Treacheries of the Space Marines Read online

  ‘The man had ordered himself into seclusion, you see. He had ordered the reclusiam at the summit of his temple to be sealed, with himself and the handful of survivors of his failed crusade inside. He understood he had brought contagion back from the dark places, and he had it in his mind to bow down before the aquila in prayer until his Emperor rewarded his passion by burning the swarm out of his flesh. But his Emperor’s ear seemed deaf to him, and when the swarm hatched anew his cries for his gold-enthroned god were drowned out by the cries of his congregation devoured around him.

  ‘But his true salvation was on its way, by my hand.

  ‘I brewed a delicious psyker-scent that we breathed into the blooms that lined the temple roads. Now the fragrance coaxed the pilgrims’ spirits out of the drab grey rut of the Emperor’s footsteps. My courtiers sent whispers floating about the penitents so that their scourges and brands inflamed their senses rather than punishing them.’ Emmesh-Aiye no longer strutted, but hunched over and padded about as if creeping among shadows. The clinking of his armoured feet against the flagstones counterpointed the rustle of the bright-coloured rags that dragged from his ankles. A drop of pinkish-white fluid, formed in one of the gouges in his tongue, ran down it to the pierced and dangling tip, and splatted to the ground.

  ‘Oh, none were wise to us, for we were cunning ghosts wrapped in clever warp-weaves,’ he went on in the voice of his slave, ‘but the mangy hounds who herd the cud-chewing Imperial mob could see that mob becoming unruly, and tried to lash and harangue them into renewed obedience. Useless! Fruitless! The fire was spreading. We had opened minds, and now we opened bodies, letting the herd see their hounds picked apart and spread out beneath the hot purple-white sun. They began to rejoice as they felt their senses brightening, and raced to outdo one another in fresh ways to flood their nerve-endings. Now we showed ourselves, my courtiers and I, and danced among them on blood-slicked roads as the spires lit up and then burned down around us.

  ‘Finally, as the very shape of the stones and the colour of the sky began to change, and the breezes and flowers themselves began to dance and sing and murder, Typhus’s plague fleet arrived.’

  Here, at the memory of the joke he had played, Emmesh-Aiye was consumed by fits of laughter that doubled him over and shook him to his knees. Both his slaves instantly knelt to mimic him, but Emmesh-Aiye paid them no heed. His mutated larynx gave out squeals so shrill that the blind boy-slave moaned in pain to hear them, and guffaws so deep that for a few moments Chengrel was sure he could feel the inhuman racket buzzing through his life-support syrup and into the remains of his organs. Finally the fits passed and the Traitor Marine collected himself.

  ‘When the Terminus Est appeared in the night sky,’ he said, ‘it dimmed the stars around it with its presence, its bleak aura glowing like a chilly canker sore over our heads, eating the life out of the space around it to draw the rest of the fleet through. Skeletal hulks, whose crews brooded in decks rotted open and sealed shut again with hull plates flayed from vessels they preyed upon, drives burning hot like killing fevers.

  ‘And oh, my brothers and companions, it was a killing fever that came upon Typhus when he saw what had become of his conquest! He led his reeking and downtrodden column down to the doctrinopolis where we ran and slit our skins and laughed aloud. He planted his boots on the great road that led to the doctrinopolis spire and spoke in a voice like a bone-rasp, that clouded and cracked the road he stood upon, which had been dusty flagstones and was now brightly-coloured glass.

  ‘There was no grandeur to the rage of Typhus. He did not brandish his blade up to the sky or call down vengeance in a thunderous voice. But in that sick-roughened tone he demanded who had brought this insult against him. I answered his call, dancing upon the chiming, scented glass of the road in front of him. He hissed his rebukes of me, struck with his blade at me, sent fat and dripping creatures of his swarm through the air to sting and lash at me. I capered away from him, eluding him, drawing him on.

  ‘As Typhus gave chase, drooling mucus from his armour-seams, his host began to make war with us. And faltered! Failed! For we had made this place so wholly ours that when the thralls of Nurgle tried to mar it, it changed them instead! Our new city brought tingling to their long-dead nerves and thawed the rime over their hearts. The foot soldiers, the ones with no Mark from their master but only the marks of their weary servitude to him, cried and spasmed as our delirium woke their senses in ways they had never known. Typhus had brought daemons whose bodies were made from the purest dream of rot given form in the Wellspring, but my own master’s most exquisite beasts and fiends came to meet them, and when they found that the enemy would not dance with them they took pity on such creatures as were made unable to feel delight, and unravelled them.

  ‘As for Typhus himself, vengeance had put blinkers on his eyes and all he could see was myself, his enemy, dancing ever backwards.’ Emmesh-Aiye’s distended fingers whipped and whistled in the air, sometimes conducting the mad daemon-chorus that saturated his memories and sometimes re-enacting his duel against the champion of Nurgle. Above him Chengrel’s face twisted in distaste, but Hodir, of all the onlookers the most accomplished in bladework, noted what was concealed in the buffoonery of Emmesh-Aiye’s movements: the speed and poise, the deft nuances to his parries, the lightning shifts of balance and angle on his ripostes. Hodir grew thoughtful, his hand once again drifting to his knife-hilt.

  ‘I tempted him and baited him, oh, and I drew him on into our city. In the great crossroads, beneath the cathedral, its buttresses meeting a half-mile over our heads, we fenced together – he silent, I laughing my delight as my combat-glands flushed ever-stranger liquors through my veins. Finally Typhus’s rage pushed him into speech.

  ‘“You dare?” he demanded of me. “This city and this world and all its prizes were mine, in the name of Grandfather-Beyond-The-Eye. They were mine that they should be his. Who are you to dare denying us what is ours? Have you no concept of what you contend against?”

  ‘“Contend?” I asked, for this was long ago and my face and tongue had not yet been remade as you see them. “No contention here, only joy! No words of harsh contumely here, only the clear and endless song of nerves and dreams flayed bare!” And I spread my arms wide, inviting Typhus to turn his senses outwards and behold the blessing we had made. But he only saw me as inviting him to assault me anew.

  ‘“Why do you tolerate this treatment from this grandfather of yours?” I asked him as we duelled again. “Your grandfather (if such you must call him, for surely your primarch’s sire is your grandfather) has laid this reeking cloak upon your body and soul and called it good! Your grandfather’s curse is not the plague or rot, it is numbness, sloth, eroding your passions and senses into drab despair or plodding servitude! Who would inflict such a thing on you is not your friend, Master Typhus. Let me show you! Let me turn you outwards again! Exchange your grandfather’s sulking stagnation for my mistress’s blazing raptures!”

  ‘But Typhus, he would not be swayed, such was the draught of bitterness that he had swallowed to the dregs so long ago. “Grandfather?” he retorted, and swung his scythe with fresh strength and fury. “That broken toy in its palace on Terra is no grandfather of mine. His blood was water-weak, and his sons took on his weaknesses. Look at you!” and he matched the words to a twist of blade that came exquisitely close to opening me. “They tried to become conquerors and never understood what conquest truly means. True conquest is not defeat. True conquest is despair. True conquest is taking not only the life but the will to live. I will mortify the desires of my enemies to live, rot their souls into despair, and ride that despair into dominion. But you, you prancing puppet,” and with that he stepped back, presenting his blade en garde, and looked me up and down, “Fulgrim’s little whelps never did understand, for all that they bragged about how they would open the doors of their own minds and understand all. The soil of Chemos grew nothing but poppinjays.”


  ‘At that I laughed again. “Misguidance upon misguidance,” I told him, as I watched the little creatures hatching from his hive and swarming into the air only to scatter senseless about his feet as our perfumes reached them. “I am no child of Chemos. Isstvan and Tallarn and Terra and even lost Skalathrax were memories by the time the Emperor’s Children called me into their ranks. And conquest? Of what value is conquest? What cares the gleeful mind for conquest when the ecstatic awaits? You think that taking away that grey little missionary’s faith has made him another conquest for you? Let me show you what we have proven on him! Let me show you what he is with the chains of mortal sense taken from him!”

  ‘And with that I sang a command in a voice that shattered all the glass flagstones underneath us, and Typhus looked up to see two Raptors from my court’s militia, carrying their passenger down from the Cathedral spire. His hair, which had hung to his waist and been matted with pus and sweat in his seclusion-cell, had been washed, perfumed and braided, and each braid was knotted about one of the Raptors’ wrists. Their claws gripped his shoulders.

  ‘And Typhus beheld that this man, this preacher and crusader, set so high in the Ecclesiarchy, was not his prize now but ours. He saw the marks, heard the delicate warp-keening that wreathed the man’s twitching body, smelt, even over his own supernatural plague-reek; the warp-musk that the preacher’s flesh had begun to sweat. And he saw what had become of that first infection, the eggs that his swarm had planted whose blossoming had brought his plans and mine into motion.

  ‘The destroyer hatchlings in the preacher-man’s flesh had nearly claimed him for Nurgle’s embrace, but we had worked too much of Slaanesh’s wiles on him for that to last. In the preacher’s body the Nurgle swarm was transfigured. Clouds of brilliantly-hued mites swarmed about his face, so small they could have been coloured smoke. Spiders pushed their way out through the flesh and then clung to it with their bright red and gold legs, holding the wound apart so the meat beneath could be stirred by the air. Elegant worms in magnificent clashing hues wriggled under his skin and hatched forth to spit sparks and perfumes at one another. The preacher’s eyes were gone, but his face was pulled in a grin of delight, not the scowl of despair.

  ‘This final humiliation Typhus could not bear. He hawked a battle-curse from his inflamed throat and lunged forwards, intent on wrecking the evidence of his defeat, but the Raptors opened the throats of their engines and bore the man away. He roared with his psyk-voice, calling the foul breath of his grandfather to wither us, and sent his Destroyer swarm to devour the preacher afresh, but our Prince’s touch was on that place too firmly. His swarm scattered to the ground, insensible and already mutating, and his warp-call was choked off as our mistress’s songs pressed in upon him.

  ‘I laughed at him, and laughed some more, and he chased me into the middle of my host. There he rasped and roared and laid about him, until he began to see the faces of his own soldiers around him. Some were overcome by what we had shown them, dancing in among us. Those who had fought that liberation were paraded in pieces, heads and limbs tossed and juggled and kicked underfoot. And in amongst this I presented myself again, ready to duel Typhus until the duel ended one of us. But Typhus stared at me a long moment, and then in the sickly inrushing light-burst of a teleporter he was gone. Within the hour, I was to hear the word of my seers that the Terminus Est had left orbit and was forging its way to a jump zone. Where the tiresome brute went after seeing our wonders, I do not know.’

  Emmesh-Aiye’s words tapered off, and he stood slumped on Chengrel’s little stone stage as though his theatrics had exhausted him. He let his eyes close for a moment, then stalked back towards his seat, head down, yanking hard on the collars of his slaves and making them stumble behind him. He dropped into his seat with a clatter of armour and ornamental fetishes, and sat there silent.

  ‘We thought something from that tale would be your bid here, brother,’ said Khrove, after it became apparent that Emmesh-Aiye did not plan to speak further. ‘You have presented your account, but what is your payment to be? Pardon my impatience, but our host must hear it before I speak.’

  But they never heard what Emmesh-Aiye planned to offer for the stones, for at that moment Chengrel stamped the adamantium feet of his hulk against the flagstones and thundered the anger that had been building in him while the Slaaneshi had given his account.

  ‘No!’ he roared. ‘No more! I forbid it! I shall not hear it!’ The hulk’s motors groaned as it tilted back and forth, and there was a great crack as one of its rear legs broke a flagstone in two. ‘You think this some sort of noble account? You think this is a tale befitting one of the Legiones Astartes? You think this should win anything but my contempt?’ The girl-slave had shrunk behind Emmesh-Aiye, staring at Chengrel wide-eyed; the boy could not see him but wept quietly at the pain that Chengrel’s shouts brought on his hearing.

  ‘No more! No more of this treachery! Count yourself blessed by your so-called Prince, Emmesh-Aiye, that I do not crush you upon this spot and have your carcass flung into the corpse-marshes! How can you brag of this? Have you any conception of how low you have brought yourself?’

  Chengrel’s fury had set the scraps of his body to twitching, and his unanchored head had floated through a fifty-degree turn. A minute, then another, passed by while he gradually manoeuvred his head around to face the front again. The occasional burbling growl of frustration came through his speakers.

  ‘And so what of the preacher?’ Drachmus asked, turning to Emmesh-Aiye while Chengrel was otherwise occupied. ‘You have neglected the crucial message of your tale. Which of the Powers kept their claim upon him? Or did he return to the shadow of the aquila? Brother?’

  Emmesh-Aiye did not raise his head but made a low buzzing with his breath that the boy-slave was able to interpret.

  ‘It is barely in my memory. The manner in which my court acquired him was the marvel and the story, so what cared we for what became of him after that? We may have sold him on some border-world in the Wellspring, I think. What of it?’

  Drachmus was about to reply when Chengrel cut them off again.

  ‘No! Be silent! I’ll have no more treachery discussed. Speak to him no more, Drachmus, so that his shame does not shame you.’

  At that Drachmus rose from his chair, his little familiar keeping its balance on his shoulder with practised ease.

  ‘My remark was addressed to fellow master of a fellow Legion, sir,’ he declared. ‘Your own labours have kept you here in this… quieter place for quite a time, Brother Chengrel, and perhaps you have not heard of Emmesh-Aiye of the Emperor’s Children and his infamous Wandering Court. The reaving of the fleet of Craftworld Rhosh’aeth? The seizing of the Thanemost Clock from its Mechanicus keepers, and the holding of it against the vengeance of the Storm Wardens Space Marines? The Epideurgic Crusade through the Segmentum Pacificus? I show respect to you as a witness to the Horus Heresy and the birth of our Long War, but I pay the respect to Emmesh-Aiye that his service to the Fourfold Ruin commands.’

  Drachmus’s tone made the rebuke in his final words clear, but Chengrel paid no heed to it.

  ‘Respect?’ he boomed. ‘Of course you show me respect. Am I not mighty? You saw my fortress. You heard the account of my wars. And when you…’ And there Chengrel caught himself as something about Drachmus’s words struck home.

  ‘Explain to me, Drachmus Word Bearer. You said you paid me respect as one who had borne arms while the Corpse-Emperor was still just the False Emperor. Explain why you remarked upon it, when it is that war, and the hate that burns from it, that defines all of us here?’

  ‘My memories of Horus’s war have been taught to me,’ Drachmus said, making no attempt to conceal the surprise in his words. ‘I was born into a people chosen by Lorgar to carry copies of his writings into exile when he could not be sure how far or deep the persecution of his true faith would run. I was born into the seventy
-third generation, in the two hundred and fourth year of our exile after we had been hounded from our home on Kelhyte, twelve hundred years after the end of the Heresy. Omens led us to a Word Bearers barge and the fleet gave up its young as aspirants in gratitude.’

  Chengrel’s eyes pulsed and blinked as he pondered this, before he directed his gaze at Hodir.

  ‘You?’ he asked.

  ‘The Te’Oran Scouring,’ Hodir answered. ‘The Night Lords tox-bombed the cities, then sabotaged the shelters one by one so we all had to fight for places in the last one. When there was only one shelter left they stormed it, took a hundred youngsters and left the rest to choke. I was one of the hundred. Thirty-seventh millennium, Imperial reckoning.’

  ‘And you?’ Chengrel snarled at Emmesh-Aiye. Without opening his eyes the latter nudged his boy-slave with the side of his foot.

  ‘The lineage of my master, Emmesh-Aiye, I shall present for brevity,’ the slave said. ‘He knows not where he was born or how. His memories begin in the great cages towed behind the procession of the daemon prince Avrasheil, journeying to war. He remembers a great war and a great dying beneath the gaze of many-armed Fulgrim and being remade by Fabius Manflayer. He was given commission into the Emperor’s Children warband of Chardra Bloodwine in the eighth millennium after the so-called Heresy.’

  Once again there was silence in the little circle of legionaries. Chengrel glowered at his guests. Hodir and Khrove sat motionless. Drachmus picked up little pinches of ash between his fingers and let them drop back into the bowl, studying the patterns they made in the air as they fell and settled. The glow from them burnished his faceplate, for dusk was falling now and the meeting-place was shrouded in gloom. Emmesh-Aiye fidgeted and stroked his lacerated tongue. Finally Chengrel gave another growl through his speakers.

  ‘Khrove,’ he said, ‘Khrove of the Thousand Sons. Scion of Magnus. Son of… But are you truly a son of Prospero? Or are you, like these others, a stripling latecomer? But speak your piece, speak your piece. If your account is glorious then it may even sweeten my disposition enough to hear the bid from this so-called Emperor’s Child.’