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Prince of Blood – L J Goulding

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PRINCE OF BLOOD

L J Goulding

'I am in blood. Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.'

- attributed to the Nameless Thane of Old Albia

The flagship was trying to kill them. There could be no other explanation.

Blearily, Lotara eyed the canteen that rested upon the arm of her command throne, thirst making her tongue fat and heavy in her mouth. She shook the tiny silver pillbox in her hand absently, and her last few analgesic tabs rattled within it. Her headache was a sharp, grinding reminder that she hadn't taken any liquid in nearly two days.

And, of course, she had nothing to wash the painkillers down.

The Conqueror was surely trying to kill them.

Her ship. Angron's ship.

Angron's prison.

Her first officer circled around behind the raised dais. Where once Ivar Tobin had been a model example of the Legions' naval officer class, now he would regularly pace the deck with the nervous agitation of an addict, his brow dull with dry, cold sweat.

He halted abruptly, covering his earpiece with one hand. 'The door is sealed from the inside, ma'am. They are sending for a cutter. Still no contact with Mistress Andrasta, or her attendants.'

Lotara frowned. Her thoughts continued to drift.

The bridge space felt stiflingly warm, though that was likely just another effect of the dehydration. The crew preferred to keep the lighting low, because the lumen sconces had begun to flicker randomly and buzz like angry hornets, and even the most void-seasoned among them could not last a whole watch without suffering migraines or waking nightmares. Lotara herself had ordered the air cycler vents blocked up, in an effort to keep out the slaughterhouse reek that clung to every fibre of their uniforms. In a space designed for three hundred souls and more, barely sixty had reported for duty that night, and many of them were red-eyed and stripped down to their stained fatigues. A few were sprawled at their posts, sleeping fitfully.

There was little she could do about that, beyond hauling them down to the brig one by one with her own two weary hands, and hammering on the doors of every bunk-room to find suitable replacements. All of her slavers - no, discipline masters, she corrected herself - were engaged elsewhere on the ship. The Conqueror had to keep moving, and her engines were thirstier even than her crew.

Tobin straightened, staring blankly past his commanding officer like a grimy parade-ground recruit. It was his new way of reminding her of her duty, her superior rank, without actually saying a word, and it irritated her immensely.

'Ma'am… You might ask the good captain to intervene,' he offered. 'Send a legionary or two down to the Navigator's chambers, perhaps? We're losing pace with the Trisagion and the rest of the Word Bearers fleet, and Lord Aurelian's patience is not without its limits.' Tobin paused just long enough to make it seem as though he might be waiting for an answer, then addressed the warrior directly. 'My lord, what say you?'

Kharn was the only legionary on the bridge, though that was nothing unusual. He stood, as he so often did, in the open space to the left of the dais, swaying slightly and pressing at his temples with raw knuckles. Lotara knew that his headaches were far more fierce than hers could ever be, worse still when they sailed the tides of the warp as the fleet did now, and nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of water in his bloodstream. She didn't remember him coming through the main doors, but he'd clearly been in the process of shedding his battleplate when the pain had driven him to start roaming the corridors of the flagship once again. The warrior's left arm was bare, and his right gauntlet hung from his belt.

He murmured a reply from between clenched teeth. He did not open his eyes, nor turn to face them, but continued to knead his scalp.

Tobin raised an eyebrow. 'My lord?'

'They called my father the Lord of the Red Sands…' he repeated, more loudly. A spasm flickered in his bicep, the outward sign of some deeper neural twitch.

Lotara glared at him. She attempted to swallow three times before she could actually manage to croak a reply.

'We all did.'

She rarely bothered to address him by name or rank any more. He didn't seem to notice.

'He was the Undefeated,' Kharn continued. 'His triumph rope grew long. He became the Slaughterer of Nations. The Eater of Cities, and then of Worlds, with us at his side. Some even dared to know him as 'the Red Angel'.'

As if in response the ship creaked and juddered. It was like a leviathan stirring in its sleep, drifting on the unseen currents of the aether beyond the shuttered viewports. Lotara rose unsteadily to her feet, sparing a concerned glance for the static-crazed oculus high overhead. She often felt that she did not know whether her once prized vessel was still ev—

Kharn whirled around, catching her in mid-step and making Tobin flinch. His face was contorted almost into the likeness of the Sarum-pattern helm he so favoured.

'Those are not his names!' he hissed, his eyes flashing in the dim light, and she could smell his rancid, unwashed transhuman stink. 'None of them. My father's name is Angron. That is all he has left.'

An awkwardly long moment passed between them. Kharn held the sleeve of Lotara's dress tunic with one increasingly shaky hand, but she kept his gaze. Tobin continued to stare past them both, pretending he couldn't see any of it.

Then the legionary's eyes fell to the Red Hand emblazoned on her chest - the untidy print that he himself had made in honour of her exemplary service, what now felt like a lifetime ago. His resolve seemed to melt away, and he turned his back on her once more.

'You should just drink it,' he muttered. 'You'll hardly even notice the taste after a while.'

She made to smooth out the wrinkles in her uniform, but found that she couldn't see any point. Instead, she picked up the canteen, unscrewed the top, and poured the contents out onto the deck.

'I won't do that, Kharn. You know I won't do that.'

It was blood.

In some grim parody of the ancient Terran faiths, the Conqueror turned every drop of water they could reclaim into thick, sticky, slowly clotting blood.

The warriors of the Legion seemed content to gulp it down when they had no alternative - especially the primarch's Devourers - though it heightened their manias, their rages and rivalries, and led to more deaths than usual in the fighting pits.

But it simply made the human crew sick. Of course it made them sick, even those most keen to impress their legionary masters. It was blood…

Was this what Angron wanted? It was impossible for anyone, even Kharn, to say.

Lotara's gorge rose, and she realised she was becoming dizzy with the effort of standing. She let the canteen slip from her fingers, still gently shaking the tiny pillbox in her other hand, and trying to think of something to say about the separation between men and beasts. But the words simply wouldn't come together in her foggy thoughts.

And that was when the warp rejected them.

Kharn evidently noticed something amiss in the split second before it happened, his head snapping around as he dropped into a reflexive, guarded crouch.

Then Lotara felt it - the dislocating reverse-yawn of an unexpected warp translation, the instant drawn out into eternity but crushed back to an instant against its will, the cold slither of the warp retreating from the hull, Geller fields straining with the almost infinite deceleration between the immaterium and reality…

The deck lurched. Sirens and alarms sounded. Lotara reeled, but kept her footing even in the slick of spilled blood. The older Tobin was not so nimble, and their skulls cracked together as he tripped over the corner of the dais. She fell, bright motes swimming at the corners of her vision, letting out a pained gasp an instant before her shoulder hit the metal-plated floor.

To their credit, and dazed as they were, the helm officers managed to bring the slewing motion of the stricken Conqueror under control as it tumbled back into real space.

His combat reflexes still heightened, Kharn glanced down at her.

He cocked his head. 'What—'

Another vessel, perhaps the escort frigate Metzgerei, slammed into the flagship's aft quarter.

The Conqueror howled in pain.

Kharn was hurled from his feet by the impact. Lotara saw him collide head first with the standing crystal-flex pane of a fighter-patrol tactical display, shattering it instantly. Tobin went skidding in the same direction across the deck, and tumbled down into the starboard sensorium bay.

The lumens blinked out across the bridge. The acrid stench of an unseen electrical fire quickly filled the air. Servitors spewed garbled half-words, their machine brains moving a few milliseconds faster than their augmitters could manage. Someone was screaming. A secondary explosion rocked the hull, probably a detonation in one of the lesser magazines.

Decompression warning beacons strobed in the enclosed space. The ship's superstructure groaned as it shrugged off the collision and limped clear of the growing debris field.

Lotara's ears were ringing. She couldn't tell where the deck alarms ended and her tinnitus began but, thankfully enough, it was drowning out the screams. Rolling onto all fours, smearing her uniform red in the process, she managed to scan the space around the command throne.

Her mouth fell open.

It was Kharn. He was on his knees.

He was screaming.

With one hand the captain clutched at the ruin of his face; it was little more than a wet, crimson flap hanging from his left eye socket to the open slash of his mouth. Teeth, gums and cheekbone glinted back from the bloody mess, under the bridge's emergency lighting.

With the other hand, he gripped what was left of Ivar Tobin by the neck.

In his insensible agony, Kharn had torn the man apart.

They called my father the Lord of the Red Sands. For a time, they loved him.

He was the Undefeated. His triumph rope grew long. He became the Slaughterer of Nations. The Eater of Cities, and then of Worlds, with us at his side. Some even dared to know him as 'the Red Angel'…

But those are not his names. None of them. He was little more than a slave who became a butcher, but a butcher who was crowned a primarch, and a primarch who was turned into a monster.

In spite of it all, we loved him too. For a time.

My father's name is Angron. In these increasingly rare moments of clarity, between the blood-rages and the infinities of pain that seem to burn his skull from the inside out, the name of Angron is all that he has left. That and nothing more, for I suspect he no longer recognises the creature he sees reflected in the pools of spilled blood around the creaking shifting throne that we built for him.

We have only his pious, self-righteous brother Lorgar to thank for that.

And one day, we will.

Blood. Drink it down. The taste is…

Once Terra has burned and the Warmaster's claim to the Throne proven just, the XII Legion will festoon the new Imperium with the skulls of Lorgar's sons, the treacherous Word Bearers. We will kill them, maim them, and burn what remains. Perhaps then, our father can find some small measure of peace to carry him through eternity.

Am I like him? Do we walk the same path?

Maybe. I know that I am marked by… something.

Its eye is upon me, the same sleepless and unwavering eye that has watched my father all his life, no doubt. I can feel its malignant glare, burning unseen in the heavens with the intensity of a supernova, the eightfold heat washing through the base of my skull, prickling the flesh between my shoulders whenever I rest, the echoes of its half-remembered name ringing inside of my skull.

It watches everything. It sees all that I am, and everything I can never be.

Khârn. Khârn. Khârn. Betrayed.

Kill them. Maim them.

Would that I were judged for my atrocities. I could answer to those in a heartbeat, and spit upon any who would say that a legionary's rightful role is not that of an attack dog.

Rather, I know that I am to be condemned for whatever vestige of mercy and sane thought I can still muster, when the killing is done and the Butcher's Nails are sated. Such things as 'mercy' and 'sanity' are of no interest to whatever it is that lurks beyond.

And peace for my father's soul is not something that concerns it one bit.

Burn them. Burn them.

The darkness retreats. The brain-fire cools. What—

Blood.

Blood, and pain, and nothing more.

The XII Legion fleet closed around its foundering leader, for the most part. The Conqueror's principal battlegroup had prepared to break from the warp as soon as they detected the fluctuations in her engine patterns - with the exception of the Metzgerei, whose prow was shattered, they made a relatively ordered translation and fell into a standard picket around the Gloriana-class beast. Other groups, those of the Red Hound, the Merciless and the Rohimnal in particular, continued their voyage for an hour or more before realising that anything out of the ordinary had even transpired, and were forced to double back.

Several other ships powered on into the aether, heedlessly. Whether they intended to keep pace with the Word Bearers or had decided to carve out their own destinies elsewhere in Ultima Segmentum, it was impossible to tell.

'Hang the lot of them,' Lotara muttered under her breath, reaching an unmarked hallway junction. 'Let the disobedient curs lose themselves and call it freedom.' She paused to orient herself. The agreed dock was one of three in this low section, and it rarely saw any traffic other than inter-group supply runs. She punched the number she had scribbled on the back of her hand into the keypad beneath a dead manifest screen, then cleared her throat and composed herself as best she could.

Truth be told, it was Lorgar's flight that troubled her more. The Trisagion and the Blessed Lady had not even paused when the Conqueror dropped out of the warp. A single crimson-hulled destroyer, its name purposefully blanked on auspex data returns, emerged only minutes after the collision, circled the picket once with gun ports open, then jumped away again. No vessel of the World Eaters had been able to raise the XVII on any medium- or long-range vox in all the hours since, nor had their astropathic calls received any kind of reply.

It was clear enough that the Word Bearers had deliberately abandoned them.

The heavy pneumatics of the voidlock hatch squealed as it opened before her, to reveal a handful of armsmen from the battle-barge Scathlocke, descending the ramp of their shuttlecraft. She was somewhat relieved to find they looked as disorganised and slovenly as her own crew, but received their half-hearted salutes with as stern a glare as she could manage.

Advancing somewhat cautiously, they moved aside to reveal their charges: a most peculiar specimen of a man, with a gaggle of courtly sycophants fawning about him.

'Shipmistress Sarrin,' he said, ambling forwards with his astrolabe staff. 'You bring none of the Legion to greet us, on board the flagship?'

He was tall and wiry, bedecked in an outrageously long brocaded coat, tailored to make him look taller still. A velvet cap was pulled low over his brow. He stood a moment and peered down his nose at Lotara, sipping from a silver flask while his attendants whispered deviously to one another.

She wondered how long it would be before the contents of that flask, too, would redden.

'That's Flag-Captain Sarrin, good sir,' she replied, clicking her tongue. 'There is another master of this ship. You may have heard of him.'

The man nodded in contrition. 'Forgive me, flag-captain. We mean no disrespect. We are Navis Scion Ramosz, of the House Tevu.'

'What, all four of you?'

Ramosz's lip curled. 'We… We would be most honoured to answer Lord Angron's summons, and offer our services aboard the mighty Conqueror. We are merely surprised that not even any of his centurions deign to present themselves at this momentous occasion. The fickle and unreliable House Andrasta have failed the Twelfth Legion, and the primarch, and the Warmaster's new Imperium, for the final time, and House Tevu will—'

Lotara stepped aside, inviting him onto the ship with little more than a sigh and a shrug.

'A word of advice, sir,' she said. 'I'd keep all those sorts of thoughts to yourself.'

Somewhat deflated, the Navigator reached the end of the ramp, but halted suddenly as his foot touched the deck beneath it. He shivered, his skin paling, and his attendants pawed at his coat sleeves in concern.

'Oh, this is a strange thing,' he murmured. 'A strange thing indeed.'

'Sir?'

Ramosz gripped his staff tightly. He took another step. 'The Conqueror is… She is not as we remember her. There is… something else… here. We can feel it all around, even in her iron bones. It thirsts for blood, truly, and it yearns… to be… free. And it does not like us.'

He pulled a worn lace handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the sides of his neck.

'No, it does not like us one bit.'

One of the armsmen had lit up a lho-stick in the empty corridor beyond the hatch. Lotara slapped it out of his mouth as she passed.

'Just wait until you meet Kharn,' she called over her shoulder. 'He's going to hate you too.'

Ramosz and his coterie struggled to keep up with her, though the swaggering guards fell into an easy step around them all, cradling their las-carbines with the safeties off. Occasionally, she would see a dejected crewmember or Legion serf steal a look at them from up ahead, before darting back into the shadows. The Conqueror continued to grumble and groan around them - back here, closer to the midship battery sections, it sounded disconcertingly like a vast, empty stomach.

Lotara held out a hand and Ramosz duly supplied her with his flask. She was disappointed not to taste the cool water she so longed for, but some manner of decadent, spiced wine.

For now, at least.

'I'd like to tell you that you will get used to that uneasy feeling you describe,' she sighed. 'But you won't. Take solace from the fact that you'll be somewhat shielded from it, in the Navigator chambers. I gather they are most comfortable.'

They passed a corpse sprawled out on the deck plates. The young man had been dead for some weeks, and his tattered uniform had been stripped of all rank and insignia pins. His sidearm was also missing, and so too were his boots.

Ramosz covered his mouth. His attendants were completely silent for the first time since they had arrived.

Lotara handed back the flask. 'Apologies. Our maintenance crews are…'

She couldn't summon the effort to finish the excuse.

Thankfully, it was not more than nine conveyor-less levels back up to the ordnance bay where the medicae triage station had been established. As they rounded the corner of a doubleback intersection leading into it, the first two armsmen faltered in their stride, and a startled whimper came from one of the Navigator's retinue.

A legionary stood guard in the wide doorway. He held two notched axes, loose and ready, and his once white battleplate was stained with old blood and other, less savoury filth. He wore a tabard of mail, and a trio of woefully small skulls hung from his belt.

The warrior did not move to block Lotara, nor any of the mortals accompanying her. He merely glared down at them through cold, emerald-green eye-lenses, shifting his weight slowly from foot to foot, his breath audible through the vox-grille of his helm.

Casualty estimates from the collision varied, since there were no solid numbers for the flagship's current crew, and there were certainly too few to mount any sort of organised sweep of the most heavily damaged areas. The compartments that had suffered full decompression had been automatically sealed off, and Lotara was forced to concede that they would likely remain that way for some time. She had seen for herself the void-frosted bodies on the other side of the internal bulkhead viewports.

Even so, there were scores of bodies here too.

Many had been bagged. But when the bags ran out, they had been covered with stripped tunics, or cargo tarps, or whatever else came to hand. The deck drains ran dark red - now a fairly common spectacle at any place on the ship - and the few medicae adepts that remained looked more like apprentice butchers.

Kharn, thankfully, was being tended to. The Apothecary, Kargos, was squatting on his armoured chest, stapling his face back together.

It had taken a while to subdue him. His frenzy claimed two more of the bridge crew before any legionaries had arrived to help, and Kargos hit him with enough tranq to kill an ogryn. When Kharn regained consciousness almost two hours later, he was surprisingly coherent, and remembered nothing of any of it.

Lotara wasn't sure if it was still entirely necessary, but the captain's arms were being held down by that leering, pallid ghoul Skane and one of his Destroyer squad. The sergeant looked up at her and grinned; he probably intended it to be shark-like, but she could see more empty gums than teeth, and sharks were not known to drool.

'Flag-captain,' he wheezed, straining his augmetic vocal cords. 'We're trying to decide who it was that gave him these new scars - the helmsman on the Metzgerei, or your Navigator. Well, former Navigator. I don't recall anyone ever cutting his face before, not even in the fighting pits. It's worth noting. There might yet be a score to settle.'

Lotara didn't respond. She was used to seeing Kharn covered in blood, but it tended to appear brighter and more unsettling whenever it was mostly his own.

She turned. Ramosz and his gaggle of attendants were all staring hard at their own feet.

'Kharn,' she called out. 'He's here.'

The reply she got was nothing more than a questioning grunt. Lotara waved Ramosz forwards.

'Chief Navigator from the Scathlocke. He's House Tevu. No blood ties to Andrasta that we could find.'

Ramosz bowed deeply, even lowering his astrolabe. 'Lord, we are honoured to serve you and the primarch. Doubtless you have no reason to recall such a trifle, but we were a member of Mistress Nisha's retinue for a while some years back.'

Kharn growled. 'Don't say her name again. That weak-willed bitch.'

Pausing to give Ramosz a pointed, sidelong glance Lotara prepared to dig her heels in once again. 'He's the best chance we've got. No one else comes close, not for guiding a Gloriana.'

To her surprise there was no further protest, but Kharn shifted in agitation beneath the Apothecary's weight.

'Aren't you done? Get off me Bloodspitter. Get off me now.'

Kargos pushed himself to his feet wiping his tools on the back of one leather gauntlet, while the two Destroyers moved to haul the reluctant patient up.

'Arise, Kharn the Bloody!' Skane chuckled, clapping him on the pauldron. 'May you—'

Kharn felled the sergeant with a single, barehanded blow to the side of the head, sending him crashing into an empty shell hoist cart. No one said anything for a long moment.

'Where are we?' the captain demanded. His face was puffy and raw around the rough metal fastenings, his left eye half closed and bloodshot. 'You. Navigator. Can you tell me that, at least?'

Ramosz still would not look up. 'We have been comparing the fleet's position against the cartae, lord. We believe this to be somewhere at the periphery of the Ruthan Marches. Beyond the range of local system scrying, certainly.'

'Ruthan. One of Dorn's conquests. Should we expect a Seventh Legion presence?'

'Unlikely,' Lotara replied. 'There have been few reports of them operating outside the Segmentum Solar in years, so I doubt we'll face them until we reach the Throneworld. Assuming that's still our plan.'

The ship juddered softly beneath their feet. Casting a cursory glance over the rows of bodies in the chamber, Kharn turned and made to leave, without ceremony. 'Have all of these incinerated. Don't bother with funerary rites. And get our new Navigator installed immediately. We must be ready.'

'Ready for what? Lord Aurelian was orchestrating our combined attacks from system to system, and now he is gone. We have no target.'

'I do not need Lorgar's permission to make war,' Kharn spat, stepping over Skane's unconscious form. 'We are on our own now, Lotara. We will serve our own primarch. No other.'

She nodded wearily, re-tying her lank hair behind her head. 'So, where are you going?'

'Time is running short. It has been more than a month since we spilled an enemy's blood. Should I tell Angron that his brother has left him here to die? Or should we simply ask him who he would have us kill next?'

The legionary guard stepped aside, but Kharn halted unsteadily at the open doorway. He placed his palms on the dark iron bulkhead, and slowly put one ear to the metal.

The other World Eaters looked on, uncertain as to what they were seeing.

'Something wrong?' Lotara called out.

'Maybe,' the captain murmured. 'For the first time in a long time, I cannot hear my father's roar.'

What manner of warp-born sorcery can turn plasteel and adamantium to rippling flesh? Often have I trodden these halls since we returned to Nuceria, and yet still it unsettles me: the transitional space in which the pulse of the ship's great reactor seems to become a true heartbeat.

Only now, it is the silence beyond the heartbeat that unsettles me more.

Once, this was the broad colonnade that led to Angron's triumphal hall. The anteroom with its great doors, the wide steps leading down, down. In the earliest days, after Desh'ea, a handful of us stood here and learned what his prolonged bouts of silence could herald.

Bloated and venous, these living walls have almost - but not entirely - obscured the ancient words that grace the arch high overhead.

IRA VINCIT, IN SANGUIS LAVANTO.

The XII Legion bathes in blood now, for true.

Two warriors stand beneath this legend. Their hulking Cataphractii suits have left bruises on the floor where they have paced back and forth. They are clad in red and brass and bronze, in imitation of the primarch's own Martian plate from the latter years of the Great Crusade.

We are, all of us, an echo of Angron at some level or another. Splinters of his fractured psyche, perhaps?

'Devourers,' I call out. 'Stand aside. I will pass.'

The first raises his bladed fists in defiance of my rank, traceries of power arcing between the razor-sharp claws. Over the points of his exaggerated, toothy gorget, his eyes are weary.

'Hold, captain. You are not welcome here.'

His name is Tarugar. An unremarkable centurion, he claimed his place among the primarch's supposed honour guard after I slew his predecessor Borok, and walked away. Tarugar did not even earn this paltry thing for himself.

He is no champion of the Legion.

I do not break my pace. I stride right up to them both, the second warrior levelling his chain-glaive and gunning the motors.

The click-whine of his Terminator armour's heavy actuators gives him away. In the instant before his all-too-obvious lunge, I slap the weapon's blade down with one hand and break the haft beneath my boot.

Tarugar slashes at me with his claws once, twice. Drop. Turn. Come up behind him. The other legionary tries to grapple, to hold me in place for the killing strike. His strength is immense. The breath is forced from my lungs. I snatch the combi-bolter at his hip, and press it to his bare forehead.

Single shot.

Brain matter, dark blood.

How many Devourers have I slain, now? How many more will I?

The dead warrior topples over backwards, taking me down with him. It is a few seconds before I can slip free of his spasming arms, tossing the gun aside.

Tarugar stands dumbfounded. He raises his claws another fraction, but takes half a backward step as I move inside his guard unopposed. I can feel the blades' field prickling the hairs on my forearm.

I lean in close. His adrenaline levels are spiking. My voice is a pitched, cold whisper.

'Does Angron even know your name, Tarugar? I doubt it. Stand aside.'

He grinds his teeth. He battles not against me, but against his Butcher's Nails. I can read my brothers as easily as I could once read our father, and Tarugar's sense of self-preservation soon outweighs his need to test himself any further against the primarch's favoured son.

'Damn you, Kharn,' he hisses. 'I hope he eats you alive.'

I glare at him wordlessly as I unbar the doors and haul them open. He turns away, cursing under his breath in guttural Nagrakali.

No champion of the Legion. No fit guardian for our primarch.

If we still have any primarch left to guard.

Yawning black before me, the steps descend into what has become Angron's dungeon cell. I take them slowly, one at a time, knocking aside the debris that litters them with the edge of my boot. The air is foul. I measure my breathing urging my hearts to slow.

Know no fear. Show no fear. Show no pity, and no doubt.

We have played this game many times before, the primarch and I, and I have tried to learn from every beating I received.

The last step delivers me onto the triumphal hall's floor.

'Father?'

I freeze. The word, half-formed upon my lips and yet spoken aloud by another voice, brings me up short.

I scan the darkness in the chamber's recesses. The spaces between the skull piles. The vaulted reaches of the high ceiling. The only light comes from the anteroom at my back. I slowly, cautiously, risk another step forwards, and scattered shards of bone crackle beneath my tread. I cannot see my primarch, though at least l now know for certain that he is still here.

Half a legionary - the lower half - lies twisted on the flagstones like a discarded plaything, capped with a protruding kink of broken vertebrae. There are large teethmarks in the buckled ceramite of his war-plate. I see no point in questioning who he was, or where the rest of him might be.

Another step. Another. I carefully turn my back to the nearest wall, and let my vision adjust.

There.

Angron's eyes smoulder with their own infernal light, though far less so than the last time I stood before him in this place. Then, his inhuman gaze had been fierce, and fearsome, so that not one of us could long hold it. The murderous glare of the gods' most lethal creation.

But now the daemon prince watches me with something like… wariness?

He is crouched in the shadow of his throne - and such a thing is no small marvel for a being of his warp-gifted size and majesty.

No. Not crouched.

Cowering.

I cannot process what I am seeing. The Nails' ticking is an aneurysmal pulse in my ears, as well as my mind.

'Father?' he calls again. Gone is the bestial growl, the hoarse rumble of a throat no longer capable of screaming itself raw. I would say, rather, that he sounds more like himself again. His old self. His former self. The broken warrior he was, before… before his…

I do not know the correct term. I do not care to know it. This is beyond me, beyond any of us. We no longer trouble ourselves to wonder.

His immense, clawed fingers slip from the side of the throne as he pulls further back into the gloom, edging away from me.

'Father… is it over?'

He has broken his chains again. I can see them trailing on the floor. No one has ever been able to imprison Angron. Not for long. And yet, he has not tried to leave.

I steady myself, offering a cautious half-bow. To avert my eyes would be to invite death. I am staring down an unleashed monster.

'Sire, it is Kharn, of the Eighth Company.'

'Khorne…'

'Khârn, sire.'

Silence. Then, 'Grave-grub Kharn. Yes. Yes, I remember you.'

This is the most lucid he has been in many months. Do I dare to dream, dare to hope, dare to pray that this could be the beginning of something more? Perhaps even the salvation that Lord Aurelian claimed to have sought for him?

'Where is the other paperskin?'

'Sire?'

'The sighted one. I do not feel her nearby. The… The…'

He is straining for something he cannot recall.

'Chief Navigator Andrasta. I am sorry to tell you, sire, that she is dead.'

The daemon shifts, and dry bones fracture beneath his immense weight. 'Did you end her?' he asks. The question takes me somewhat by surprise.

'I did not. She took her own life.' I imagine all the ways this conversation might play out, and decide that any further detail would be an unnecessary risk. 'We cannot be certain why. We have arranged for a replacement.'

The primarch reaches slowly for his blade, half-buried but not forgotten amidst the detritus of the hall. As his fist closes around the scaly hide grip, the runes etched into the black metal begin to throb with un-light, enough to set the Nails fizzing and buzzing behind my eyes. This weapon is not like Gorechild, or Brazentooth, nor any other that Angron has carried before. It was forged for none but him, and it is always hungry.

I have seen it cleave through the hulls of Imperial battle tanks.

But he does not raise the great sword now. Perhaps he merely needed to remember how it feels in his hand. The links of his chains graze the flagstones.

'How long do they live, when no one takes their skulls?'

I cannot recall the last time anyone exchanged this many words with him. I slowly, carefully lower myself to the floor, making sure to keep our eyes locked the entire time. I will answer any question, no matter how mundane, if it will hold him here in the moment for just a little while longer.

'Mortals are feeble things, sire. Without intervention, they will endure for less than a hundred years, and much of that is spent in pain. But Mistress Nisha Andrasta was somewhat older than that, and curiously frail-minded. It is possible that she would not allow herself to understand what your Legion is becoming.'

Angron grows very still for a creature capable of such unnatural and unpredictable rage.

'My Legion,' he growls.

I do not respond. I regret having seated myself so close to him.

'What is it becoming, Kharn?'

The words gaoler and plaything leap unbidden to the forefront of my agitated mind, almost making me flinch. I have no reason to believe that the daemon prince can read my thoughts, but those two felt disloyal, and irreverent, nonetheless.

I consider my response.

'We are following you, sire. We will follow you into eternity.'

'Why?'

'Because you are our father.'

The truth of this statement appears to confound him. He looks me up and down, then scrutinises his talons, his forearms, the tips of his folded wings, lingering just a moment longer than I would like upon the heavy iron manacles around his wrists. Then he shakes his head, rattling the dreadlock-cables that still frame those animal features. It is like watching a mindlocked servitor trying to comprehend the myriad hypocrisies of The Apocrypha Terra - a mind that once held the capacity to understand, now torn between the memory of what it was and the promise of what it could yet be.

'I am not your father, grave-grub. You are not like me. I should not be here.'

The words sting. They always have.

Slowly, Angron begins to rise out from behind the throne. He towers over me, the great sword dragging in his grip, his hunched shoulders pushing aside the empty lumen fixtures that hang overhead.

I keep my voice level and measured. 'We have only ever wanted to please you, sire. My brothers and l, we—'

'I should not be here,' the daemon rumbles again. His attention is drifting to the doors at the top of the steps. His eyes are growing fiercer. I need to bring him back, to hold him in this now dwindling moment.

There is an empty battered helm lying on the flagstones near my foot. It will serve.

'Do you remember the red sands, sire?' I ask quickly. 'Do you remember the honour of the caedere remissum? Do you remember what it signifies?'

Angron twitches. He peers at me once more, a blast of hot breath gusting from his snout.

I continue.

'When we found you, we did not know what you wanted of us. Not really. Nothing we did could earn your approval. The rulers of Nuceria, the high-riders, quickly made their peace with Guilliman after your rebellion was ended, and gladly joined with the empire of Ultramar. Though you would not allow us to return there, we thought to mark the sacrifice that you and the Desh'ean gladiators had unknowingly made for us. For the Imperium.'

I pluck the helmet up from the floor. The eye-lenses are broken, the grille dented inwards.

The primarch's expression is unreadable. But he has not killed me yet. That is something.

I turn the helmet over in my hands.

'Here - the twin-crests of the remissum, like bladed horns. When a warrior in the arena knew their mind was failing, when they had spilled too much blood and could no longer find pleasure in anything else, then they would wear them as a warning to their foes. The bout would be sanguis extremis. To the death. My brothers and I saw that it was a bold and noble thing to proclaim oneself beyond hope, sire. Beyond redemption.

'And so, as the War Hounds became World Eaters, many of your veteran companies adorned their helms in this fashion. We wanted you to know that we mourned with you, and that every battle we fought at your side would be to the death.'

'Not for you!' he growls. 'The mantle is not for you!'

'Then you remember enough to know that it did not end well, sire? We tried to learn of your past, and you killed us for it. We tried to celebrate the breaking of chains, and you killed us for it. We tried to teach you how the Imperium wages war, and instead you hammered the Butcher's Nails into our skulls so that we would eventually kill one another, and spare you the effort.'

Without warning, Angron lets out a roar of inhuman hatred and rage, a roar loud enough to rattle my armour plates, and sweeps the great blade around in a flashing arc. His throne of skulls, the throne we built at his command, is obliterated in a single heartsbeat.

Chipped teeth and fragments of bone rain down.

I keep my eyes closed for as long as I dare - and that can only be a second or two. The daemon is breathing hard, less than a metre from my face. When he speaks, I can see the sharp, iron fangs glinting in his maw.

'If you wish to prove yourself to me, Kharn of the Legion, then you must follow this path to its end. We were all born to bleed, but the gods' favour is not given easily, or quickly. You must pay for it with blood and skulls. Blood enough to drown the stars, and skulls beyond number. The crusader will tell you as much.'

'You mean Lord Aurelian?'

Angron does not appear to recognise the name.

I exhale slowly. 'As we feared they would, sire, the Word Bearers have left us. Our fleet now stands alone, deep within Ultima Segmentum.'

'Then why do you keep me here? Why do you keep me in the dark?'

'This is your flagship, sire. Your place is with us. We spill blood together, so that you may remain.'

He shudders, screwing his eyes shut and letting out a vile sound that could almost be a whimper. 'No. No. The Legion is not mine, not any more. The Blood God calls to me. He is calling me to his side, to… to…'

'Sire, l assure you, we are free to—'

'No!' he shrieks. 'Reality itself drags against these imperfect limbs! My strength is failing! I should be so much more, but you… you will not let…'

The primarch begins to claw at his own face.

'This is not freedom! It is slavery!'

I fall to my knees. It wounds my soul to see him suffer like this, and to know that we keep him here for our own selfish reasons. It is far more than slaughter for slaughter's sake. For our sins, we have shackled Angron to the material realm, as Lorgar urged us.

We simply do not wish to lose our father again.

I do not wish to lose him.

But, if this loss of self is the price of immortality, then neither do I wish to follow in his footsteps. I do not wish to lose him, but I will not lose myself.

The daemon prince rises to his full height, opening those leathery wings so wide that they almost touch the pillars on each side of the hall. The deck beneath his cloven hooves begins to shudder as otherworldly energies roil about us. He roars again, bringing dust from the arches above.

'I will have blood! Blood! Blood for the Blood God! Blood for my lord Khorne!'

The runes upon his blade pulse in time with his black heart, picking out the harshest angles of his hell-forged armour plate, and I wait for him to strike my head from my unworthy shoulders.

* * *

It was more than an hour before Kharn returned to the bridge. He was carrying his battle helm loosely in one hand, the bristles of the centurion crest splayed and unkempt.

Lotara brushed her fingers back and forth inside her uniform collar. The skin on her neck felt raw.

'I didn't know if you'd be coming back this time,' she muttered. 'That was a bad quake. We've lost power to life support along the upper portside flank. I've ordered a hard seal of the embarkation decks as a precaution.'

The legionary regarded her for a moment as he passed. 'You shaved your head.'

She shrugged, and stepped up to the command dais, sheathing her combat knife.

'I did. It's always too damned hot in here.'

The smile that twisted his features was cruel, but short-lived; Kharn winced as a thin trickle of blood ran from the staple beneath his eye. It looked almost like a red tear.

'Where is Vel-Kheredar?' he demanded, wiping it away.

'Overseeing the repairs.'

'Summon him, Lotara. I have need of his talents.'

The flag-captain sighed, and took her place on the throne. From where she sat, Kharn appeared silhouetted against the flickering oculus. His attention was fixed upon the stained deck plates.

'Admiring your handiwork?' she said, with a sharp click of her tongue. 'Feel free to take a brush to it yourself, if you like. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that blood is basically impossible to clean up without water.'

He didn't answer.

She rubbed imaginary grime from between the brass keys on her armrest pad. 'So… has Lord Angron issued us with any new orders? Do we have a specified target?'

Kharn shook his head.

'In that case, my lord - what are your orders?'

He trudged back to his customary position just to the left of the dais, and carefully set down his helmet.

'Have Master Tevu confer with his fellow Navigators across the fleet,' he replied, 'and plot a course for the nearest occupied system. If we wish our primarch to endure long enough to reach the Throneworld, then we must make sacrifice.'

The World Eaters fleet tore through the void, with the Conqueror at its head. The flagship trailed several of her damaged Ursus Claws, the great magnetic harpoons clattering against the scarred hull as she powered on in haste, heedless of any wider strategy than the immediate pursuit of bloodshed.

The bitterly cold world of Tekeli was the first that they encountered. Home to one of the great donjon-complexes raised by Rogal Dorn at the height of the Crusade, it had been intended as a bastion from which future generations might govern the considerable populace of the Ruthan Marches. In those more innocent times, notions of galactic Unity and the Imperial Truth had genuinely prevailed, and even the XII Legion had grudgingly agreed that a day might come when they could lay down their weapons for good.

Of course it was not to be.

There was no orbital bombardment no countenance of a void war. The World Eaters simply hurled themselves at the planet, desperate to feel solid ground beneath their feet and a weapon in each hand. The sky blackened beneath the sheer, overwhelming weight of the drop assault, from the high mountain passes to the frozen seas, and the defenders knew that they had already lost.

A maniple of engines from the Legio Thanataris - the only Titanicus element within the sector - had taken command of the local garrison. Deploying to the lowlands beyond the donjon with their Secutarii ground forces arrayed in earthworks upon the flanks, they would make the traitors pay dearly for every metre of ground.

But when the first waves of traitor drop pods came down within the civilian centres to the northwest, the princeps realised they had wholly misjudged the World Eaters' intentions.

The Legion had not come to crush the bastion, but to slaughter every last man, woman and child on Tekeli.

It went on for days. While the vox-net lasted, the open channels became a cacophony of agonised screams, offers of surrender and pleas for mercy, before finally dissolving into little more than fitful static.

On the eighth day, when the last of the Titans fell, a grim shadow finally spread its wings over the tallest ramparts of the donjon, and crimson lightning split the clouds overhead.

Wreathed in the smoke of a hundred corpse pyres, the daemon Angron raised his black blade to the heavens, and bellowed in unholy triumph as his blood-crazed warriors broke through the gates.

Vel-Kheredar knows me well, it seems.

The archmagos reforged Gorechild. Now he has reforged me.

22.

I will wear the red, the brass, the bronze, fresh from the armoury and turned by my own hand, though I am no Devourer. I spit on Tarugar and all the rest. Our primarch is a newborn creature of the warp, a prince of blood. He needs no protection that legionaries can offer.

Rather, I am sanctified in the colours that are said to most please our new god.

But I will not lose myself.

23.

Many of my brothers have followed my example, even as they follow me now on the field of war. The brain-fire keeps our blood hot. With every swing of our blades, we anoint the icy ground before us.

24. 25.

We will walk the Eightfold Path.

We will wear the mantle of the caedere remissum, even though the primarch forbade it.

We will rebel, just as he rebelled.

We will kill not because we are ordered to, but because we live for it. Blood, and pain, and nothing more.

26.

This last addition is the purest form of worship I can imagine, glowing bright and crimson in the corner of my visor display. It is a calming counterpoint to the Nails' fierce tick, tick, tick…

Vel-Kheredar knows me well indeed.

27.

A tally. A measure of my skill, and a tether for my soul.

The others may do as they wish, but I will not lose myself.

28.

I will not become like our primarch.

29.

30. 31.

This is no brotherly contest of old. These are my offerings to the Blood God. By the count of their skulls will I prove my worth, for they are all I have to offer in place of my own, before each new battle's ending.

Tekeli. Horgan Prime. Dabrosc, and all three of its moons. Stenyr. The orbital cities over Parliax. Another world, whose name I forget. Nebe VI. Nebe II. Deluge.

And on, and on, to the hallowed Throneworld itself.

32. 33. 34. 35.

My father's name is Angron. That is all that he has left.

We have only Lorgar to thank for that.

And one day, we will.

About the Author

L J Goulding is the author of the Horus Heresy audio drama The Heart of the Pharos, while for Space Marine Battles he has written the novel Slaughter at Giant's Coffin and the audio drama Mortarion's Heart. His audio drama Daedalus also features the Scythes of the Emperor, along with the short stories 'The Aegidan Oath', 'Heloth', 'Reclamation' and 'Terminal Velocity'. His other Warhammer 40,000 short stories include 'The Lords of Borsis', 'Kaldor Draigo: Knight of Titan' and 'Shield of Baal: The Word of the Silent King'. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

As the Indomitus Crusade draws to a close, Roboute Guilliman returns to Ultramar to face a new threat – the pestilential Death Guard!

A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Veronica Anrathi.

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