The First Heretic Read online

  The First Heretic

  Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  The Horus Heresy

  Dramatis Personae

  PART ONE

  Prologue

  I

  One

  II

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  III

  PART TWO

  IV

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  V

  PART THREE

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  VI

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Legal

  eBook license

  The Horus Heresy

  It is a time of legend.

  Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

  The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

  Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

  First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

  Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

  Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.

  As the flames of war spread through the Imperium, mankind’s champions will all be put to the ultimate test.

  Dramatis Personae

  The Primarchs

  Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers

  Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines

  Magnus the Red, Primarch of the Thousand Sons

  Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard

  Konrad Curze, Primarch of the Night Lords

  Ferrus Manus, Primarch of the Iron Hands

  Perturabo, Primarch of the Iron Warriors

  The Word Bearers Legion

  Kor Phaeron, First Captain

  Erebus, First Chaplain

  Deumos, Master of the Serrated Sun Chapter

  Argel Tal, Captain, 7th Assault Company

  Xaphen, Chaplain, 7th Assault Company

  Torgal, Sergeant, Torgal Assault Squad

  Malnor, Sergeant, Malnor Assault Squad

  Dagotal, Sergeant, Dagotal Outrider Squad

  The Crimson Lord, Commander of the Gal Vorbak

  The Night Lords Legion

  Sevatar, First Captain

  Legio Custodes

  Aquillon, Occuli Imperator, ‘Eyes of the Emperor’, Custodian

  Vendatha , Custodian

  Kalhin, Custodian

  Nirllus , Custodian

  Sythran, Custodian

  The 301st Expedition Fleet

  Baloc Torvus, Master of the Fleet

  Arric Jesmetine, Major, Euchar 54th Infantry

  Imperial Personae

  Cyrene Valantion, Confessor of the Word

  Ishaq Kadeen, Official remembrancer, imagist

  Absolom Cartik, Personal astropath to the Occuli Imperator

  Legio Cybernetica

  Incaradine, Conqueror Primus of the 9th Maniple, Carthage Cohort

  Xi-Nu 73, Tech-Adept of the 9th Maniple, Carthage Cohort

  Non-Imperial Personae

  Ingethel, Emissary of the Primordial Truth

  PART ONE

  GREY

  Forty-three years before the events of Isstvan V

  ‘Kill me then, “Emperor”. Better to die in freedom’s twilight than draw breath at the dawn of tyranny. May the gods grant me my last wish: that my spirit lingers long enough to laugh when your faithless kingdom at last falls apart.’

  – Daival Shan, Terran separatist

  warlord, at his execution.

  ‘If a man gathers ten thousand suns in his hands... If a man seeds a hundred thousand worlds with his sons and daughters, granting them custody of the galaxy itself... If a man guides a million vessels between the infinite stars with a mere thought... Then I pray you tell me, if you are able, how such a man is anything less than a god.’

  – Lorgar Aurelian, Primarch

  of the Word Bearers

  ‘There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.’

  – Nikollo Makiavelli, Ancient

  Eurasian philosopher

  Prologue

  The Grey Warrior

  His sisters wept when the Legion came for him. At the time, he couldn’t understand why. There was no greater honour than to be chosen, so their sorrow made no sense.

  The grey warrior’s voice was a machine’s rasp, deep and laden with static as he spoke from behind a death mask. He demanded to know the boy’s name.

  Before the mother answered him, she asked a question of her own. It was her way to stand straight and strong, never to be bowed by the things she saw. It was a strength she had passed on to her son, and would stay in his blood despite the many changes to come.

  She asked the question with a smile. ‘I will tell you his name, warrior. But first, will you tell me yours?’

  The grey warrior looked down upon the family, meeting the eyes of the parents only once before he stole their child.

  ‘Erebus,’ he intoned. ‘My name is Erebus.’

  ‘Thank you, Lord Erebus. This is my son,’ she gestured to her boy. ‘Argel Tal.’

  I

  False Angels

  I remember the Day of Judgement.

  Can you imagine looking up and seeing the stars fall from the sky? Can you imagine the heavens themselves raining fire upon the world below?

  You say you can picture it. I don’t believe you. I’m not speaking of war. I’m not speaking of promethium’s stinging oil-scent, or the burning chemical reek of flames born from missile fire. Forget battle’s crude pains and the sensory assault of orbital bombardment. I am not speaking of mundane savagery – the incendiary ills men inflict upon other men.

  I speak of judgement. Divine judgement.

  The wrath of a god who looks upon the works of an entire world, and what he sees turns his heart sour. In his disgust, he sends flights of angels to deliver damnation. In his rage, he seeds the skies with fire and rains destruction upon the upturned faces of six billion worshippers.

  Now tell me again. Tell me again that you can imagine seeing the stars fall from the sky. Tell me you can imagine heaven weeping fire upon the land below, a
nd a city burning so bright that all sight is scorched from your eyes as you watch it die.

  The Day of Judgement stole my eyes, but I can still illuminate you. I remember it all, and why wouldn’t I? It was the last thing I ever saw.

  They came to us in skyborne vultures of blue iron and white fire.

  And they called themselves the XIII Legion. The Warrior-Kings of Ultramar.

  We did not use those names. As they marched us from our homes, as they butchered those who dared to fight back, and as they poured divine annihilation upon everything we had built...

  We called them false angels.

  You came to me asking how my faith survived the Day of Judgement. I will tell you a secret. When the stars fell, when the seas boiled and the earth burned, my faith didn’t die. That is when I began to believe.

  God was real, and he hated us.

  –Excerpted from ‘The Pilgrimage’, by Cyrene Valantion

  ONE

  The Perfect City

  False Angels

  Day of Judgement

  The first falling star came down in the heart of the perfect city.

  The crowds were always dense and boisterous in the plaza’s midnight markets, yet everything fell silent when the sky wept fiery trails and the stars fell to earth in a stately drift.

  The crowds parted, forming a ring around the huge arrival as it came down. Only when it came closer could the people see the truth. It wasn’t a star at all. It wasn’t formed of fire – it was breathing it from howling engines.

  A smoke cloud drifted out from the downed craft, stinking of scorched oil and off-world chemicals. The ship’s hull was viciously avian, a raptor’s body of cobalt blue and dull gold. Its underbelly gleamed orange, bright with the hissing heat of orbital descent.

  Cyrene Valantion was one of the gathered crowd, and three weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday. Whispers started up around her – whispers that became chants, chants that became prayers.

  Jagged thunder echoed from nearby streets and plazas – the grumble of great engines and wheezing boosters. More of the stars-that-were-not-stars came raining down from heaven. The very air rattled with the hum of so many engines. Each breath tasted of exhaust.

  The dark-hulled emissary from the sky was emblazoned with the symbol of the Holy Eagle, fire-blackened from its dive through the atmosphere. Cyrene’s vision twinned, blurring between what she was seeing now and what she’d seen in artistic renderings in childhood. She was far from being one of the faithful, but she knew this craft, elaborately brought to life in pictures of vibrant inks on scrolls of parchment. Such imagery was scattered throughout the scriptures.

  And she knew why the elders in the crowd were weeping and chanting. They recognised it too, but not merely from the holy codices. Decades ago, they’d borne witness to the same vehicles arriving from heaven.

  Cyrene watched as people fell to their knees, lifting their hands to the starry skies and weeping in prayer.

  ‘They have returned,’ one old woman was murmuring. She spared a moment from her obeisance to claw at Cyrene’s flowing shuhl robe. ‘On your knees, ignorant whore!’

  By now, the whole crowd was chanting. When the old woman reached for her leg again, Cyrene shook herself free of the hag’s wrinkled talon.

  ‘Please don’t touch me,’ Cyrene said. It was tradition never to touch those who wore red shuhl robes without first gaining the maiden’s permission. In her fervency, the old woman ignored the ancient custom. Her fingernails raked the younger woman’s skin through the street dress’s thin silk.

  ‘On your knees. They have returned!’

  Cyrene went for the qattari knife strapped to her naked thigh. Slender, ornamented steel gleamed amber in the firelight reflected from the sky-craft.

  ‘Don’t. Touch. Me.’

  With a hissed curse, the old woman returned to her prayers.

  Cyrene took a deep breath, seeking to slow her frenetic pulse. The air heated her throat, prickling at her tongue with the charcoal spice of thruster smoke. So they had returned. The angels of the God-Emperor had returned to the perfect city.

  She didn’t feel the rush of reverence. Nor did she fall to her knees and thank the God-Emperor for his angels’ second coming. Cyrene Valantion stared at the vulture hull of the iron craft, while one question burned behind her eyes.

  ‘They have returned,’ the old woman murmured again. ‘They have returned to us.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cyrene. ‘But why?’

  Movement from the craft came without warning. Thick doors clanged wide and a ramp juddered down on squealing pneumatics. Between gasps and nervous weeping, the worshipful chanting grew louder. The people intoned prayers from the Word, and the last of those standing finally dropped to their knees. Cyrene was the only person left on her feet.

  The first of the angels stepped from the thinning smoke cloud. Cyrene stared at the figure, her eyes narrowing despite the exalted rightness of the moment. A sliver of ice wormed through her blood.

  As if one girl’s whispered protest could possibly change what was happening, she breathed a single word.

  ‘Wait.’

  The angel’s heavy armour was at immediate odds with the images from scripture. It stood unadorned by the holy parchments that should detail its holiness in flowing script, nor was it clad in the winter-grey of the God-Emperor’s true angels. This one’s armour, like the craft it emerged from, was a deep and beautiful cobalt, trimmed with bronze so polished it gleamed close to gold. Its eyes were slanted red slits in a stoic facemask.

  ‘Wait...’ Cyrene said again, louder this time. ‘These are not the Bearers of the Word.’

  The old woman hissed at her blasphemy, and spat on her bare feet. Cyrene ignored her. Her gaze never left the warrior armoured in cobalt, so subtly and distinctly different from the scriptures she’d been forced to study as a child.

  The angel’s brethren emerged from the dark interior of their landing craft and descended to the plaza. All wore armour of the same blue. All of them carried great weapons too heavy for a mortal man to lift unaided.

  ‘They are not the Bearers of the Word,’ she raised her voice above the chanting. Several people kneeling around her replied with harsh whispers and potent curses. Cyrene was drawing breath to call out the accusation a third time when the angels, moving in inhuman unison, raised their weapons and aimed into the crowd of worshippers. The sight stole the breath from her throat.

  The first angel spoke, its voice deep and raw, filtered through hidden speakers in its facemask.

  ‘People of Monarchia, capital city of Forty-Seven Ten, hear these words. We, the warriors of the XIII Legion, are oathed to this moment, honour-sworn to this duty. We come bearing the Emperor’s decree to the tenth world brought to compliance by the Forty-Seventh Expedition of humanity’s Great Crusade.’

  All the while, the dozen angels kept their weapons aimed at the kneeling civilians. Cyrene could see the muzzles were as charred as the vulture craft’s hull, darkened from firing shells of monstrous size.

  ‘Your compliance with the Imperium of the Man has held for sixty-one years. With the greatest regret, the Emperor of Mankind demands that all living souls abandon the city of Monarchia immediately. Moments ago, your planetary leaders were given the same warning. This city is to be evacuated within six days. On the final day, your planetary leaders will be allowed to send a single distress call.’

  The crowd kept silent, but their stares were now of confusion and disbelief, not reverence. As if sensing a drift in their attention, the angel aimed its weapon into the air and fired a single shot. The gunshot banged like a thunder peal rolling around a valley, storm-loud in the silence.

  ‘No one is to remain in Monarchia by dawn of the seventh day. Go now to your homes. Gather your belongings. Evacuate the city. Resistance will be met with bloodshed.’

  ‘Where will we go?’ a female voice called from the transfixed crowd. ‘This is our home!’

  The first angel turned his w
eapon, aiming directly at Cyrene. It took several seconds for the young woman to realise she’d been the one to speak. It took much less time for those near her to break and flee, leaving her in an ever-expanding patch of sudden isolation.

  The angel repeated its words, its emotionless inflection no different from before. ‘No one is to remain in Monarchia by dawn of the seventh day. Go now to your homes. Gather your belongings. Evacuate the city. Resistance will be met with bloodshed.’

  Cyrene swallowed, saying nothing more. Cries and jeers rang out from the crowd. A bottle crashed against one of the angels’ helms, shattering into glass rain, and as several others shouted out demands to know what was happening, Cyrene turned and ran. Where the crowd wasn’t already fleeing with her, she forced her way through the press of people.

  The throaty chatter of the angels’ weapons started up a handful of seconds later, as the God-Emperor’s messengers opened fire on the rioting crowd.

  Three days later, Cyrene was still in the city.

  Like many of the people calling Monarchia home, Cyrene’s dusky skin was a legacy of her ancestors’ lives in the equatorial deserts, and she had handsome eyes of a light brown that were rather like burnt auburn. Sun-lightened hazel hair fell in tumbling locks over her shoulders.

  At least, her more infatuated lovers described her in such terms.

  This was the picture her mind painted, though she no longer saw it when she looked in the mirror. Now her eyes were ringed from two nights without sleep, and her mouth was soured by dehydration.

  Exactly how things had come to this point remained a mystery. Across the city, resistance to the invaders had been ferocious for the hour or so it had lasted. The greatest massacre had taken place at the Tophet Gate, when the protests became a riot, and the riot became a battlefield. Cyrene watched from the haven of a nearby church, though there hadn’t been much to see. Citizens cut down and culled, all for the crime of daring to defend their homes.

  A battle tank of cobalt and bronze fired at the Tophet Gate itself, and though the slaughter was a tragedy, this was raw desecration. Grinding the dead beneath its treads, the tank fired a salvo at the towering structure. Its cannons left pain-scars across Cyrene’s sight, but she couldn’t look away.

  The Tophet Gate fell, its marble bulk breaking into segments after it pounded into the plaza. A fortune in white stone and gold leaf, a monument to the God-Emperor’s true angels, shattered by invaders claiming to be loyal to the Imperium.