‘Do not worry,’ Argel Tal told her. ‘One way or another, it will be over soon.’
The Gal Vorbak did not remain in seclusion for long. Most emerged from their sealed chambers within a handful of nights. Xaphen was the first, leaving his chamber seemingly unchanged, though he was never without his helm as he travelled the ship’s decks. A brazier burned at all times from its cage mounting on his power pack, trailing the scent of ashes and coals wherever he went. He spent his time visiting the other Gal Vorbak in their meditation chambers, allowing no other visitors.
Argel Tal left Cyrene’s chamber after three nights. Aquillon was in the sparring halls, just as the Word Bearer had expected.
‘I had a feeling you’d be here,’ he said.
The Custodes stepped back from one another: Aquillon had been duelling with Sythran, both of them wielding live weapons and wearing full armour, including their crested helms.
Sythran deactivated his guardian spear, the spear blade turning off with a snap of discharged energy. Aquillon lowered his blade, but left it active.
‘A long meditation,’ he said, watching through ruby eye lenses.
‘Is that suspicion in your voice, brother?’ Argel Tal grinned behind his faceplate. ‘I had a great deal to dwell upon. Sythran, may I borrow your spear? I wish to duel.’
Sythran turned his head to Aquillon, saying nothing. The Occuli Imperator spoke for him. ‘Our weapons are keyed to our genetic spoor. They would not activate in your hands. As an addendum, it is considered the height of insult for one of us to let another touch the blades issued into our care by the Emperor himself.’
‘Very well. I meant no offence.’ Argel Tal moved to the weapon rack, donning a battered, ancient pair of power claws over his gauntlets. ‘Shall we?’
Aquillon’s golden helm tilted slightly. ‘Live weapons?’
‘Duellem Extremis,’ Argel Tal confirmed, tensing his fists to activate the electrical power fields around the long claws.
Sythran left the practice cage, sealing his commander and the Crimson Lord within. He’d seen Argel Tal and Aquillon cross blades on hundreds of occasions, and an educated, experienced estimate would see the Word Bearer defeated within sixty to eighty seconds.
The commencement chime sounded. Eleven clashes and five seconds later, the bout was over.
‘Again?’ enquired the Astartes. He heard Sythran’s quiet exhalation in place of speech. Aquillon said nothing, either.
‘Is something amiss?’ Argel Tal asked. With the claws on his gauntlets, he couldn’t offer a hand to help Aquillon rise.
‘No. Nothing is amiss. I had not expected you to attack, that is all.’
The Custodian regained his feet, his own armour joints humming as false muscles of machine-nerve and cable-sinew flexed and tensed.
‘Again?’
Aquillon hefted his long blade. ‘Again.’
The two warriors flew at one another, each strike flashing aside with bursts from their opposing power fields. Every second saw three strikes made, and each strike snapped back with the weapons’ electrical fields repelling one another after the metal kissed for the briefest moment. The air was rich with the ozone scent of abused power fields in only a matter of heartbeats.
This time, the two warriors were more evenly matched. Argel Tal’s strength lay in his awareness, not only of his own blade work but his enemy’s potential, betrayed by their own movements. It had always allowed him to stand his ground against superior weapon-masters, such as Aquillon, for a respectable amount of time before being unable to deflect the winning blow. Now he coupled that perceptive gift with speed to match the Custodian’s, and Aquillon was forced to bring desperate defensive strokes to bear for the first time in any of his duels with Argel Tal.
He gleaned the flaw in the Word Bearer’s sudden thrusts – that edge of indelicacy, the suggestion of imperfect balance – and struck out when the next opportunity presented itself. The flat of his blade crashed against Argel Tal’s breastplate, sending the Astartes stumbling back. Aquillon’s lips were already creasing into a smile as the crimson-clad warrior thudded to the deck.
‘There. The balance is restored. You are back where you belong: on the floor.’
Argel Tal’s voice told of the grin behind his faceplate. ‘I almost had you.’
‘Not a chance,’ the Custodian replied, wondering why it was suddenly true. ‘But you are different, brother. Energised. Vital.’
‘I feel different. Forgive me for now – I have duties to attend to.’
‘By your word,’ said the Custodian.
Both Aquillon and Sythran watched the Astartes leave. In the silence afterward, Aquillon said ‘Something has changed.’
Sythran, true to his vow of silence, merely nodded.
TWENTY-FOUR
Isstvan V
Traitors
In Midnight Clad
Isstvan – an unremarkable sun, far from Terra, precious Throneworld of the Imperium.
The system’s third world, comfortably close enough to the sun to support human life, was a virus-soaked mass grave marking the anger of Horus Lupercal. The world’s population was nothing more than contaminated ash scattered over lifeless continents, while the bones of their cities remained as blackened smears of burnt stone – a civilisation reduced to memory in a single day. The orbital bombardment from the Warmaster’s fleet, payloads of incendiary shells and virus-laden biological warfare pods, had seemingly spared nothing and no one anywhere in the world.
Isstvan III lingered now in silent orbit around its sun, almost grand in the extent of its absolute devastation, serving as the scarred tombstone for the death of an empire.
The system’s fifth planet was a colder globe, able to support only the most resistant and genetically valiant life. Its skies were thick with storms, its skin was scabbed by tundra, and nothing on the face of the world promised an easy life for any that would settle upon it.
Ringing Isstvan V was one of the largest fleets ever gathered in the history of the human species. Without a doubt, it was the most impressive coalition of Astartes vessels, with the scouts, cruisers, destroyers and command ships of seven entire Legions. The matt-black hulls of the Raven Guard’s vessels blended into the void around their flagship, the sleek, vast and vicious Shadow of the Emperor. In a tighter formation, the green armour-plated warships of the Salamanders clustered in orbit around their primarch’s vessel, the immense Flamewrought, its edges and battlements bedecked in leering, draconic gargoyles of burnished bronze.
A much smaller fleet hovered in the high atmosphere, comprised almost entirely of smaller escorts around the hulking capital ship Ferrum, marked the presence of the Iron Hands. The vessels were denser, their armour thicker, and their black hulls were trimmed with gunmetal grey and polished silver. The Iron Hands had sent their elite companies, while the bulk of the Legion’s fleet remained en route.
Of the enemy fleet, there was no sign at all. The vessels of the Death Guard, the Emperor’s Children, the World Eaters and the arch traitorous Sons of Horus were gone – hidden from Imperial eyes and the Emperor’s vengeance.
In preternatural concordance, hundreds of vessels drifted closer to the world from the system’s farthest reaches. Clad in armour of midnight-blue, the warships at the vanguard bore the skullish insignia and bronze statuary of the Night Lords Legion. The Iron Warriors drifted alongside their brothers, bastion-ships of composite metals and dull iron ceramite barely reflecting the stars. The vessels of the Alpha Legion formed the peripheries of the massed fleet, their sea-coloured hulls painted with stylised scales in honour of the reptilian beast they’d taken as their symbol. Embossed hydras snarled into space from their places along the ships’ hulls.
At the core of the approaching armada, with more warships than any of their brother Legions, came the stone-grey battlefleet of the Word Bearers. The XVII Legion flagship, Fidelitas Lex, carved its way closer to the world ahead, massive engines vibrating with the gentle power of an approach vector’s thrust.
So many vessels breaking from the warp at once should have been a maelstrom of colliding hulls and spinning junk, yet the armada coasted closer to Isstvan V with maddening calm, safe distances maintained between every craft, and the void shields of each ship never once coming into crackling contact.
With a precision that required mass calculation, the fleets of seven Astartes Legions hung in the skies above Isstvan V. Shuttles and gunships ferried between the heaviest cruisers, while the decks of every warship made ready to deploy their warriors in an unprecedented, unified planetfall.
Horus, traitorous son of the Emperor, was making his stand on the surface. The Imperium of Man had sent seven Legions to kill its wayward scion, little knowing four of them had already spat on their oaths of allegiance to the Throneworld.
The cellar was crowded with the remembrancers and off-duty Army grunts barred from the operations decks. Ishaq shouldered his way through to the bar, earning a score of annoyed grunts and tutted threats that he knew wouldn’t ever go anywhere near an actual confrontation.
He ordered a plastic beaker (no expenses spared here in the Cellar) of whatever engine grease had been recently brewed without being immediately fatal. In payment, he scattered a few coppers on the bar’s stained wooden surface. In their absence, his pockets were distinctly empty.
Around him, the conversations were all keyed to the same subject. The planetfall. The betrayal. Horus, Horus, Horus. What he found most interesting was the tone such discussion was taking. ‘The Emperor abandoned the Great Crusade.’ ‘Horus was betrayed by his father.’ ‘The rebellion is justified.’ It went on and on, just as it had been doing for over a month now, during the entire time the fleet had been in the warp.