[Word Bearers 01] - Dark Apostle Read online

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  DARK APOSTLE

  Word Bearers - 01

  Anthony Reynolds

  (v1.0)

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred

  centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden

  Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the

  will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the

  might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass

  writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of

  Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for

  whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that

  he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues

  his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the

  daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route

  between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican,

  the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies

  give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest

  amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the

  Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their

  comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and

  countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant

  Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus

  Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes,

  they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat

  from aliens, heretics, mutants—and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold

  billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody

  regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.

  Forget the power of technology and science, for so much

  has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the

  promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim

  dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst

  the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and

  the laughter of thirsting gods.

  As Sanguine Orb waxes strong and Pillar of Clamour rises high,

  The Peal of Nether shakes,

  And Great Wyrms of The Below wreak the earth

  With flame and gaseous exhalation.

  Roar of Titans will smite the mountains and they shall tumble.

  Depths of Onyx shall engulf the lands,

  and then exposed shall lay

  The Undercroft,

  Death and Mastery.

  The door shall be opened to he of pure faith

  Into Darkness two descend,

  Apostate and he who would be,

  Into madness and confusion descend,

  Restless dead and creatures old,

  The Undying One to face.

  Master of the cog will come in chains and tattered robes,

  To become Enslaved,

  To unleash the Orb of Night and Breaking Dawn.

  One shall fall, he of lesser faith, he unmarked by godly touch,

  His fate to remain, trapped eternal,

  And for one to flee with prize in hand,

  Gatemaster,

  He who bears Lorgar’s touch.

  PROLOGUE

  Marduk, First Acolyte of the Word Bearers Legion, looked up. His noble, deathly pale patrician features, common amongst those imbued with the gene-seed of blessed Lorgar, were twisted in frustration and anger. Braziers burning within the darkness of the icy mausoleum lit his face, the flames mirrored in his eyes.

  “I have read the portents. I felt the truth within the blood of the sacrifices on my tongue.”

  He rounded on his silent listener, the ancient Warmonger.

  “But this vision fills my head, and its meaning is unclear. I have recited the Curses of Amentenoc; I have supplicated the Great Changer with offerings and sacrifice. I have spent endless hours in meditation, opening myself up to the wisdom and majesty of the living Ether. But the meaning remains unclear.

  “I am assailed by the dead, long dead, and they claw at my armour with skeletal claws. They scratch deep furrows into my blessed ceramite, but they cannot pierce my consecrated flesh. I begin to recite from the Book of Lorgar, the third book of the Litanies of Vengeance and Hate. ‘Smite down the non-believers and the deceived, and they shall know the truth of the words of oblivion.’”

  Marduk clenched his fist tightly, servo-muscles in his armour whining as his entire body tensed.

  “I shatter their bones with my fists. They cannot stand against me. But they are many.”

  “Calm your mind, First Acolyte,” boomed the ancient one. It was the sound of the sepulchre given voice, an impossibly deep baritone that reverberated through the still tomb, deep within the strike cruiser. Each word was spoken slowly and deliberately, amplified through powerful vox-units.

  Once he had been a mighty hero who fought at the side of the greatest warriors ever to have lived. As a captain he had led great companies of the Legion against the foes of Lorgar and the Warmaster, and Marduk had studied all of his recorded sermons and exhortations. They were masterpieces of rhetoric and faith, filled with righteous hatred, and his skill at deciphering and predicting the twisting patterns of the future through his ritualised dream visions were astounding. He had fallen fighting against the archenemies, the deniers of the truth, those who followed the False Emperor in their ignorance and blindness.

  “You fight your visions too hard. They are gifts from the gods, and as with all gifts bestowed from the great powers, you should receive them with thanks.”

  The meagre physical remnants of the inspirational leader had been interred within the sarcophagus that lay before Marduk. Though his body was utterly ruined, he was destined to live on within the tomb of his new shell, and become the Warmonger. While the other Dreadnoughts of the Legion had slowly succumbed to madness and raving insanity, the Warmonger retained much of his lucidity. It was his faith, Erebus himself had stated, that kept him from slipping into darkness.

  All the anger and frustration flowed out of Marduk, and he smiled. The face that had looked brooding and twisted with anger a moment before was darkly handsome once again, black eyes glinting.

  “Pray for enlightenment, but do not be impatient and expect instant gratification,” continued the Warmonger. “Knowledge and power will come to you, for you are on the path of the devout, and the favour of the gods is upon you. But you must let yourself succumb to the embrace of the great powers; they will buoy you, and only then will the veil be lifted from your eyes. Only then will you see what your vision means. You need not fear the darkness, for you are the darkness.”

  The Warmonger flexed its huge, mechanical arms, hissing steam venting from the joints.

  “My weapons ache for the bloodshed to begin anew,” the dreadnought said, massive weapon feeds aligning themselves in anticipation. “Do we fight alongside our Lord Lorgar this day?”

  “Not today,” said Marduk quietly, recognising that the Warmonger’s lucidity was slipping. It was often this way.

  “And the Warmaster? Do his battles against the False Emperor fare well? Has he yet dethroned the hated betrayer, the craven abandoner of the Crusade?”

  The mention of the Warmaster Horus pained Marduk. He longed for the simpler days of the past, when the victory of the Warmaster over the Emperor seemed like a certainty. The memories were fresh in his mind, and his anger, hatred and outrage burned within him stronger than ever. He wished he had been at the battle of the Emperor’s palace on Terra alongside the Warmo
nger and most of the warriors that made up the Grand Host of the Dark Apostle Jarulek, but he had not. No, in those days he had been but a novice adept sent to serve under Lord Kor Phaeron. It was a great honour, but while he fought the hated Ultramarines of Guilliman on Calth with passion and belief, he longed to be fighting the battle at the palace that would determine the outcome of the long war. Or so he had thought. The war ground on, and would never end until the so-called Emperor of mankind was thrown down, and every cursed edifice that falsely proclaimed his divinity was smashed asunder.

  “The Corpse Emperor sits on his throne on Terra still, Warmonger,” said Marduk bitterly, “but his end draws ever nearer.”

  BOOK ONE:

  SUBJUGATION

  “From the fires of betrayal unto the blood of revenge we bring the name of Lorgar, the Bearer of the Word, the favoured son of Chaos, all praise be given unto him. From those that would not heed we offer praise to those who do, that they might turn their gaze our way and gift us with the boon of pain, to turn the galaxy red with blood, and feed the hunger of the gods!”

  —Excerpt from the three hundred and forty-first Book of the Epistles of Lorgar

  CHAPTER ONE

  Kol Badar glared across the expanse of the cavaedium. The arena of worship, located deep within the heart of the strike cruiser Infidus Diabolus, was large enough to allow the recently swollen ranks of the entire Host to stand in attendance. Its curved ceiling stretched impossibly high, and immense skeletal ribbed supports met hundreds of metres above. The kathartes perched along the bone-like struts, daemonic, skinless harpies that flickered in and out of the warp. But Kol Badar’s gaze did not rise to look upon the carrion feeders.

  No, his scowling features were focused on the last of the warriors filing into the enormous room. From his vantage point, just one step from the top of the sacred raised dais that none but the most holy of warriors would occupy, he could see the last of the Host’s champions leading their warriors into the cavaedium, to take their places for the coming ceremony. The expanse was almost full. The entire Host had been gathered. Kol Badar let his gaze wander over the serried ranks, glorying in the strength and power that his warriors exuded. None could hope to stand against such a force of the devout, and his warriors would soon prove their worth once again.

  His warriors. He grunted at his own hubris. They were not his warriors. If anything, they were the warriors of the Dark Apostle, though in his words they belonged only to Chaos in all its glory. The Dark Apostle claimed that he was merely the instrument through which the great powers directed these noble warriors of faith, and that Kol Badar was his primary tool to enact the great gods’ will.

  Kol Badar was the Coryphaus. It was a symbolic title, granted to the most trusted and capable warrior leader and strategos of the Host. His word was second only to that of the Dark Apostle. The Coryphaus was the Dark Apostle’s senior war captain, but more than this, he was the voice of the congregation. The mood and opinion of the Host was delivered to the Dark Apostle through him, and it was his duty to lead the chanted responses and antiphons from the gathered Host in ceremonies and rituals. It was also his role to lead the responses within the true house of worship of the dark gods: the battlefield.

  The processional corridor that ran down the middle of the nave remained clear as the cavaedium filled. Almost half a kilometre long and laid with black, immaculate carpet consecrated in the blood of thousands, none dared to step upon this hallowed ground, but those deemed worthy, on pain of immortal torment. There were no seats within the nave: the warriors of the Legion received the word from the Dark Apostle standing, armed and armoured. Dozens of smaller sanctuaries and temple-shrines branched off from the ancient stone walls of the cavaedium, containing statues of daemonic deities, ancient texts and the interred remains of holy warriors who had fallen during the constant, long war.

  An almost imperceptible, ghostly chanting whispered around the room. Lazily swooping cherubiox circled in the air, skeletal, winged creatures with sharp fangs set within childlike mouths, each carrying a flaming iron brazier. Odorous incense descended from the tusked maws of daemon-headed gargoyles towards the gathered Host. The clouds of smoke eddied and roiled in the wake of the gently weaving cherubiox.

  Kol Badar stepped heavily down the altar steps, the joints of his massive, ornate Terminator armour hissing and steaming. He passed through the gates of the ikonoclast, the spiked metal barrier that separated the altar from the openness of the nave. Its wrought iron frame was decorated with dozens of ancient banners, twisted icons and trophies dedicated to the gods of Chaos, and upon its spiked and barbed tips were impaled the heads of particularly hated foes.

  He prowled along the base of the altar, glaring at the warrior-brothers filing into the room, as if daring any of them to dishonour him in any way. The warriors of the Legion stood unmoving once they had taken up their positions. Almost two thousand warriors of the Word Bearers stood in absolute silence, and Kol Badar stalked back and forth along their ranks.

  Two thousand was a particularly large number of warrior-brothers for a single Host. The ranks of the Host had swollen a century past, when the warriors of another Dark Apostle had been amalgamated into its ranks after their holy leader had been slain in battle. Ceremonies of mourning had lasted weeks as the Legion honoured the passing of one of its religious fathers. Jarulek had, of course, ordered the execution of all the captains of the leaderless Host for having allowed such a sacrilege to take place. It was deemed by the Dark Council on the revered daemon-world of Sicarus, the spiritual home of the Word Bearers Legion and the throne world of the blessed Daemon Primarch Lorgar, that Jarulek take in the leaderless Host, for he had an apprentice, a First Acolyte who would soon be ready to bear the mantle of Dark Apostle. When, and if, the First Acolyte became worthy of the title of Dark Apostle, then Jarulek would split the Host once more into two.

  The thick features of Kol Badar’s face darkened at the idea. The very thought of the bastard whoreson Marduk bearing the exalted title of Dark Apostle made Kol Badar’s rage and bitterness burn fiercely within him.

  The Anointed, the warrior-cult of the most favoured warriors within the Host, stood in neat ranks surrounding the raised pulpit of the Coryphaus, and Kol Badar approached them. The Anointed looked like statues, utterly still and wearing their fully enclosed, ancient suits of Terminator armour. Each suit was a relic of holy significance, and to don the armour was a great religious honour. Once a warrior-brother entered the ranks of the Anointed, he was a member for life, and with lifespans extended indefinitely through a combination of their Astartes conditioning, bio-enhancement and the warping power of the gods of the Ether, the Anointed were only replaced on the rare occasion that one of their cult fell in battle. Many of them had fought alongside Kol Badar and their holy Daemon Primarch Lorgar at the great siege of the Emperor’s palace, and he knew of no finer fighting force. Unsurpassed warriors with the hearts of true fanatics, the cult of the Anointed had won countless battles for the Legion. Their glories were sung in the flesh-halls within the temples of Sicarus, and their deeds recounted in the grimoire historicals housed in the finest scriptorums of Ghalmek. Kol Badar stalked through the ranks of the elite warriors and climbed the steps to his pulpit, there to await the arrival of the Dark Apostle.

  The Dark Apostle—Jarulek the Glorified, Jarulek the Blessed, a divine warrior who heard the whispered words of the gods, and communed with them as their vessel. One of the favoured servants of the immortal daemon primarch Lorgar, Jarulek truly was a bearer of the word. His furious passion and belief had brought countless millions into the fold. Countless millions more, ignorant and resistant to the words of truth, had been slain in holy war upon his order.

  As much as it furthered the cause of the Word Bearers for more systems to be brought under the sway of Lorgar’s word, Kol Badar much preferred the worlds that resisted. He enjoyed the killing.

  Thin, spider-like limbs extended from the pulpit towards his exposed face. Fi
ne, bladed hooks at their tips emerged and pushed into his flesh, latching beneath the skin. He closed his eyes. A large proboscis uncurled, and he opened his mouth to accept it. It entered his throat, and small barbed clamps latched onto his larynx. The proboscis expanded to fill his throat. His voice, enhanced by the apparatus, would not only carry through the vast expanse of the cavaedium, but also through the entire Infidus Diabolus, so that all within the cruiser might intone the correct responses.

  He recalled the conversation he had had with the Dark Apostle mere hours earlier, and his face flushed with the thought of the rebuke he had received.

  “Speak as the Coryphaus, Kol Badar, not as yourself Jarulek had scolded him gently.

  Kol Badar had clenched his heavy jaw tight, looking down. “What would you have me say, Dark Apostle?” he had asked, his voice sounding course and crude in his ears after Jarulek’s velvet words.

  “I would have you speak for the Host, as the Coryphaus. Does the Host accept him?”

  “The Host follows your word without fault, my lord.”

  “Of course. Meaning?”

  “Meaning that they embrace and revere him, for it is your will for them to do so,” he had said, his voice thick.

  “And speaking as yourself?” Jarulek had asked, softly.

  “He is an upstart newborn risen beyond his position. He has not been with us from the start. He did not fight at our side as we assailed the cursed False Emperor’s lapdogs on Terra.” Kol Badar had fumed. “You should have let me kill him.”

  Jarulek had chuckled at that. “A newborn, I have not heard you call him that before. He has fought against the False Emperor mere centuries less than you and I, old friend.”

  Kol Badar’s face had darkened. “He was not there at the start.”

  “No, but a long time has passed since then: ten thousand years in the world of mortals.”