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 rightness 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 rightness 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’s 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.
‘Assassins come. One will reach this palace. Her name is…’
‘M’Shen,’ Talos whispered. He had dreamed the name himself.
‘Yes.’ The primarch’s tongue flicked out to lick at the trailing drool. ‘Yes. And she, too, does the work of justice.’
The Night Haunter handed the helm back to Talos, closing his eyes as he lowered his slender, armoured form onto the throne. ‘I am no better than the millions I burned on Nostramo. I am the murderous, corrupt villain that the Imperial declarations name me. I will greet this death gladly. I punished those who wronged. Now my own wrongs will be punished in kind. A delicious and balanced justice.
‘And in this murder, the Emperor will once again prove me right. I was right to do as I did, just as he is right to do as he does.’
Talos stepped closer to the throne. The question that left his lips was not the one he’d intended to voice.
‘Why,’ he said, eyes burning with something akin to anger, ‘do you call me Soul Hunter?’
The Night Haunter’s black eyes gleamed, and the enthroned god smiled again.
‘And we’re down,’ Septimus said. ‘Docked and locked, powering down now.’
Talos rose to his feet, leaving the restraint couch.
‘Septimus, see to the Navigator. Ensure her surgery occurred without complications.’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘First Claw, Seventh Claw,’ Talos said. ‘With me. We are going to speak with the Exalted.’
‘The war on the surface is costing us dearly.’
‘The losses are acceptable.’
Talos eyed the Exalted’s visage, twisted and leering in a parody of pale Nostraman flesh.
‘Acceptable?’ the prophet asked. ‘By what standards? We have lost nine Astartes since we made planetfall. The Warmaster is throwing us against the hardest targets on Crythe.’
‘And we break them.’
Imbedded within every pure Astartes was the capacity to generate acidic spit. In loyalist Chapters descended from flawed gene-seed, this ability was occasionally hindered, stunted or absent altogether. The Night Lords were not impure. At the Exalted’s obdurate display, Talos felt his saliva glands tingling, responding to his annoyance. With a whispered curse, he swallowed the burning venom, where it would dissipate harmlessly in his stomach acids. It stung on the way down his throat.
‘Yes, we break them. And we break ourselves upon them. We are fighting the Mechanicus. The Warmaster is bleeding us against targets ill-suited to our Legion’s warfare. Titans and servitors and tech-guard? We are wasted against an enemy too inhuman to feel fear.’
‘It is not the role of a warrior to whine when he is deployed outside his ideal battlefield, Talos.’
‘Then by all means,’ Adhemar interjected, spreading his arms wide, ‘come down to the surface, Excellency. Bloody your claws with the rest of us. Allow your precious Atramentar to fire some bolts in anger. See for yourself!’
The older Astartes grinned, wolf-like and keen, as the Atramentar either side of the Exalted’s throne growled through their tusked helms. ‘We just crippled a Titan,’ Adhemar’s dark eyes shone with amusement, ‘so don’t think you raising those weapons is any deterrent to us telling the truth.’
The Exalted burbled a wet chuckle. ‘You are in fine spirits for a sergeant that so recently led his men to their deaths.’
The smile was wiped from Adhemar’s face. Talos looked between the two Atramentar – Garadon and Vraal – in their bullish Terminator plate. Tense. Ready.
But they would not act. He was sure of it.
‘Enough of this madness,’ Talos said. ‘We are hurled like fodder against insane resistance, and ordered to scout ahead of the mortal armies. Scout ahead? Astartes? This is no way to wage war. Fear is our greatest weapon, and that blade is blunted in this conflict.’
‘You will fight because it is the will of the Warmaster,’ the Exalted sneered. ‘And it is my will.’
‘Seventh Claw is destroyed.’ Talos’s fingers ached to draw Aurum. He knew, with icy certainty, he could ascend the dais and ram the golden blade home in Vandred’s chest before the Atramentar cut him down.
Sorely, sorely tempting.
‘Did you harvest their gene-seed? You were my Apothecary once. It would grieve me to think you had forgotten your former duties completely.’
‘I cut them from the bodies of the slain myself,’ Talos replied. And he had. With his combat knife, he’d cut the progenoid glands from the chest and neck of each killed warrior. Adhemar, with tears in his eyes, had packed the discoloured organs in freezing gel, storing them in a sealed stasis crate aboard Storm’s Eye.
Six souls lost. Lost to the warp. He imagined his men, brave warriors all, their shades howling as they drifted through the Sea of Souls.
‘Adhemar and Mercutian are First Claw now.’ Talos was adamant. ‘That is not a request.’
The Exalted shrugged, moving weighty armour and bone spikes. Matters of unit size and assignment were beneath him.
‘And let us be clear, Brother-Captain Vandred. This war will see us dead. The Warmaster will bleed the 10th to the bone, because we are expendable to him. The survivors will, by virtue of no other choices remaining to them, join the Black Legion.’
‘The Warmaster, a thousand praises upon his name, has granted his forgiveness for your… outburst… on the surface of the prison world.’ The Exalted’s ruined teeth glistened unpleasantly. ‘Do not abuse his generous nature, Talos.’
Talos looked to the Atramentar. Garadon had been there. Had he not explained the truth of the matter?
‘The Warmaster sought to create divisions between the landing party. He wanted me because my second sight is not blinded, as his own seers suffer. I cannot believe you still refuse to the see the light of truth. Garadon was with us. Surely he–’
‘The Hammer of the Exalted relayed all that occurred. The only flaw the Black Legion was guilty of was allowing our Thunderhawk to be overrun by prisoners.’
‘Are you insane?’ Talos took a step closer. Both of the Atramentar brought their weapons to bear: Garadon hefting his hammer, and Vraal’s lightning claws sparking into hostile life. ‘They blew the main ramp door open with explosives.’
The Exalted did not answer, but the smile revealed all. It knew. The Exalted knew, had always known, and did not care. The loss of Talos, no matter how precious a commodity his prophetic gift was, would be an acceptable sacrifice in the name of the Warmaster’s continued goodwill.
Talos’s next words came out as a whispered threat. ‘If you think I will allow you to lead the 10th into the grave because you hunger so feverishly for Abaddon’s good graces, you are sorely mistaken.’
‘You seek to usurp me, Soul Hunter?’ The Exalted still smiled.
‘No. I seek leadership for the surface conflict. I want to win this war and still have a company to come back to.’
‘Promoting yourself? How droll.’
‘Not I, Vandred.’
Finally, the Exalted reacted. It rose from its throne on squealing armour hinges, its slanted, birdlike eyes narrowed.
‘Do not speak his name. He slumbers too deeply. He will not awaken. I am the Exalted. I am Captain of the 10th. You will obey me.’
‘Enough, Vandred. You will not lead us on Crythe, and we are dying to your desire in order to please the Warmaster. We are fighting an enemy that lacks any human emotion. They do not feel fear, and they will not panic. It is costing us life and resources to destroy such a foe in grinding, traditional warfare. If their morale can yet be broken, it will not be done with bolters and blades. So we will use our own machines. The machines they once made for us.
‘I am going to the Hall of Remembrance,’ finished Talos. ‘First Claw, with me.’
With those words spoken, he stalked from the bridge, guarded by the sacred weapons of the newly-forged First Claw.
Outside, Cyrion stopped.
With the doors closed behind them, he leaned against the wall, head down, as if stunned. A tremor overtook his right arm, and he held onto his bolter only because his fist tightened in an uncontrolled clenching of tendons.
In a broken voice that reached only Talos, he said, ‘Brother. We… must speak. The Exalted’s terrors are flooding him. He is finally drowning in them.’
‘I do not care.’
‘You should care. When you spoke of the Hall of Remembrance, what remains of Vandred within that tainted shell was weeping in fear.’
The Exalted and its guardians watched the squad leave. As the doors slammed closed in the Astartes’ wake, Garadon lowered his ornate hammer, resting its haft on his shoulder once more. The black lion’s face of his shoulder armour roared silently in the direction of the sealed doors.
‘I will never understand why the primarch honoured Talos so highly,’ the Atramentar said.
Vraal, on the other side of the Exalted’s command throne, voxed his own thoughts. ‘He is fortunate. Luck favours him. He dreamed of the Navigator. Now he takes a Titan princeps prisoner. The Warmaster himself will praise that capture.’
‘You sound disgusted, brother.’ Garadon’s own voice was as cool and toneless as ever. ‘Does his fortune offend you?’
Vraal had still not retracted his lightning claws. They hissed and sparked in the gloom of the bridge, sending harsh illumination flashing along the contours of his bulky Terminator armour like sheet lightning.
‘It does. He offends me with each breath he draws.’
‘Vraal,’ the Exalted slurred, its voice thick wit
h bitter mucus.
‘Yes, my prince?’
‘Follow them. I do not care how it is done, but the ritual of reawakening must be desecrated.’
‘Yes, my prince.’ Vraal nodded his tusked helm. The servos in his ancient war-plate growled at the movement.
The Exalted licked its fanged teeth, uncaring of the blood it drew.
‘Talos must not be allowed to awaken Malcharion.’
XIV
CAPTAIN OF THE 10TH
‘I do not want this.
I have served with loyalty and honour…
Throw… my ashes into the void.
Do… not… entomb me…’
– Final words of the war-sage Malcharion
The sleeper dreamed.
He dreamed of battle and bloodshed, dreams that warped the boundary between memory and nightmare within his sluggish mind.
A world. A battlefield. The battlefield. Armies of millions laying waste to each other in a relentless grind. Bolter fire, bolter fire, bolter fire. So loud it bleeds into other senses. So loud it becomes blinding, so loud it tastes of ash. The sound of bolters firing is more familiar to him than the sound of his own voice, so deeply is it ingrained within him.
The spires of a palace that spans a continent. The towers of a fortress like no other – a bastion of gold and stone to rival the imaginations of even the greediest gods.
He would die here. This he knew, for it was memory.
He would die here, but would not be granted peace.
And still, the bolters fired.
The ornate platinum surface of the sarcophagus stared back in silence, still draped in thin, gentle tendrils of wisping steam as the stasis field powered down.
It was ornate and beautiful in the way Storm’s Eye would never be. The Land Raider, enhanced by vicious spikes and ornate armour restructuring, was artistry of a sort: revelling in the Legion’s reputation, fitted with chain racks to display crucified enemies even as the battle tank cut down hundreds more.
Storm’s Eye was limitless aggression and the infliction of woe upon the enemy. The machine-spirit within, reflected by the ceramite without.
But this was artistry of a different, nobler breed.
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