or not, he died as any other man did - in blood and agony.

  'Death haunts the darkness,' shouted Curze. 'And he knows your names.'

  He could hear frantic calls for reinforcements, but the superior systems of his own armour easily jammed them as he took to the air once more and vaulted from shadow to shadow.

  'No one is coming,' he said. 'You are going to die alone here.'

  Spraying blasts of gunfire followed his pronouncements as the warriors sought to pinpoint his location in the darkness.

  But Curze owned the darkness and no matter what light or senses these warriors depended upon, they were not nearly enough to stop him from killing them, he could see the survivors - a Templar and two of the Phoenix Guard - backing towards the door. They now realised this was a fight they could not win, but had made the mistake of thinking that a fight with Konrad Curze was one you could walk away from.

  Laughing with the joy of the hunt, a pleasure he had forgotten without worthy prey to test him, he soared through the air and dropped into their midst like an assassin.

  His fist punched through the armour of the first Phoenix Guard, and Curze wrenched his victim's spinal column out. Leaving the bloody curve of crushed hone protruding from the gaping wound, he snatched the dead warrior's halberd and dropped to the floor as the other warriors turned towards the agonised scream.

  Before they could react, Curze swept the halberd out in a wide, circular arc, the blade twice the width of a handspan above the deck. The energised edge cut through battle plate, meal and bone with a searing, electric tang.

  Both warriors fell to the deck, grunting in pain as they collapsed onto the bloody stumps of their legs. Curze hurled his stolen halberd aside and blocked a return strike from the fallen Phoenix Guard.

  He snapped his enemy's weapon in two and jammed the splintered ends through his chest.

  The Templar roared in anger, managing to get off a shot before Curze was upon him. He ripped the weapon from his victim's grip and planted one knee on his chest, the other on his left arm.

  The pinned warrior reached up with his free arm lo strike at him.

  Curze caught the blow and ripped the arm from its socket.

  Emergency lights began kicking in with a rising hum and thump of relays, and the chamber was suddenly illuminated with a harsh, white glow that dispelled the shadows and banished the darkness.

  Where before there had been darkness, now there was only light.

  And what had once been a place of imprisonment was now an abattoir.

  Curling arcs of blood spray coated the walls and floor, and shattered, headless, limbless bodies lay strewn about like spilled surgical waste.

  Curze smiled at the scene of slaughter and the persona he had worn like a disguise since he had first knelt before his father fell away like a discarded mask.

  Now he was no longer Konrad Curze.

  Now he was the Night Haunter.

  Night Haunter turned over the last card and his jawline tightened as the familiar pattern emerged once more. The strategium of his flagship was kept dark, the faint blue light of consoles and hololithic displays islands of light in the darkness. The Primarch of the Night Lords paid no attention to his surroundings, ignoring the pregnant pressure of anticipation that bristled from every member of his bridge crew.

  A deck of worn cards sat on the softly glowing lectern before him, their edges scuffed and curled from decades of shuffling and dealing. Little more than a parlour game played by the indolent rich of Nostramo Quintus, he had since discovered that variations of these cards had been employed in the hives of Merica and by the tribes of the Franc as a means of divination in the time before Old Night had descended.

  The cards apparently corresponded to the stratification of society at the time, with the various suits representing warriors, priests, merchants and workers. Ancient belief held that the future could be read in the patterns of cards known as the lesser Arcanoi, but such traditions were outmoded concepts in this colourless, secular galaxy…

  Except that no matter how thoroughly he shuffled the cards and dealt them on the polished glass of the lectern, the pattern was always the same.

  The Moon, the Martyr and the Monster lay in a triangular pattern. The King lay reversed at the feet of the Emperor on one side of the pattern, and on the other, also reversed, was the Dove - a card academics postulated wa
s a symbol of hope. The card he had just dealt sat at the top of the pattern, a card that had changed little over the centuries and the meaning of which, though often misinterpreted, was unmistakable.

  Death.

  He heard footsteps and looked up to see Captain Shang approaching, clad in his battle plate and wrapped in his ceremonial black cape of gleaming patagium. His helmet's flaring wings framed a death mask of an alien skull, its tusked lower jaw thrust beyond his throat.

  Behind his equerry, Night Haunter could see the gently rotating orb of Nostramo displayed on the viewscreen. Thick clouds of pollutants ringed the grey planet, shot through with emphysemic yellows and leprous browns. The radiation-blasted moon of Tenebor was just visible as a sickly orb emerging from the stained-lung corona of Nostramo's dying sun.

  'What it is, captain?" asked Nighl Haunter.

  'Word from the Choir chambers, my lord.'

  Night Haunter chuckled mirthlessly. 'My brothers?'

  'It would appear so, my lord,' said Shang. 'The astropaths sense a psychic bow-wave that appears to indicate a great many vessels approaching through the Empyrean.'

  'Dorn,' said Night Haunter, returning his attention to the cards before him.

  'Undoubtedly. What are your orders, my lord?'

  Looking once again at the world of his youth, Night Haunter felt the ever-present anger seething under his skin like hot magma beneath the fragile crust of a dying planet.

  'Nostramo was once the very model of a pacified planet, Shang,' said Night Haunter. 'Its populace was kept compliant through fear of the harsh punishment I would mete out to any who broke my laws. Every citizen knew his place and to break the law was death.'

  'I remember, my lord.'

  'And now we return to this…' said Night Haunter, sweeping the cards from the lectern to reveal a slowly scrolling list of text. 'A murder every eleven seconds, a rape every nine seconds, violent crimes increasing exponentially every month, suicide rates doubling every year. Within a decade, there will be nothing left of the ordered world I left behind.'