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  I thought I had him. He had warned me against pursuing the matter, but I trusted that the wisdom and sincerity of my words would finally penetrate the armour of his secrecy.

  ‘You aren’t an insolent soul, Khayon. It isn’t in your nature. Insubordination is something you must be driven to, not something in your blood. Why, then, do you persist with this?’

  ‘I know what I sense.’

  I saw another flicker of temper at the edges of his eyes. ‘Your nebulous concerns are born of the very fact you have no idea what you are sensing. If you knew, you wouldn’t keep asking.’

  ‘Then tell me, Ezekyle. Tell me what lies in the warp’s cry. The Eye itself is shrieking your name. Unborn daemons drift around you in a halo of torment. What is out there? What calls to you?’

  I knew, the moment his eyes met mine, that I had overstepped. His mouth hardened into a thin line. He idly stroked two of the Talon’s blades together with a whetstone rasp.

  Nagual growled, sensing my unease across the symbiotic bond. You have angered him, the beast sent to me, forever simplistic in his emotions. His soul boils.

  Abaddon’s cold gaze drifted to the daemon. Because of the growl? Because he could sense what the creature was saying? An interesting possibility – unwelcome, but interesting.

  Silence, Nagual.

  ‘That is your father speaking, sorcerer,’ said Abaddon. ‘You speak with the vanity that Magnus the Red bred into your bones – that sense of knowing more than anyone else, of knowing best. The arrogance of believing that you alone know what to do with wisdom. You see something you don’t understand and it blisters your mind because, in your arrogance, you are so certain that you alone can deal with it.’

  ‘It is not that,’ I vowed. ‘I wish only for you to trust me, to trust all of us among the Ezekarion. We are your counsel and your bloodwards. We are the voices sworn to always speak the truth before you.’

  He rounded upon me, looking down with cold anger barely held back. ‘You are the only one that accuses me like this, Khayon. You are the only one that whispers your doubts and pours them into my ears. You are the only one that scratches at the walls of my mind and demands entrance, desperate to witness my every thought. The ­others trust me, but you alone do not. Not the proud and wise Iskandar Khayon. Why is that?’

  He didn’t let me answer. He silenced me with a gesture and continued, ‘You stare at me with suspicion. And I will tell you why, sorcerer. It’s because you are afraid. Afraid that I will fail you as our fathers failed us. Afraid that after rediscovering brotherhood I will be deceived into abandoning it once more. Afraid that the madness that claimed Horus will seep into my skull and leave me the same preening, deluded husk he was towards the end of his rebellion.’

  I said nothing. There was nothing to say. To deny even one of his words would be to insult both of us. He had spoken my thoughts as if he had read them from a parchment page.

  ‘If you wish to speak to me, Khayon, speak from wisdom, temperance and trust. Speak from ignorance if you must. That, at least, is palatable. But do not speak from fear.’ He shook his head in something approaching disgust. That simple gesture shamed me far more than his accusations. ‘Sometimes, brother, I swear that you have forgotten how to hate. All that remains is suspicion and fear. I will have no cowards at my side.’

  I took a step closer, feeling my teeth clench, feeling my hands closing into fists.

  I am no coward. I knifed the words into his mind, not by intention but by sheer force of belief. He tensed at their impact, and after a moment he smiled.

  ‘Perhaps you aren’t.’ The ragged harshness left his voice. ‘You truly believe I need your aid, brother? That I am so fragile I will fall victim to the same delusions that ruined our fathers?’

  I dared a smile, though there was precious little joy in it. ‘It is more that I have a healthy loathing of the creatures that call themselves gods. The warp is alive around you, Ezekyle. I sense that, without a doubt.’

  He fell silent after that. I can recall it with crystalline clarity even all these millennia later, the way he weighed the decision before speaking. To trust me or to chastise me? To believe that I was sincere in my concerns, or to believe that I was foolish and fearful?

  ‘Very well, Khayon. I will give you the answers you seek. We will speak of this when you return from Maeleum.’

  I stared at him, seeking to keep pace with this sudden shift in his thoughts. Maeleum? What madness was this?

  ‘Why send me there?’

  ‘Why do I send you anywhere?’ he countered.

  ‘But there is no one to kill on Maeleum. There is nothing there at all.’

  ‘You think so?’ His tone was neutral enough that I couldn’t tell if he was baiting me or honestly asking.

  I was surely correct, after the casualties sustained in the rebellion against the Emperor, and the losses suffered in the massacres that took place within the Legion Wars. The Sons of Horus had bled and bled and bled, most often at the hands of their former allies who punished them for their desertion at Terra. And as for the survivors, most of our warriors and officers alike were drawn from the Sons of Horus, who had followed Abaddon and Falkus back to their crusading home aboard the Vengeful Spirit. How many could truly remain on their adopted, desecrated home world? Maeleum was lifeless now, the tomb of a dead Legion.

  But Abaddon has ever known more than he reveals. Even then he had eyes and ears everywhere across the Eye, sequestered in places and delivering messages unknown to even the Ezekarion.

  ‘I am taking the Vengeful Spirit to lift the siege at the Anvidius Conjunction,’ he said, painfully calm, painfully reasonable. ‘And thus, I need you to go to Maeleum in my stead.’

  Not a mission of murder, then. Something worse, something to which I was far less suited.

  For a number of reasons, I was rarely our Legion’s chosen emissary. That dubious honour was most often reserved for Telemachon, and in those early days he was both warlord and herald. It was an honour that I was glad to concede to him, for the role of diplomat was one I despised, though I did once ask Ezekyle why he so rarely selected me.

  ‘There is more to forging alliances than intimidation and threat. You’re too cold. Too detached, too guided by reason. Too…’ and here he paused. ‘Too Tizcan.’

  ‘Those are surely virtues, not flaws.’

  Abaddon looked at me as if I had proven his point.

  And so others were far more commonly chosen. Ezekyle would send them ahead of our main fleet, bringing terms to rival warband leaders, requesting their alliance or their surrender. As one might imagine, these consular missions met with varying receptions.

  In the very beginning, Telemachon’s arrival was often a source of amusement. Abaddon was believed dead and the Vengeful Spirit had sailed away into that tremulous space between history and mythology;­ thus Telemachon was seen as a mad soul, a warrior trapped in the past, bringing words of impossible doom to uncaring warlords. Those that remained unconvinced were soon illuminated by the presence of what they had previously believed impossible: the Vengeful Spirit tearing through their fleets or razing their cities with blissful ease.

  Most recently, with so many warbands gathering beneath Daravek’s merciless gaze in opposition to our rise, the receptions our emissaries received were ever more hostile.

  My previous ambassadorial effort had ended in abject failure. Ezekyle had ordered me to make overtures to the warband of Korosan Myrlath, one of the few remaining Sons of Horus, Abaddon’s own former Legion.

  ‘I will see your will done,’ I promised.

  ‘No, Khayon.’ Abaddon was quite serious. ‘I don’t want him dead. You are to go as an emissary.’

  I remember saying nothing for several seconds. I needed time to process this. ‘Is this an example of dry Cthonian wit?’ I asked.

  ‘No, brother. Not this time.’
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br />   And so, emboldened by my lord’s trust, I swallowed my reluctance and made the journey.

  It went poorly. They captured me despite my peaceable intentions and hauled me before their overlord’s throne. There I was paraded and mocked before Korosan’s court.

  I felt the kiss of a blade against the back of my neck. Its thrumming power field spat sparks of searing energy against my cold armour plating.

  ‘We meet at last, assassin,’ Korosan Myrlath greeted me.

  I looked up as far as my executioners allowed. They kept me held low, forcing me to remain on my knees before their lord’s throne. I managed to lift my gaze to Korosan’s amused stare. Time had changed him as it had changed all of us, and he too wore his sins on his skin. He had fused to his armour, becoming a thing of biomechanical arrogance, his ceramite weeping stinking, ­bubbling blood from between its plates.

  ‘Today I am merely an emissary,’ I replied.

  This delighted him, despite being the truth. ‘Of course you are, Khayon. Of course you are. Do you have anything of worth to say before we see your sentence carried out?’ He did not rise from the throne of rusting, twisted iron. I was not certain he could rise from it. He seemed bound to the throne where his armour had bonded to the corroded metal.

  ‘I was not aware that I was on trial.’

  ‘No? But Thagus Daravek will pay richly in plunder for your head.’

  ‘So you have already bent the knee to the tyrant,’ I replied, forcing into my voice a mirth I did not feel.

  This earned a chorus of fresh laughter from the gathered warriors. Sensing their masters’ amusement, the beastmen and mutants around the throne room erupted into an orchestra of bestial noise. I waited until the howls and roars faded. I could do nothing else.

  ‘Abaddon’s pet assassin,’ Korosan grinned as he spoke the words, ‘accusing others of tyranny. What grotesque irony is this? Speak your master’s message, slave, and then we shall be done with this farce.’

  ‘Abaddon’s message remains unchanged,’ I replied. ‘Daravek seeks servants. Abaddon seeks brothers in arms. Forswear your oaths to the tyrant. Sail with us and take revenge upon the Imperium. Join us, or die.’

  Korosan smiled, showing two layers of teeth. His armour, once cast in the green of the Sons of Horus, was lost to a stain of verdigris and crusted over with colonies of barnacles. A sword was driven point-deep into the deck before the throne. Its hilt was of human ivory, its blade some kind of sharpened, shifting stone. He kept one hand on the weapon’s pommel at all times. I could hear the faint scraping sound as he ran his armoured thumb up and down the grip.

  ‘You’re quite serious,’ the warlord said, ‘aren’t you?’

  I resisted the urge to fight against the two warriors holding me on my knees. ‘Wholly serious. My lord has no wish to destroy you.’

  More laughter. I ignored it. This time, so did Korosan. ‘No wish to destroy me? No, perhaps not. He wishes only for me to bow to him, as Horus’ heir.’

  That was the moment I realised I was dealing with a fool. I felt suddenly blessed that I would not be calling this blind, proud creature ‘brother’. He was unworthy of fighting at our side.

  ‘I am no slave. Every warrior in history has fought under a warchief’s orders. Every soldier born has followed an officer’s commands. Even generals obey kings. I will not listen to your childish mind fumble and misunderstand the benefits of unity and brotherhood. This is your last chance. My lord would have you as an ally.’

  ‘He would have me spurn my oaths to the true Lord of the Eye,’ Korosan said with a sneer. ‘And I will shed no tears of regret over disappointing your weakling master with his stolen Talon. We will return your dismembered corpse to your precious lord. That shall serve as my answer to his generous offer.’

  He gestured to one of the warriors behind me, the one holding his blade against the back of my neck. ‘Ectaras. Do it.’

  I said nothing as the blade rose. The crowd roared their acclaim.

  I heard the whining protest of the descending blade. I saw the filthy, gore-mattered deck beneath me. There was no poetic thunderclap of the sword’s impact, no revelatory flash of my life awakened from memory to play out as theatre before my eyes.

  The sword fell.

  I died.

  After I died, I opened my eyes. The command deck of the Vengeful­ Spirit was just as I had left it, with my brothers and sisters of the Ezekarion and our gathered slaves, awaiting my return. I mourned the loss of the Rubricae whose armoured husk I had stolen and possessed for my journey. Poor Zaelor now lay headless in the midst of Korosan’s court. Surely they would defile his remains once they realised the empty shell wasn’t my corpse.

  ‘Well?’ Telemachon asked me. I ignored him, turning to Abaddon.

  ‘Negotiations,’ I admitted, ‘went poorly.’

  Abaddon seemed unsurprised. I suspected then, as I have suspected ever since, that he did not wish Korosan to stand with us at all, but appearances of fairness had to be maintained. He had sent me knowing Korosan would refuse me.

  His response was typically focused. ‘Kill them.’

  And so we did. We committed our burgeoning fleet to the skies above Korosan’s world, to rain fire upon nineteen thousand warriors, thralls, slaves and minions. Korosan himself was taken alive at the battle’s end. Abaddon gave him to the Aphotic Blade, who impaled and crucified him upon their battle standard. Servitors intravenously fed him the bodily waste of our Legion’s slaves to keep him alive. He survived for five miserable months.

  Such is the price of defiance.

  In the observation spire on the night of my return from Daravek’s nameless world, Ezekyle’s assured gaze finally made me abandon all attempts to argue. As far as he was concerned it was already settled: I was bound for Maeleum.

  ‘Your return is timely, he added. ‘The Viridian Sky is refuelling and rearming to prepare for passage to Maeleum. Transfer aboard once you leave here.’

  The Viridian Sky was Amurael’s ship, and one of the fastest in our fleet. Amurael Enka had been a Son of Horus, even down to ­sharing many genetic facial markers with the fallen primarch, much like Abaddon. That had once been seen as an omen of great fortune in the XVI Legion. Less so, now.

  Amurael was also the newest of the Ezekarion. My voice had been one of the firmest in favour of his inclusion.

  ‘Amurael is a far finer ambassador than I, especially if you wish someone to carry word to any Sons of Horus remaining on that pathetic crypt of a world.’

  ‘You always assume the worst,’ he chided me. ‘This is no mere emissary expedition. Far-point telemetry probes have warned of a vessel making planetfall on Maeleum.’

  I breathed in through my teeth. Telemetry within the Eye was disgustingly unreliable. Some of our probes – deployed in abundance across our expanding territories – functioned via cores of surgically implanted astropathic minds, others operated through pulses of echolocation in a planet’s atmosphere. In truth, ­telemetry was of hardly any use in the true void either, but it was prone to giving readings of raw madness in this realm where the warp and reality blended together.

  ‘Telemetry,’ I ventured carefully, ‘tells a great many tales.’ It was not the first time I had said this. It was not even close to the first time.

  Abaddon’s smile was slow and severe, the jaws of a trap squeezing closed. ‘In this instance it tells a tale that aligns with Ashur-Kai’s vision dreams, and I refuse to ignore providence on that scale.’

  I did not share the value Abaddon placed on prophecy either. Not then. Not now. I didn’t ask what my former mentor had seen in his visions. It didn’t matter; whatever it had been would have been couched in metaphor and exaggerated significance, no doubt.

  ‘I will go,’ I said, surrendering to the inevitable.

  Abaddon watched me with a nameless expression that betrayed none of his tho
ughts. ‘We will speak of your concerns over my soul when you return. You have my word, brother.’

  It was enough for now. I nodded my compliance.

  ‘And try not to die on Maeleum, Khayon. I need you alive.’

  The Cthonian sense of humour is born from lives spent in near-feral gangs inhabiting the lawless tunnel-communes of profitless, used-up mine networks. It is best summed up by a theme of blunt, dry grimness. It is not quite sarcasm; rather it is closer to a deliberate tempting of fate.

  I have never found it particularly amusing.

  Something flashed behind his stare. I felt it in the same moment – some pull on the threads of the void outside the ship, a caress of a new presence within the nebula – the same way mortals would sense the opening of a door in their chambers.

  We both turned to the vast window, looking out at the gas-wreathed stars. Abaddon’s teeth showed as a row of ivory knives. In the same moment, a female voice sounded from the mouths of the black iron gargoyles fashioned into crenellations along the chamber’s walls.

  ‘Ezekyle,’ said the Vengeful Spirit to her master. ‘Eight ships have translated in-system. The Exaltation is hailing me.’

  ‘Tell Telemachon that he is just in time.’ Abaddon looked at me as he spoke. ‘And inform him that he is going on a journey with Amurael and Iskandar.’

  I resisted the urge to sigh. As I said, I have never found Cthonian humour particularly amusing.

  A Legion’s Graveyard

  Maeleum.

  The flames of atmospheric entry cleared away from the cockpit windows to reveal a realm of corroded metal as far as the eye could see. Dead ships hung in the sky, belly-ripped and hull-torn, lingering like swollen clouds ready to shed rusted-iron rain. No engines kept them afloat, nor did any auspex sweeps sing back with any signs of life. They drifted in the unhealthy sky, immune to gravity, pulled from orbit yet unwanted by the ground below.