Текст книги "Aurelian"

Автор книги: Аарон Дембски-Боуден

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 6 страниц)

‘Ingethel,’ he said. ‘Do you live?’

Its fingers twitched, several of them, on all four of its hands. The sky was darkening now. With the night came the cold. Lorgar replaced his cracked helm, breathing deep of his internal air supply.

‘Ingethel,’ he said again.

The daemon’s bones creaked as it slowly rose. I live. Not for much longer. But for now, I live.It turned its monstrous face to his. Cataracts milked its abominable eyes. All is done. You have witnessed all that had to be seen.

‘How much was true?’ demanded Lorgar.

All of it, replied the daemon. Or none. Or perhaps something in between.

Lorgar nodded. ‘What if there was more I wished to see? You have shown me what the gods demanded I bear witness to. Now show me what I wish to see.’

The daemon curled its twiggish arms close against its broad, speckled chest. This is permitted. What would you have me show you, Emperor’s son?

He paused for a moment, seeking the right words. ‘I’ve seen what I must do to ensure victory. I’ve seen the fate of the galaxy if the Emperor’s lies are not challenged. Now, I wish to walk other worlds in this Great Eye. If this is the gateway to the heaven and hell of human myth, show me more of it. Show me the possibilities in these mutable worlds. Show me what the warp can offer humanity, if we concede to this merging of flesh and spirit.’

I can do all of this, Lorgar. As you wish.

The primarch hesitated. ‘And before I return to the Imperium, there is one thing I must see above any other.’

Name it.

Lorgar smiled behind the emotionless faceplate. ‘Show me what happens if we lose.’

PART FIVE

CRUSADE’S END

ELEVEN

COUNCIL

The Fidelitas Lex

Four days after Isstvan V

MAGNUS WAS SILENT for a long time. Lorgar continued his writing, pausing only to tap the quill into one of the nearby inkpots. The traditionalist in him adored Colchisian rusticism; he couldn’t shake the lingering notion that Holy Scripture should not be written upon a data-slate, unless no other implements presented themselves. In truth, he enjoyed the expression of recording his thoughts and prayers through flowing cursive lettering. There was more beauty in such creation, and gave his apostles something to copy in its entirety.

‘Brother,’ Magnus said at last. ‘I remember banishing that vision of you from my tower. It was mere days ago for me. Strange to think of the games time plays with us, is it not?’

Lorgar finally laid the quill to rest. When he turned to Magnus, it was with amusement in his eyes, and something more. It took his brother several moments to really see it, to truly understand what was different.

Few things in the galaxy could unnerve Magnus the Red, but the sight of absolute conviction burning in the embers of Lorgar’s eyes was suddenly revealed to be one of them. He’d seen that look before, in the eyes of madmen, prophets and fanatics of alien races and other human worlds. Above all, he had seen it in the eyes of his father, the Emperor, where it warred with a patient affection. But he had never seen it in the eyes of a brother – never in the eyes of a being who commanded enough power to reshape the galaxy against the codes of the Imperium.

‘The Great Crusade is over,’ Lorgar smiled. ‘The true holy war begins now.’

‘Will you face Guilliman?’

Lorgar’s smile didn’t fade, though it took on a kinder warmth, rather than the full and unhealthy heat of fervour. ‘My Legion leaves for the Calth system as soon as Horus’s council concludes.’

Magnus’s image wavered, affected by his own unease. ‘That does not answer my question.’

‘The Ultramarines must be crippled at Calth. Their backs need to be broken, lest they race ahead to Terra and bolster our father’s defences.’

Magnus struggled to equate the purred assurances of military tactics with his most scholarly brother’s soft voice. It all seemed somehow incongruous, yet Lorgar had never looked so bizarrely complete. Gone were the furtive, soulful glances and the hesitations before speaking.

The duel with Corax had done more than grant him scars upon his face and throat.

‘That does not answer my question, either,’ Magnus pointed out.

‘My fleet will divide. We will storm Ultima Segmentum, for there is more to attack than Guilliman’s little empire.’

‘Where? Why?’

Lorgar’s chuckle sent distortions rippling through Magnus’s image. ‘You may know our plans when you join us fully.’

A chime sounded, followed by a stern, careful voice over the vox.

‘The Warmaster requests your presence, lord.’

Lorgar rose to his feet, not bothering to take his weapon this time. ‘Thank you, Erebus. Inform the Vengeful Spiritthat I am coming aboard immediately.’

THIS TIME, THE council chamber was almost empty. Lorgar dismissed his warrior escorts, letting Kor Phaeron lead them away. He walked to the central table alone, not concealing his bemusement at the lack of presences in the room.

‘Brothers,’ he greeted Horus and Angron.

The Warmaster’s expression was a sour indication of how he’d cast the atmosphere of indulgent fraternity aside. Angron’s distracted scowl showed he’d never paid heed to such a notion, anyway.

‘Lorgar,’ Horus fairly seethed the name through an insincere smile. Gone was the charismatic demigod so adored by his followers. In his place stood the truth offered by privacy: a brother among kin, and on the edge of black temper.

‘I came as requested,’ said the Word Bearer. ‘I see you have no desire to discuss Fulgrim.’

‘You have spoken your piece on our beloved brother. For now, you will have to trust me that all is in hand.’

Lorgar snorted. ‘I have seen horrors and truths you are only now beginning to imagine, Horus. It is you who should be trusting me.’

The Warmaster’s features were taut and blue-veined. He scarcely looked himself these nights.

‘I have trusted you, Lorgar. Look at what we brought about in this system. Now it is time for you to repay my trust with some of your own.’

‘Very well. But where is ‘‘Fulgrim’’?’

‘He walks the surface of Isstvan V once more, attending to the withdrawal of his Legion’s final forces. Now, enough of such talk. We have a great deal to plan.’

Lorgar shook his head. ‘No. Enough planning. We have spent months, years, speaking of plans. There is no more to discuss. I am taking my Legion into the galactic east. If all goes well, I will rejoin you on the crusade to Terra. If the battles go badly, then I will still rejoin you, though with significantly fewer warriors.’ He ended his assurances with a smile.

Angron stared into the middle distance, distracted by the stabbing thoughts of his neural implants. The occasional tic pulled his facial muscles tight, but he seemed to pay no attention to the conversation.

Horus released a slow breath. ‘We have argued over this many times, and I was a fool to let your enthusiasm run as wild as your imagination for this long. You do not have enough warriors to achieve what you plan.’

‘And I have told you, brother, my apostles are prepared to sail into Ultramar. We have made pacts with divine forces you still struggle to comprehend. Daemons, Horus – true daemons, born of the warp, will answer our summons. Our cargo holds heave with the bodies of faithful mortals, taken from the worlds we have conquered. The Seventeenth Legion has not been idle these last years.’

‘You need Legionaries.’ Horus leaned on the stellar cartography table, his fists eclipsing the galaxy’s outermost stars. ‘If you divide the Word Bearers fleet according to your desire, you will need more Legionaries.’

Lorgar threw his hands up in surrender. ‘Fine. Give them to me. Give me a few of your companies, and I will take them with me into the east.’

‘I will give you more than that,’ Horus gestured to the other brother in the chamber. ‘I will give you another Legion.’

Angron turned his scarred features upon Lorgar. His smile was the ugliest thing the prophet had ever seen.

TWELVE

COUNTERMEASURES

THE WORLD STILL smelled of betrayal. The smoky reek of it, thick and piquant, hung heavy in the air.

But then, that was no surprise. The civil war to divide the Imperium had begun there only four nights before. Many of the Legions loyal to Horus were still engaged in the arduous process of withdrawing their forces back into orbit. The pyre marking the final resting place of the tens of thousands of slain warriors was more than an ashen burial ground – it was a beacon of cinders, proclaiming the overthrowing of humanity’s stagnant oppressor. The blackened earth and scorched, empty suits of armour from over two hundred thousand Legionaries lay at the heart of a tank graveyard. Those war machines suitable for plunder were already claimed by the victorious Legions. The wrecks too far gone to repair sat where they’d died, consigned to rust and corrode when the rebels moved on.

Captain Axalian of Twenty-ninth Company watched his warriors’ progress from atop the burned-out hull of a Raven Guard Land Raider. The aquila still stood out upon his breastplate, as was his right as one of the Emperors Children Legion. Many of his brothers were already defiling the Imperial symbol as they altered their armour with little but their own blades and ingenuity, but he kept his wargear as pristine as possible. The emblem could be removed by the tech-adepts once his planet-side duties were complete. Until then, he would tolerate no damage to the ceramite he’d miraculously managed to keep unbroken through the insane battle earlier that week.

He had no need to raise his voice. His men, and the servitors working alongside them, operated fluidly and efficiently with only a little spoken direction. His role was one of organiser, not an overseer, and he took pride in the smooth operation taking place in his allotted section of the field. Axalian watched another of the black-hulled battle tanks being connected to the lifter claws of an Emperor’s Children transporter gunship. The servitors backed away, and a warrior nearby raised his hand. The captain nodded in reply.

‘This is Axalian,’ he spoke into the vox. ‘Sector 30, requesting clearance.’

‘Request acknowledged, Captain Axalian. Please hold.’

Another gunship, this one in the sea-green of the Sons of Horus, rattled overhead, pregnant with stolen Rhino troop carriers. About a minute after it, an Iron Warriors’ lander shook the ground as it lifted off on guttural engines.

‘Captain Axalian,’ came the reply from the Techmarine overseer at Reclamation Command, to the east. ‘You are clear, with five minutes to make your assigned launch window. If you fail to meet this requirement, you will surrender the launch window to the next vessel in line. Do you understand?’

Of course he understood. He’d been doing this for four days. He’d heard that same refrain, from the same Sons of Horus Techmarine, at least two hundred times.

‘I understand.’

‘Your launch window has commenced.’

He switched vox-channels. ‘Thunderhawk transporter Redeemer, you are clear for orbital return.’

‘Order received, captain. Launching now.’

The flyer’s thrusters started cycling up. Axalian watched it rise, shuddering with the weight of its plunder.

That was the moment a shadow passed overhead. The Reclamation Command bunker blurted an emergency code in screeching binaric cant across the communications channels.

‘Abort!’ Axalian called into the vox. ‘ Redeemer, this is Axalian, abort launch immediately. Land and cut engines at once.’

The Thunderhawk thudded down heavily on its landing gear. ‘Sir?’ voxed the pilot.

‘Stay down,’ said Axalian. ‘We have inbound.’

Three of them, and inbound without clearance. He watched the grey gunships roar overhead, spiralling down in landing trajectories, uncaring of the discord they sowed in their approaches.

‘Word Bearers.’

With an annoyed grunt, he jumped down from the Land Raider hull. Two of his warriors stood watch over a gang of servitors nearby; he gestured for them to leave their charges and follow him.

‘Self-righteous bastards,’ one of them voxed, ‘coming in like that.’

Axalian was irritated enough not to reprimand the Legionary for the breach of protocol. ‘Let us see what this is about,’ he said.

The gunships were kin to all Legion troop drop-ships: thick-hulled, swoop-winged and avian in a strangely hulking way. With a mechanical unison that could only have been intentional, the three ramps lowered as one. Axalian stood before the closest Thunderhawk, flanked by his guards.

‘I am Captain Axalian of the Third Legion. Explain yourse—’

‘Captain,’ both of his warriors hissed at once.

Leading the squad of Word Bearers was a towering figure in ceramite painted the red of fine wine. He stalked down the gang-ramp, ignoring how it shook beneath his boots. The primarch’s unmasked face was pale, given life and colour by the tattooed stripes of runic scripture inked in gold upon the white flesh. Axalian could claim the honour of standing in the Emperor’s presence a number of times, and this being resembled the Master of Mankind more than any other, but for the changes he wrought to himself to appear different.

‘My Lord Aurelian,’ Axalian saluted.

‘Tell me,’ Lorgar bared his perfect teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile, ‘where is my brother Fulgrim?’

‘THE SCARS SUIT you.’

They faced each other in a mausoleum of tank husks, while their warriors looked on. Thirty Word Bearers held their bolters in loose fists – half of them in their Legion’s traditional granite-grey ceramite, the other half clad in betrayers’ red. Change had come to the Seventeenth Legion after the Dropsite Massacre. Great change indeed.

Lorgar stood at the head of his phalanx. Fulgrim, clad in burnished purple and gold, needed no such formation. His Emperor’s Children surrounded the intruders; some stood in neat squad rankings in the presence of two primarchs, others remaining by the hulls of battle tanks, awaiting orders to close into formation. All of them sensed the unpleasant tension in the air, few fingers strayed far from bolter grips. Legionaries firing upon brother Legionaries may have seemed madness only weeks before, but the age of innocence and inviolate trust was over. They had buried it forever on this very battlefield.

Fulgrim’s effortless charm manifested in a warm smile, a brotherly glint in his eyes. He made no effort to reach for a weapon, as if such behaviour was beyond conception.

‘I am not making a jest,’ Fulgrim said, ‘the scars suit you.’ He stroked his fingertips along his own pale cheeks, tracing a mirror image of where the scars were carved down Lorgar’s face and neck. ‘They blend well with your tattooed scripture, almost like understated tiger’s stripes. They ruin any hopes of refining your features to perfection, certainly, but they are not entirely unattractive.’

Lorgar’s own smile seemed genuine enough to all who looked upon the scene from the sidelines, at least as sincere as Fulgrim’s.

‘We must speak, you and I, my beloved brother.’

Fulgrim gave an elaborate shrug, his face a guileless picture. ‘Whatever could you mean? Are we not speaking now, Lorgar?’

Several of the Emperor’s Children chuckled through vox-speakers. Lorgar’s smile didn’t fade. He said two words into his own open vox-channel. A name.

‘Argel Tal.’

CAPTAIN ROUSHAL OF the Emperor’s Children destroyer Saturnine Martyrcovered his eyes as his command deck exploded in light and noise. The peal of thunder shattered several consoles, cracking glass instruments and driving a thick crack through the occulus screen.

He was already yelling into the vox for an emergency containment and repair team, while cursing at his on-board cult of tech-adepts for whatever laxity allowed such a grievous malfunction.

Several of the returning shouts insisted it was a teleport flare. Either way, alarms were ringing.

When Roushal dragged himself off the floor, waving a hand through the dissipating mist, the first thing he encountered was the muzzle of a bolt pistol. Fat-calibred and painfully wide, it broke his teeth on the way into his mouth, and rested hideously cold and bitter on his tongue. He tried to swallow. Three of his teeth went down with the saliva. They tasted smoky and bitter.

‘Unguh?’ he managed to gasp.

The mist cleared enough to reveal the massive arm clutching the pistol, and the Word Bearer in traitors’ red to whom the arm belonged.

‘My name is Argel Tal,’ said the warrior. ‘Remain silent, on your knees, and you will be allowed to survive the next hour.’

FULGRIM HESITATED.

‘Yes, Captain Axalian?’

The captain needed a second attempt to speak. The primarch was clearly unconnected to the main vox-net, and he was the ranking officer in his lord’s presence. It fell to him to appraise the Legion commander of the orbital… situation.

‘Lord, we are receiving a mass-aligned signal from forty-nine of our vessels. One signal, coming from the Saturnine Martyr, is the source pulse. The others are confirmations, aligned to the source message.’

Fulgrim ground his teeth together. The smile died in his handsome eyes. ‘And what is the message, Axalian?’

Before the captain could reply, Lorgar clicked his gorget’s voxsponder to a louder volume. The voice that came through was crackled by distance distortion, but the words were clear enough.

‘This is Argel Tal of the Gal Vorbak. Objectives achieved, my lord. No casualties. Awaiting order to teleport back to our ships.’

Lorgar silenced his vox. ‘Now, brother,’ he smiled at Fulgrim, and there was no mistaking the absolute sincerity in the expression. ‘Let us talk alone.’

Fulgrim swallowed, too composed to ever reveal his discomfort, but unable to force life and colour to his strained features.

‘You have changed, Lorgar.’

‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

THIRTEEN

LA FENICE

THEY HAD SPOKEN for hours, walking together by the edge of the battlefield, weaving between the barricades and firebases established by the Iron Warriors Legion. They kept their voices low, watching one another with careful eyes, while any Legionary or servitor nearby scattered before their slow path. It seemed clear, in no uncertain terms, that the brothers had no wish to be interrupted.

By the time Lorgar left the surface, night had fallen upon the killing fields of Isstvan V. The work continued, with Axalian and his cohorts returned to work hours before, lifting the salvage and leaving the scrap. The captain was close enough to witness the brothers finish their discussions, noting that the Seventeenth Primarch’s saccharine amusement had abated, as had the anger simmering within his gaze.

As for Fulgrim, he seemed similarly dispassionate, adopting neither the familiar smile he usually wore in Lorgar’s presence, nor the subtle signs of fraternal condescension that had so thoroughly marked their decades of brotherhood.

When the teleport flare faded, Axalian voxed for his waiting Thunderhawk to hold position, and switched communication channels.

‘This is Axalian to the Heart of Majesty. Priority request.’

The expected delay lasted almost a full minute, before a voice fuzzed back on fragile vox. ‘Captain Axalian, priority request acknowledged. How may we illuminate you, sir?’

‘What is the status on the forty-nine vessels with Word Bearer ‘‘visitors’’?’

Again, the delay. ‘Fleet reports indicate the Seventeenth Legion is recalling its embarked guests via teleportation.’

Ah, Third Legion pride at work. No warship captain would confess to being taken by surprise like that, let alone boarded by those they’d trusted. Embarked guests. Axalian almost grinned. How delightful.

He was just about to reply when his battle-brother’s voice rasped back from the Heart of Majestyin the heavens above. ‘Captain Axalian, we are receiving conflicting reports on the primarch. Where is Lord Fulgrim? The fleet is calling out for immediate visual affirmation of his location.’

The captain looked to where the flare of teleportation fog was little more than a disseminating glimmer.

‘I had visual confirmation on the primarch until a few moments ago. Inform the fleet, he teleported with Lorgar.’

With morbid curiosity, he listened to the slipstream of voices in conflict across the orbital vox-net. It took almost five minutes for sense to break through and when it did, it wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

‘This is the flagship to all vessels. The primarch is aboard. Repeat: this is the Pride of the Emperorto Third Legion fleet. Lord Fulgrim is aboard.’

THE CHAMBER LAY in darkness. It assaulted the other senses to make up for its lack of the most important one: the smell of decay was a raw musk hanging thick in the cold air, and never before had Lorgar considered that absolute silence could have an oppressive presence all its own.

‘Lights,’ the primarch said aloud. His voice echoed dramatically, but nothing answered.

‘The acoustics in here have always been wonderful,’ Fulgrim said, and his brother could hear the grin in those words.

The Word Bearer lifted his fist. A moment’s thought wreathed it in heatless, harmless psychic fire, but it was a parasitic luminescence, seeming to eat the darkness rather than banish it. Still, it was enough.

Lorgar regarded the devastated theatre. Whatever last performance had taken place here had been one of supreme decadence. Bodies, already gone to rags and bones, slumbered in cadaverous repose across the chairs and aisles. Discarded weapons and broken furniture lay strewn across the scene. Nothing was unmarked by the black stains of old blood.

‘I see your Legion’s pursuit of perfection does not extend to cleanliness,’ Lorgar said softly.

Fulgrim grinned again. He could see it now, his brother’s teeth oranged by the amber witchlight.

‘This is holy ground, Lorgar. You of all souls should respect that.’

Lorgar turned and moved on, walking over the bodies toward the stage. ‘You are the puppet-slave of a single god. I am the archpriest of all of them. Do not tell me what I should respect.’

The stage was riven by damage and darkened by shed blood. Both primarchs ascended the steps to the platform itself, their ceramite boots forcing the reinforced wooden boards to creak and whine.

‘There it is,’ Fulgrim gestured behind the thin, silk curtain. Lorgar had already seen it. He brushed the gauzy veil aside with the gentle push of a man moving an unbroken spiders web.

The Phoenician. The painting stole his breath for a long moment, and he was complicit in his awe, glad to let it do so. Few works of art had moved him as this one did.

Fulgrim, triumphant in this rendering, wore his most ostentatious suit of armour, as much Imperial gold as Third Legion purple. He stood before the immense Phoenix Gate leading into the Heliopolis chamber on board his flagship, a vision of gold against even richer gold. At his shoulders, reaching out in angelic symmetry, the great fiery pinions of a phoenix cast burning light against his armour, lighting the gold to flame-touched platinum and enriching the purple to a deep Tyrian hue.

All of this, from the look of haunting purity in the pale eyes to the last and least strand of white hair, was formed from a mortal’s craft. To stare with a primarch’s eyes, even from this respectful distance, showed the faint topography of brush strokes across the canvas. Only the most divine muse could inspire mortal hands to create such a masterpiece.

‘My brother,’ Lorgar whispered. ‘What a man you were. A paragon among wolves and wastrels.’

‘He always enjoyed flattery,’ Fulgrim smiled. ‘Do you so quickly forget how he sneered at you, Lorgar? Does his disregard slip from your memory so fast?’

‘No,’ the Word Bearer shook his head, as if reinforcing the denial. ‘But he had every right to think less of me, for I was never whole. Not until now.’

The thing wearing Fulgrim’s skin peeled back its lips in a smile the true primarch would never have made.

‘You asked to see your brother, chosen one. Here he is.’

‘This is a painting. Do not mock me, daemon. Not after we at last reached an accord.’

‘You asked to see the brother you had lost.’ The smile didn’t leave Fulgrim’s face. ‘I have upheld my end of our agreement.’

Lorgar was already reaching for the crozius on his back.

‘Peace, chosen one,’ Fulgrim held up his hands. ‘The painting. Look longer, look deeper. Tell me what you see.’

Lorgar turned again and stared at the exquisite masterwork. This time, he let his eyes slip across the image, seeking no details, merely drifting until they rested where they may.

He met the image’s soulfully-rendered eyes, and at last, Lorgar breathed through the faintest of smiles.

‘Hail, brother,’ he finally said.

‘Do you see?’ the daemon at his side asked. For a moment, for those three words, it wasn’t Fulgrim’s voice at all.

‘I see more than you realise.’ The Word Bearer turned to face his brother’s captor. ‘If you think to relish all of eternity while playing puppeteer to my brother’s bones, you will find yourself fatally disappointed one night.’

‘You speak the lies of a desperate and foolish soul.’

Lorgar laughed with a rare and sincere grin, perhaps the only expression that ever broke his resemblance to his father.

‘Your secret is safe with me, daemon. Enjoy your stewardship while it lasts.’

He gave Fulgrim’s shoulder a comradely slap and walked through the aisle still decorated with corpses, chuckling as he left the graveyard theatre.

When he closed the door, he took his witchlight with him, leaving Fulgrim and the painting together in the darkness.

OUTSIDE THE DOORS, Argel Tal waited with his honour guard. Most of the Legion had repainted their armour in the same crimson as the Gal Vorbak – another sign of the changing times. Each of these warriors wore betrayers’ red.

‘Sire,’ Argel Tal greeted him. The horns on his helm lowered as the Legionary nodded. Lorgar felt the palpable heat of the man’s twin souls – one living, one parasitically leeching from the first in imitation of life, replacing its theft with a symbiotic flood of power.

Harmonious. Pure. Divine. This was the unity of Chaos, when flesh and spirit met.

‘My son, tonight we convene the Council of Sanctity, and I will speak once more of Calth. Then, in the hours that follow, I will summon you and your most trusted subcommanders. After the Council of Sanctity has dispersed, I will speak to you not only of Calth, but of what follows it.’

The warrior hesitated before speaking. ‘I do not understand, lord.’

‘I know. But you will. There is a great difference between glory and sacrifice, Argel Tal. Sometimes, fate takes care of itself. In those times, you may follow your heart and do whatever you will. You may chase the glory you seek. And other times, destiny needs the courage and blood of mankind to force it through to a better future. Even at the cost of passion and vengeance. Even at the cost of a glory most highly deserved. We all make sacrifices, my son.’

Argel Tal bristled, though he sought to hide his offence from his primarch’s eyes. ‘I would like to believe I know enough of sacrifice already, my lord.’

Lorgar conceded with a nod. ‘That is why I turn to you with the truth this evening, and not Kor Phaeron or Erebus. You, like me, have looked into the gods’ eyes. And you, like me, have other wars to fight even as the Calth system burns.’