Scars: Episode III
Author: Wraight, Chris
Date: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Black Library
Rights: © Games Workshop Limited 2013. All rights reserved.

The Observatory had been built in the north-east reaches of the Imperial Palace. Its domed roof was lined with turquoise mosaic tiles shining in the light of a hundred candles. Esoteric devices on the curved surfaces sparkled and moved with the soft play of shadow.

It was not easy to see what was picked out by those designs – astrological symbols, perhaps, or maybe mythical beasts from a forgotten age of Terra. At the very summit was shadow, a lacuna out of the reach of the candlelight. A face had been created there a long time ago but the detail could no longer be made out. It sat in the darkness, gazing featurelessly down on the floor below.

The Observatory had not been used to scry the stars for a long time. Ancient brass telescopes, orreries and astrariums cluttered the aisles, unused, most of them covered in heavy tarpaulins. Rosewood cabinets were locked. The dust on the bookcases was a finger-width thick.

The floor was marble, a chequerboard of ivory and sable, and the walls around it glittered with faded gilt. Twenty pillars sustained the dome above, each with a stone emblem carved into the capital. Some were illuminated clearly – a wolf, a serpent, a lion. Others were obscured.

Three lords stood in the centre. Two were titans, their huge frames enclosed in extravagant shells of armour. The third was hunched and frail.

For a long time they did not say a word. Their silence seemed immense in that place. It seemed as if the first one to speak might shatter the walls and bring the dome down upon them.

The first to break the calm was the tallest and the most physically imposing. His face was slabbed and hard, crowned with a shock of white hair cropped close to the skull. His golden battleplate looked as solid as the stonework around it – its owner might just as well have been one of its statues. A thick cloak hung from his shoulders, pooling darkly in the flickering half-light.

‘Anything?’ he asked.

The speaker had many names. From his origins on the ice-world of Inwit he had been Rogal Dorn. Later he was the primarch of the Imperial Fists. In recent times he had slowly become accustomed to being the Emperor’s chosen praetorian.

His voice had the timbre of a hammer thudding into timber. It was the voice of a man who desired nothing more than to man his ships, to rally his Legion and head into the void to face the enemy that he knew was coming.

And yet that was the one thing, the only thing, that he had been expressly forbidden to do. It was a strange burden, to be condemned by one’s own expertise.

‘The Sigillite has not spoken,’ answered the second figure.

This one was scarcely less imposing. His armour had the same baroque quality the Observatory had – decorated with the phases of moons and symbols of what might have once been called the occult. Like Dorn he was clad in gold and bronze and enveloped in rich fabrics of crimson, and yet where Dorn seemed as solid as the bedrock upon which the Observatory rested, this one seemed somehow more ephemeral, more liable to burst into sudden movement. Words of power had been painstakingly engraved into his elaborate battleplate – ancient words, in characters so small that they might have been the near-silent whispers of spectres.

This man’s full name was so long that it could not be contained on a single sheet of bronze. He most commonly answered to a single version of it: Constantin Valdor, Captain-General of the Legio Custodes. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly quiet. His eyes, though, were never quite still, flickering almost imperceptibly, forever searching for the next threat to be countered.

‘No, I have not,’ said the third. ‘I am struggling to find something to say that has not already been said.’

Malcador the Sigillite had none of the grandeur of his companions. His robes, though richly made, were simple. The staff he leaned upon looked to be made of little more than iron, though the aquila device that topped it was artful. His voice gave away his physical weakness – it sounded destroyed by age. None, save perhaps the Emperor himself, knew just how old he was. He had no known birthplace, no cultural identity. As far as the wider Imperium was concerned, he had just always been there, as solid a presence as the Palace itself.

Malcador and the Emperor. The Emperor and Malcador. They were like light and dark, sun and moon – each as inscrutable and unknowable as the other.

Except that the Emperor was gone, locked away in the deep Throne chambers, his unmatched power deployed to an end that even the Lords of Terra did not speak of openly.

‘Then let me tell you again,’ said Dorn. ‘Perhaps you have forgotten where it is that we stand. Magnus has broken the wards around the Throne, and now this, the mightiest fortress in the galaxy, sits upon a foundation of madness.’

‘It is contained once more,’ insisted Malcador. ‘For now the world knows little of the actual truth.’

‘It is contained only because the Emperor binds Himself to the hidden war,’ Dorn replied. ‘This respite has been bought with the sacrifice of a thousand souls. That is why the world does not know.’

‘Not yet,’ said Valdor bleakly. ‘But they will. Perhaps a few more weeks, perhaps months, but it will spill out eventually. Rumours are already running wild.’

‘It will do,’ agreed Malcador. ‘But as long as He holds firm…’

‘Yes, as long as He holds firm,’ said Dorn, bitterly. ‘That is what we are reduced to. No actions, no movement – just hope.’

‘We cannot help Him,’ said Valdor. ‘We know this. So let us turn to what we can do.’

Malcador chuckled dryly. ‘I never asked you how it felt, Constantin, to see Prospero burn. Did even your callous soul blanch at that?’

Valdor didn’t miss a beat. ‘No. It was necessary.’

‘Was it?’ sighed Malcador. ‘I did not give the order. I wanted Magnus censured, not destroyed. What was it that made Russ do it? You never could give me an answer.’

Dorn exhaled impatiently. ‘You know all of this, Malcador. You know all that happened there, just as we do.’ He was coldly furious. ‘Does this need repeating? The Warmaster is at the heart of it, poisoning everything we do, and now he has the blood of three more Legions on his hands.’

At that, Malcador seemed to wince. The slaughter of Isstvan V was still raw. None of them, save the implacable Valdor perhaps, could refer to it without provoking that hollow, draining, sense of loss.

‘Ferrus is truly gone, they tell me,’ admitted Malcador. ‘Vulkan and Corax missing. Eight Legions declared traitor, even now carving the void apart to get to us.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Shall I go on? The ether in turmoil, blighting the Astronomican and making us blind? No word of Guilliman or Sanguinius. Are they with us? Or have they also turned?’

‘Not the Angel,’ said Dorn, firmly. ‘And I will not believe it of Roboute.’

‘But they are lost to us, for now at least,’ said Valdor. ‘So we must survey what we know. Russ is at Alaxxes. When I left him, they were badly mauled, for the Sons gave us a hard fight, but they will hunt again.’

‘And the Lion,’ said Malcador. ‘What of him?’

‘He pursues his private feuds,’ said Dorn. ‘And when has he ever been anything but his own master?’

Malcador smiled. ‘You brothers – such a nest of rivalries. I warned him to make you sisters, that it would make things more civilised. He thought I was joking. I wasn’t.’

Dorn didn’t smile. His face seemed permanently rooted in a kind of frozen tension.

‘There is one other,’ said Valdor quietly.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Malcador. ‘So easy to overlook the Khan. Why is that?’

‘It is his gift,’ said Dorn dismissively.

‘The Khan was in the Chondax system,’ said Valdor.

‘Which, like so many others, is beyond our reach,’ said Malcador, his voice bleakly humorous.

‘What of Jaghatai’s loyalty?’ asked Valdor.

‘I did not know him, not well,’ said Dorn.

‘None of us did,’ said Malcador. ‘That was the point of him – in any system there needs to be uncertainty.’ He smiled at Dorn. ‘You, my friend, were an exercise in the opposite. No wonder you two did not understand one another.’

‘So who was he close to?’ asked Valdor.

Malcador thought for a moment. ‘Horus, of course. They were so similar. I believe they conferred on Ullanor.’

‘Magnus, too,’ said Dorn, somewhat hesitantly. ‘They fought alongside one another for a long time.’

‘Yes,’ said Malcador, nodding pensively. ‘The Librarius – the Khan, Magnus and Sanguinius were behind it. That was the root of their connection, such as it was. They all believed in the need for psykers within the Legions.’

Valdor took a deep breath. ‘So there it is. The Khan’s known allies, Horus and Magnus, traitors both.’

‘All of us trusted Horus,’ said Dorn.

‘Quite,’ said Malcador ruminatively. ‘As I said at the time, Nikaea was the root of this. We should have explained things better, though there were reasons, some of which we could never disclose, not there.’ He pursed his thin lips. ‘We were too caught up in what needed to be done. That may be the tragedy of it all – we did not explain.’

Dorn looked at Malcador coldly, as if he fully agreed. Valdor remained as implacable as ever.

‘Too late for regrets,’ said Malcador wearily. ‘We must summon him. Russ and the Khan standing here beside you, Rogal, would make me sleep easier. The Executioner and the Warhawk – that would give even Horus pause.’

‘Chondax has gone dark,’ warned Valdor. ‘But I can instruct the astropaths to focus their efforts there.’

‘And if he fails to answer?’ asked Dorn.

For a moment, neither Valdor nor Malcador answered. The space around them seemed to shrink a little.

‘Then we must assume that Jaghatai has fallen too,’ said the Sigillite at last, no trace of wry humour left in his voice. ‘Another name to add to the tally of the lost.’

Ilya sat back in her chair after placing the ivory token. Her move had taken her a long time. With so many places to choose from, and so many tokens at her disposal, they always did.

Her opponent shook his head. ‘Poor choice.’

‘Really?’ she asked, waiting to be shown why.

‘Yes,’ he said, reaching over the large, square board to position a black slate counter. She studied the results. They became sobering – he was close to capturing a straggling, kidney-shaped slice of territory, and there was almost certainly nothing she could do about it. The choice therefore became simple: to fight the inevitable, or carve out some new area of her own elsewhere. It was a choice she had become used to making.

‘I don’t see the possibilities closing, not in time,’ she complained.

‘That is the skill of it. But you’re getting better.’

Ilya allowed herself a brief glance at her opponent, checking to see whether he mocked her.

As ever, it was hard to tell. Jaghatai Khan lounged back in a low-slung seat of furs and leather, limbs loose, his proud face as inscrutable as stone.

Ilya remembered when she’d first met him, back above Ullanor. For some reason she’d nearly fainted, even after Yesugei had warned her about it. It was said that primarchs sometimes had that effect – the force of their superactive souls strained at the bonds of sense. She had also heard it said that the human species had never evolved to cope with presentations of such power within simulacra of their own bodies. The effects were well-documented: nausea, light-headedness, panic.

That had all passed now. Spending time with the primarch hadn’t become mundane – it could never become mundane – but it was containable. The flutters of anxiety in her stomach now rarely troubled her. Their conversations had become a trifle less formal. They shared a glass of wine from time to time. They played games.

‘Am I really getting better?’ she mused, picking up another ivory stone and pondering where to place it. ‘I think you tell me that so you don’t lose an opponent.’

‘Qin Xa plays.’

‘Does he ever beat you?’ she asked.

‘He’s very good.’

‘I’ll take that as a no.’

The primarch’s physical presence could be a distraction. It wasn’t just the size of him, though there was something inescapably incongruous in addressing a man nearly twice as tall as her. It was more the unconscious… splendour.

The Khan was lean, rangy, cut harshly like the talons of a hunting bird. He spoke sparingly. When he did, his voice was cultured, tinged with an aristocratic idiom. His face was long and sleek, dark-skinned like all Chogorians and framed by long black hair. The scar that ran down his left cheek was pronounced, the zigzag of an old wound. Ilya heard that the legionaries had to add poison to the knife cut to get it to scar, for their superhuman flesh otherwise healed too perfectly.

He took care over his appearance. His cloak was trimmed with white fur: ermyet, it was called by his fellow Chogorians. He wore a kaftan of deep burgundy, lined with silk. Bands of gold sat on his fingers, around his neck, enclosing the topknot of glossy hair.

Even out of armour he looked dangerous. The folds of his clothing failed to hide the warrior’s training of the body beneath. Every movement he made, whether reaching for more chinyua wine or setting his own stones in position seemed to take place in a refined world of swordsman-like precision.

Halji had told her about it many times. ‘Nothing is wasted,’ he had said, sweeping his tulwar though the air in front of her to prove the point. ‘Every movement as efficient as muscle allows. No flourish, no flair. Just the principle.’

The Khan, fittingly enough, seemed to have perfected that.

‘Do you wish me to give you a piece of advice?’ he asked.

Ilya raised an eyebrow. ‘By all means.’

He sat back in his oversized chair. The light around them played with the gentle movement of candles. The strains of a Prosperine silverharp sounded faintly in the background. The Khan was very fond of music – an enjoyment he and Magnus shared, so they said.

‘You play regicide?’ he asked.

Ilya nodded.

‘Not as sophisticated as Go,’ said the Khan. ‘Regicide gives you one enemy, one trajectory – kill the Emperor, you are the victor. In Go there is no Emperor to kill. Or perhaps it is better to say there are many Emperors.’

Ilya listened. She thought the White Scars tried too hard to explain the superiority of their cultural preferences. They were so used to being overlooked and ignored; something of that must have sunk into their psyche somewhere.

‘My warriors are trained by this game,’ the Khan went on. ‘They learn to see threats from all sides. They learn to counter many targets.’

‘I can see that,’ said Ilya. ‘Damn it. I struggle to keep everything in my head.’

‘You do very well.’

‘There must be times, though… Times, in reality, when you do have one enemy.’

‘It is easier for a subtle mind to adjust to simplicity.’

Again, that edge of defensiveness.

That is because you know you are seen as barbarians.

Ilya sighed, and placed her stone. It would probably do little to stem her losses; she expected to be given back handfuls of her counters fairly soon. ‘So what is the next target?’

The Khan studied the board. ‘After Chondax? I do not know.’

‘No orders from the Warmaster?’

He did not reply. He hadn’t spoken about Horus since the final stages of the conflict on the White World, though before he had often mentioned him. Qin Xa was the same. She knew that they hadn’t received any firm news from the Warmaster whilst on Chondax – she would have seen the logs – but something, perhaps some half-heard star-speaker vision, might have eked its way through.

It was as if they were all starting at shadowy rumours, fragments of uneasiness that moved through the void like gossip between infantrymen.

‘So do you have plans?’ Ilya asked, wondering if she would get a clear answer.

The Khan stared intently at the stones, not lifting his eyes. ‘I feel the need to speak to Yesugei again. If we cannot make contact soon, then we will need to make our way home.’

Ilya smiled. ‘Really? You’d bring the whole Legion to Chogoris, just for him?’

The Khan did not smile. Smiling was rare with him, which was odd: the rest of the Legion hardly ever stopped. ‘Of course I would.’ He placed his stone, predictably enough beginning the encirclement of another of her dwindling groups. ‘I have relied on Yesugei for centuries.’

Ilya took a sip before moving again. The wine wasn’t very good – Chogorians didn’t really appreciate viniculture. ‘So why didn’t he come with us to Chondax?’

‘He was needed on Nikaea.’

‘Nikaea?’

‘A summit.’ The Khan gave her a shrewd look. ‘I would have been there too if I could have been, but Yesugei was my representative. He spoke for me. You see how much I trust him?’

‘I do. What was he doing there?’

‘Arguing for the right of the zadyin arga to exist. I hope he was successful.’

‘And if he wasn’t?’

The Khan shrugged. ‘It makes no difference to me, but I would prefer that my more assiduous brothers don’t have to make a difficult choice.’

Ilya smiled. She had come to find the White Scars amiable indifference to Imperial edicts more endearing than exasperating. They weren’t rebellious, exactly, just themselves – no more, no less. Out alone. Unconcerned. They would never give up the Stormseers.

‘The ruling could have gone against you months ago,’ she observed. ‘We would have no idea.’

‘Lots of things may have happened about which we have no idea,’ said the Khan. ‘That is the advantage of this agreeable place.’ But the primarch’s expression faltered for a moment then, as if he knew, or perhaps guessed, something more than he said.

‘Do you wish to tell me more?’ Ilya asked carefully.

‘I do not,’ the Khan replied, putting his stone down and launching a fresh attack on her beleaguered positions. ‘Now concentrate. You are nearly dead.’

‘So tell me what you think,’ said Shiban.

The body of the dead legionary lay in front of him on a slab of steel, rendered in uncomfortable detail by the overhead lights of the Kaljian’s apothecarion. His armour had been cut away and the flesh inside was black, like overcooked meat.

Jochi stood beside Sangjai, who rubbed his chin.

‘Progenoids gone,’ Sangjai said with regret. ‘The heat.’

‘How did he die?’

‘You can see for yourself,’ said Sangjai, moving up towards the warrior’s neck and parting the flaking folds with gloved hands. ‘A single blade thrust down to the spine. He was held in place while they did it.’

Shiban leaned on his hands. ‘Ever seen an ork make a wound like that?’

‘I do not know. Do they make wounds a certain way?’

‘You have seen the way they fight,’ said Jochi. ‘They mutilate what they kill.’

‘Perhaps they did not have the chance,’ said Sangjai.

‘They had plenty of time,’ said Shiban. ‘That is not the issue.’

Sangjai looked back at the corpse. He studied it long and hard. He bent over and stared at the wound again. Shiban heard a faint whine as his augmetic left eye adjusted focus.

Eventually Sangjai straightened. ‘It could have been hain. I have seen them use a blade well enough. But yes, perhaps unlikely.’

‘What, then?’

Sangjai looked at him evenly. ‘You want my guess?’

‘Say it,’ hissed Jochi impatiently.

‘This is a long knife cut. A legionary blade. They knew where to angle it. It was done quickly, and they trusted the lava to hide it.’

Shiban nodded. He felt vaguely nauseous. ‘Anything else?’

Sangjai shook his head.

‘Legionary blade,’ murmured Jochi, appalled. ‘They were fighting among themselves?’

‘Who knows?’ said Shiban.

‘There was nothing on Phemus but greenskins,’ Jochi went on, getting increasingly agitated. ‘Greenskins and us. Did they go mad?’

‘That’s enough.’

‘How many died this way?’

‘Enough,’ Shiban snapped.

He pushed away from the table. His mind crowded with thoughts. Phemus had taken a long time to pacify, far longer than it should have. The fleet commanders had put it down to the hostile terrain, but Shiban had seen the campaign logs prior to his transfer, complaining of higher casualties than expected, poor communications, regular setbacks.

They were fighting amongst themselves?

Hard to believe. Tensions always existed between the brotherhoods – he’d experienced them himself – but not to that extent. Never to that extent.

‘This cannot be ignored,’ he said at last. ‘I am going back down.’

‘The cleansing is over,’ said Sangjai doubtfully. ‘We have our recall orders – the Khagan will move the fleet soon.’

‘Comms have been bad for months,’ said Shiban, smiling bleakly. ‘If we are slow in answering, he will understand.’

‘You will not solve this,’ said Sangjai. ‘Not on Phemus.’

Shiban started to walk away.

‘You have to start somewhere,’ he said.

It took a long time for a fleet formation to respond to orders. Legiones Astartes battle cruisers were gigantic things – kilometres long, like dark cities in space. Building them was the labour of decades, drawing in millions of workers and thousands of Mechanicum creation engines. Once sent into the deep void they continued to grow, to evolve, to change. A ship’s own forges were never still, never at rest.

Moving one was an exercise in logistics. A million crew-serfs needed to be at their stations, priming weapons, activating power coils, manning command nodes. Thousands of line officers needed to make their decisions, ensuring the enginarium caverns delivered drive to the thrusters at the correct pitch and frequency. Hundreds of section commanders needed to keep track of the relative movements of other ships and feed a trillion augur readings to the cogitators and sensors to prevent collision with other behemoths manoeuvring ponderously in the void.

But in the end, even the biggest warship was driven by a single soul – a lone captain, gifted suzerainty by the Imperium’s relentless drive towards hierarchy in all things. One voice gave the order to move, to train weapons, to light the black with the world-burning power of lances and torpedo volleys.

The order was given, the ships moved.

Across the VI Legion fleet, every ship fired up low-burn engines and sent void shields shimmering down snarl-edged flanks. Escorts raced ahead, engines blazing, machine-souls eager for the hunt. The true giants lumbered in their wake, wallowing as they came about before gunning drive-trains into life.

The shoal of sleet-grey ships spread out, slotting into assault formations. Fire-angles were established in all directions, a three-dimensional sphere of destruction spreading from the centre. The rust-red bloom of the nebula suddenly glowed with a thousand points of intensity, swiftly extinguished as the fleet pulled up into attack speed.

Ahead of them, thousands of kilometres distant and out of unaugmented visual range, the Alpha Legion did the same. Their vessels were similarly gargantuan, similarly bristling with weaponry of almost absurdly destructive potential. Some vessels were adorned with new Legion symbols – edged with sapphire and emerald, the sigil of the striking hydra. Others still bore the colours of fidelity, crowned with the old chain-linked Alpha-Omega device. As ever with the XX Legion, nothing had been entirely settled. Everything was still in flux.

Bjorn watched the enemy from the bridge of the Helridder, studying their formation, noting the patterns. The two fleets still weren’t visible to one another in the realview ports – his images were the grainy, poorly resolved feeds from long-range augurs.

He didn’t feel any particular emotion. Prospero had been the same – a task, much as countless others that the Wolves had been given; something to be carried out efficiently. Only later had the dull sense of wrongness fallen over them.

We are outgunned, he thought.

He performed rough calculations in his head and knew that the strategeos in the flagship would be reaching the same conclusion. They would already know how many more ships the Alpha Legion possessed and how quickly their lethal complements could be brought to bear.

‘We are outgunned,’ said Godsmote, just a fraction behind, standing next to Bjorn on the command plinth of the bridge with the rest of the pack. He was in his armour, the dirty grey of it streaked with bloodstains and ritual kill-marks, and his voice came tinnily from behind his helm’s death mask.

‘Looks that way,’ agreed Bjorn, studying the incoming feeds.

‘Wise to meet them head-on?’

‘Probably not.’

Godsmote grunted. No use questioning a decision once it had been made, and the Wolf King hadn’t been in any mood to back down from another fight no matter how badly mauled they were.

We are a blunted blade, thought Bjorn bleakly. We have been used too much.

All Legions had taken casualties during the Great Crusade, but some assignments had been bloodier than others. The Wolves numbers had never been among the highest, a feature exacerbated by their aggressive drive to limit recruitment to Fenris, and their constant deployment – usually self-appointed – to some of the most arduous warzones of the campaign. Prospero had hurt them further, perhaps more than they truly understood.

‘I wondered if it would become easier,’ Bjorn mused.

‘If what would?’ asked Godsmote.

‘Killing another Legion. Killing kinsmen.’

‘We’re not there yet.’

‘Yes, we are.’

Bjorn already saw how it would play out: comms would be transmitted from the Hrafnkel to the Alpha Legion flagship demanding that they stand down. No answer would come back. The Space Wolves would hold fire until the last moment, right up until the range of the main lances had been reached, issuing demand after demand. Then the killing would begin.

Helridder would play its part. It was built for fast-attacks: agile and weapon-heavy, sparsely crewed and with scant berthing for anything but fuel and ammunition. The entire legionary complement on board was six. A lean pack, but one in command of an agile hunter-killer.

‘They’re moving to an attack spread,’ noted Godsmote, glancing at the screens.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Bjorn watched the pulses of green light crawl across his tactical readout, creeping towards one another with deceptive slowness – the velocities were now incredible. ‘What do you know of the Alpha Legion?’

‘Not a lot,’ said Godsmote.

‘Ever heard of them mounting a major fleet action?’

Godsmote paused. ‘Should I have?’

Bjorn shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard of it. Not really what they’re known for.’

To the extent that anything was known about the Alpha Legion, it concerned subtlety, subterfuge and infiltration. Guilliman, famously, thought little of them. Russ, less famously, thought much the same. They didn’t like getting their gauntlets bloody, it was said.

Once the news had come in from Isstvan V, once it had been given time to settle, some treacheries had seemed more obvious than others. The World Eaters he could understand. The Iron Warriors similarly, and so too Mortarion’s strange Death Guard.

But the Alpha Legion. Something about their switch of allegiance bothered him. It felt… unsound.

‘Why are they here, doing this?’ Bjorn asked, speaking as much to himself as to Godsmote.

Godsmote smiled bleakly. ‘Looks obvious.’

Bjorn didn’t smile. Even before losing his hand to the daemon he had never smiled much – now, less than ever. He knew that the packs laughed about it, poking fun at his unremitting seriousness, but they could laugh as much as they wanted.

He felt a weight on his soul, sometimes – like an anvil resting on his chest. He’d sit on the edge of the fire-circle while the others sang or recited, listening but not speaking. For a long time he’d not envisioned himself becoming an integral part of the Legion, just one of its fringe elements, destined to die in some blood-drenched campaign on some world or other.

Now that feeling had left him. Oddly, just as everything changed, his old sullen desire for withdrawal had ebbed, replaced by something else. After time long spent on the fringes, Prospero had begun to draw him into the Rout’s heart. The primarch knew his name now. The sagas mentioned him, guaranteeing a kind of immortality in the cold halls of the Aett. It felt as if the centre of gravity had shifted, dragging him closer towards the savage embrace of a Legion whose temper had always contrasted so badly with his own.

‘It is not obvious,’ said Bjorn. ‘Not to me. There are mysteries here.’

The lights on the bridge began to lower. From somewhere far below a warning chime sounded. Guns were being hauled into position, firing solutions were being calculated.

Far ahead, in a slender line on the very edge of vision, the first pinpricks of light from the enemy positions crept into the realviewers, like a string of jewels slung against the void.

‘Well, that may be,’ breathed Godsmote, his voice already heavy with relish. ‘But here they come, and for myself I wish only to discover how they die.’

Yesugei leaned closer to the viewport and watched the plains of Chogoris fall away into a pale blur. For a few moments after takeoff he’d been able to see the Khum Karta monastery laid out below him in all its sprawling glory – the old towers of the Khitan, the training grounds, the gardens ripe with plum trees. Gold pinnacles had glinted in the sunlight. Soul-pennants had snapped in the stiff breeze.

Then it was gone, lost in a haze of pale greens and browns. He watched the Altak stretch out, spreading out across the continental mass, devouring everything. Only a few wisps of cloud scudded across the emptiness, ephemeral against the vastness.

All worlds looked much the same from space. The colours varied, but the real differences were all hidden in ground level details – the smells, the feel of the gravity, the taste of the wind. Yesugei had trod upon a hundred different worlds and none had ever really resembled another. Humanity had spread itself across a bewilderingly wide range of habitats, conquering each one with the remorseless patience and ingenuity that was, so he had come to learn, the mark of the species.

Soon Chogoris ceased to look different from any other planet – a blank sphere hanging in the uniform blankness of starlit vacuum, its distinctiveness lost.

Yesugei turned away from the viewport and settled back in his chair. He never enjoyed leaving the home world. Before the Master of Mankind had arrived and brought the Great Crusade to them, Yesugei had been quite content with the limits placed upon them by a single world. They had enemies to fight, kingdoms to lay low, prey to hunt; he had never wanted for more than that. The Khan had been the same.

He remembered talking to him once as the moons rose, back in the old days when Khum Karta had been a tenth the size and built of red-tinged stone rather than underpinned by rockcrete and steel.

‘What will we do when all enemies are conquered?’ Yesugei had asked, feeling warm dusk breeze against his skin.

The Khan stood on the parapet, his long, lean frame proud against the lowering light. By then he was the master of the whole continental mass, the conqueror of the Khin-zan, the Qo, the Khitan, the Nyomen and a hundred other nations.

‘Let them go again,’ he said calmly. He flexed his fingers against the red balustrade. ‘I have no desire to become their master.’

Yesugei laughed. ‘Then why conquer at all?’

‘Because we must.’ The Khan looked up into the heavens. Perhaps he knew what would be coming soon, the arrival that would change everything. ‘We hunt, because we are hunters.’ His expression became sour. ‘There is no point in saying, This is it, this is the end, you have achieved what you set out to do. The world will not remain still around you. You move with it, or you are swept away.’

Yesugei looked up at his master. The Khan’s physicality had never lost its power to impress. Everything about him was demanding. Some of the men of the ordu were already calling him khan tengri, tantamount to bestowing godhood. Yesugei couldn’t blame them. They’d all seen what he was capable of.

‘I do not know if I believe that,’ Yesugei said lightly. ‘You rule the land from here to the ocean. You will not give it up.’

The Khan turned his eyes on Yesugei. Those eyes, too, never lost their terrible power. Yesugei remembered when he’d first seen them, recovering in a fire-warmed ger after the powers he’d been born with had nearly killed him. They were like a god’s eyes – deep-set, unconsciously scrutinising. Pitiless.

‘I will, one day,’ the Khan said softly. ‘Do you know what I fear, Targutai?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Only beasts fear nothing.’

Yesugei smiled. ‘Decrepitude, then.’

The Khan nodded. ‘You do know me, zadyin arga.’ He looked back out over the plains. ‘Decay is the enemy. Every emperor we have deposed has been fat. They reached the limits of their power and sat back on golden thrones, satisfied with what they had done when they still had vigour. By the time we came for them, they could barely lift a tulwar.’

‘You will not become fat,’ observed Yesugei. ‘I do not think you are capable of it.’

The Khan shrugged. ‘My body, perhaps not, but my mind?’ He seemed to shudder, not from the cold – it was still warm – but from a lack of motion. Yesugei had noticed it before: he needed to be moving, out on the saddle, chasing something down. ‘There is only one unforgivable lie. That is the lie that says, This is the end, you are the conqueror, you have achieved it and now all that remains is to build walls higher and shelter behind them. Now, the lie says, the world is safe.’

The Khan shook his head. ‘All emperors are liars, Targutai. Safe.’ He spat on the balustrade. ‘No fouler word exists.’

That exchange had been over a hundred and forty years ago. Since then, of course, everything had changed, but Yesugei had never forgotten it. Sometimes he wondered whether he might ask the Khan about it again, seeing if he had revised his views. He doubted it: the Khan’s moods and temper seemed burned into him, like the Talskar imprint on his left cheek.

The lander neared its destination, and banked around for the final approach. As the starfield wheeled past the viewports, Yesugei caught a glimpse of the transport he’d requisitioned: the Legion frigate Sickle Moon, its spear-shaped profile standing starkly, picked out by the white livery and gold-red trim. The lightning-strike sigil, the mark of the khans for a thousand years, had been painted proudly along the forward flanks.

It looked fast. That was good – it would need to be.

The lander swept up towards the frigate’s dorsal hangar, guided by twin lines of strobing lumens. Once touched down inside, Yesugei stirred himself, got up and walked down to the lander’s embarkation ramp. He took a moment to smooth his robes and collect his staff before emerging out into the hangar – appearances were important, and despite everything that had happened the Legion still placed store in its Stormseers.

The lander’s outer doors hissed open. The hangar was lit brightly, as was usual on V Legion warships. Every surface was highly polished, glistening softly under hanging lumens. The interior smelt of steel polish, engine oil and falang, the Khitan ceremonial incense. Two lines of White Scars stood to attention on either side of the ramp, clasping their fists across their chest in the ritual greeting.

Still they respect us, even after all this foolishness, thought Yesugei as he descended. He found the display of respect touching. I am glad to belong to such a Legion.

The ship’s commander inclined his head as Yesugei approached.

‘Welcome, zadyin arga,’ he said. ‘You honour us with your presence.’

Yesugei bowed in turn. ‘I have taken you away from important duties.’

‘You have saved us from tedium. We are happy to have you.’

The two of them walked together towards the hangar’s exit. Behind them servitors began to unload the lander, hauling grav-crates from the cargo bay.

‘So can you get me to Chondax?’ asked Yesugei.

The commander gave an equivocal gesture. ‘We will try, but you know about the storms. The Navigator says nothing can be promised.’

‘When has a Navigator ever said different?’

‘That is true.’

‘And you have me with you now,’ added Yesugei. ‘It has been a while since I peered behind the mask of heaven.’

‘This is a good ship,’ said the commander firmly. ‘A harmonious ship. Twenty major engagements since first launch and still harmonious.’

That was reassuring. Chogorian captains had taken all sorts of esoteric concepts up into the void with them since their sudden and enforced leap in technological progress, and ancient ideals of harmony and balance still counted for a great deal.

They reached the far end of the hangar and Yesugei paused before a set of double doors. ‘What is your name, commander?’ he asked.

‘Lushan.’

‘Khitan?’

‘Yes, from Xiam.’

‘From the beginning, then, Lushan, let there be no secrets between us. This turmoil is not natural. I do not understand its origin, but it makes our star-speakers deaf and dumb, it silences the galaxy and it masks the primarch. Defying it will certainly be dangerous. I say this only so you are aware.’

‘All of us are prepared,’ said Lushan, looking perfectly unconcerned. ‘We can head out to the jump point on your command.’

‘Good,’ said Yesugei, opening the doors with a gesture. ‘Then do so now. My dreams have been troubled – until I am reunited with the Khagan I fear they will become worse.’ He gave the commander a weary look. ‘And it would be nice to have some sleep.’

Torghun strode towards the Starspear’s command deck. He was curious. It wasn’t common for Jemulan to call the khans together. The noyan-khan preferred to run his fiefdom in the Chogorian manner: loose control from the centre, maximum autonomy extended to the various brotherhoods. Now, though, the order had come in and his commanders were hastening to comply. Those stationed on other vessels had taken shuttles over to the Starspear; some still located in the outlying regions of the cluster had arranged to be present by secure lithocast.

‘What do you think?’ asked Manju, his lieutenant, walking alongside him. His face, light-complexioned and framed by blond hair, was creased with uncertainty. It was a markedly youthful face for a Space Marine, one upon which the Legion-scar looked oddly out of place.

‘No idea,’ said Torghun. He’d heard rumours that the astropathic veil was beginning to fracture, that some messages were beginning to get through at last, though nothing firm enough to place any confidence in.

‘The new assignment?’ offered Manju, his tone giving away his hope.

‘It would be about time.’

As was typical, the White Scars straggling Legion structure made coordination difficult – many brotherhoods were still engaged in the last gasps of xenos cleansing out in the far reaches. Others had been in their ships for weeks, hanging in orbit over the White World with nothing to do but practise their bladecraft in cages until fresh orders were issued from the Swordstorm.

The Chogorians seemed happy enough with that. They were used to their inscrutable primarch and his impulsive decision-making. The Terrans took it harder, at least those who hadn’t long resigned themselves to the Legion’s haphazard methods of command and control.

‘I thought they’d improved things,’ said Manju. ‘The Terran they brought in.’

‘She’s just one woman,’ said Torghun, smiling wryly. ‘She can’t change it all.’

They passed from the corridors into a capacious antechamber crowned with a high dome of glittering crystal. Fleet attendants bustled across the floor clutching data-slates, stepping clear of drone-like servitors in their paths. On the far wall was a Legion lightning-strike inlaid in alabaster and slate. The sigil of the Horde of the Earth stood next to it, a stylised mountain-peak modelled, so Torghun had been told, on Temudan, one of the holy peaks of the Legion’s home world.

Below the sigils were the huge doors of blast-grade adamantium that led into Jemulan’s audience chamber. Two warriors of his keshig stood on either side of the entrance carrying heavy glaives. Their faces were hidden behind sloping grilles of Mark III power armour, the helms crested with horsehair plumes dyed black.

Other summoned khans were making their way through to the chamber beyond. Their shoulder-guards carried their brotherhood emblems: a double-headed arrow, a falcon, a dawn sky. At the sight of the last one – a golden sun with spear-tip rays – Torghun’s gaze met Hibou’s.

Torghun nodded his head fractionally in greeting. Hibou did the same.

Once they were through, the blast doors shuttered closed behind them. The chamber glistened from reflective white walls. Bronze-caged lumens hovered above head-height. Perhaps seventy White Scars stood on the tiled floor, though some outlines flickered with the crackling aura of hololithic projections. A low murmur of expectant discussion rippled across the gathering.

Jemulan entered the room last and ascended the dais at the far end. The noyan-khan was as imposing a presence now as he had been when he had presided over Torghun’s Ascension. The many intervening decades had only hardened his ravaged, hawk-sharp face, making the zigzag scar on his face even whiter. His battleplate was ancient, reverently maintained but carrying its own sets of cherished burns, chips and dents.

‘Brothers,’ he said, turning to face the crowd and bowing perfunctorily. His face looked haggard. ‘My earnest thanks for attending at such notice. I know you are diligently preparing for the next stage of the Crusade, wherever that might be.’

Torghun and Manju exchanged brief glances. Jemulan sounded exhausted, as if fresh from combat. His voice, for the first time Torghun had ever heard it, gave away the old warrior’s age.

‘I would not have called you together had it not been of signal importance,’ Jemulan continued, sweeping his weary eyes across them all. ‘I wish the news I have to give were better. I wish it were not…’ He faltered, then recovered himself. ‘I have come from the Swordstorm. I have spoken to the Khagan. He wished me to tell you all how proud he is of your achievements here. He knows how much blood you have shed. He told me it will be remembered.’

Something has happened, thought Torghun, narrowing his eyes. He can barely bring himself to tell us.

‘As you know, the astropaths have been out of contact with the Imperium. The darkness is lifting now, though only partially. For reasons we do not understand, star-speakers on the flagship are receiving visions again. Our interpreters have been working hard to decipher them. Some images are still hard to discern, but at least we are getting them.’

Jemulan paused, seemingly unsure how to continue.

This is good news, surely. Why is he so reticent?

‘I hardly know how to tell you what we discovered,’ said Jemulan. ‘Since there is no way to tell it well, I will tell it plainly – the Great Crusade has been split. Treachery. The unthinkable has happened – a primarch has fallen into madness. A world lies in ruins and loyal warriors have been butchered. We do not know how many Legions are involved. We do not know why this has happened, but we are being asked to intervene, to leave Chondax.’

Jemulan’s words were as heavy as lead ingots. No one in his audience spoke, no one responded. Torghun, just like the rest, stood dumbfounded. A collective paralysis seemed to grip the chamber.

‘As I speak to you, others across the fleet are being told this news. Our orders are to accelerate the muster and bring the fleet back to a war-footing. There is much we do not know yet, but this much is clear – heresy has emerged among the Legiones Astartes. The only remedy is to root it out. This means war. This means going after those who until this day we called brothers. Their guilt is clear. They are murderers. They are faithless murderers.’

Jemulan spat the final words out with venom. His gauntlets clenched, trying to still hands trembling with fervour.

The crowd began to murmur again. Their initial shock gave way to a terrible curiosity – the basic mortal need to have questions answered, to know in all details what had taken place. Some instincts had not been quelled by the rigours of their transhuman conditioning.

‘Who?’ rose from the floor – first in lone voices, then as a chorus. Torghun found himself joining the clamour almost by default, adding his voice to those raised in outrage and disbelief. ‘Who?’

Jemulan raised his hands, stilling the tumult. His expression remained dark.

‘This is what we know,’ he said as the chamber fell quiet again. ‘The home world of the Thousand Sons has been destroyed, the Legion annihilated. Magnus the Red is slain, his back broken and his city lain waste.’

Jemulan looked as if he half disbelieved what he was saying.

‘These tidings come from the hand of the Warmaster himself, bearing his signs of surety,’ he said. ‘They are the first authenticated sendings we have received since the veil fell, and though much remains to be determined, at least now we know the name.’

Jemulan’s dark visage swept the chamber, animated by pure fury – the fury of a betrayed comrade in arms.

‘Only death awaits the traitor,’ he proclaimed. ‘So shall it be for Leman Russ, betrayer and heretic.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Scars and the Space Wolves novels Battle of the Fang and Blood of Asaheim. He has also written the Space Marine Battles novel Wrath of Iron, along with Schwarzhelm & Helborg: Swords of the Emperor and Luthor Huss in the Warhammer universe. He’s based in a leafy bit of south-west England, and when not struggling to meet deadlines enjoys running through scenic parts of it.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Neil Roberts.

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Table of Contents

- Cover
- Title Page
- Scars: Episode III
- About the Author
- Legal
- eBook license