The Phoenician

Nick Kyme

I am dying.

A flickering retinal display tells me that my cybernetics are functioning, but I cannot move them. Without flesh to impel it, the iron means nothing. Without an engine to drive it, what use is the machine? For all its ostensible fortitude and resilience, I now discover that iron is just as weak as flesh. It is ironic that only now does this revelation strike me.

Julius is walking away from me, the arrogant cur. It takes me a moment to realise why he is upside down and I see his armoured heels disappearing into the distance. My Tactical Dreadnought armour has failed. I’m on my back, trying to hold in my guts.

I am not alone.

The dead are everywhere, their ranks swelling with each passing second. Morlocks in funerary black surround me. I see snatches of iconography, a splash of blood. Their wounds are fresh, but the legacy of them, and the wounds against this Legion, will linger long after this battle has ended. I will not see its end, though. I feel no regret or sadness – anger fills me instead, a black well of hatred that I am slowly slipping into.

My head lolls to the side, and I see a face I recognise. I rasp a name.

‘Desaan...’

He doesn’t answer. My brother is already gone.

I try to suppress the sense of fatalism that seizes my mind, just as the chill of death begins to seize my body.

I want to believe that this can all end in victory, that we weren’t simply undone by a lie.

Then I see him, emerging through a cloud of smoke, shimmering in the heat haze from a thousand fires, and the one whom he faces. Death is close, its hands around my throat, digging through my innards with eager talons. Slit from abdomen to neck, the pain rivals anything I have ever felt before... But I must hang on. I have to see this.

Blackness crouches at the edge of my vision. I am content to let it, just as long as I can remain conscious.

Two brothers face one another amidst an ocean of war, the dead lapping at their feet.

One is stern – his eyes like pools of mercury, hair cut close to the scalp. Cold and unyielding, his face is as craggy and hard as a Medusan cliff. Black as coal, with arms of pearlescent silver, he is brawn personified with a fresh-forged vengeance.

Ferrus Manus, the Gorgon. My father.

The other is slender, even in his purple and gold armour. His unhelmed visage is handsome, the epitome of physical perfection, and long white hair streaks from his head like flashes of fire. He has my father’s weapon, the great hammer Forgebreaker. As he climbs to a spur of rock, this vainglorious yet deadly peacock, his movements are swaggering and arrogant.

Fulgrim, the Phoenician. My father’s brother.

Ferrus Manus will kill him for this affront. As he strides towards the spur with purpose, the living making way for this clash while the dead linger underfoot, he draws Fireblade. It burns like his anger, righteously.

Fulgrim’s smile remains. His arms are open as if to embrace the Gorgon. In truth, it is a mocking challenge. Below, my few surviving brothers of the Avernii Clan clash with the Phoenix Guard. Lightning claw meets halberd, and the death toll amongst the Morlocks and the Emperor’s Children rises.

I black out for a few seconds. My eyes are bloody and I witness the rest of the battle through a crimson filter that my retinal lenses cannot correct.

Forgebreaker looks heavy; too noble a weapon for Fulgrim’s ignoble hands, but he wields it deftly and I am reminded of his awesome prowess.

My father speaks words of accusation, but my hearing is fading and I fail to catch them. His teeth are bared in a predatory snarl. Fulgrim’s too, revealed in a liar’s grin.

From despair comes fury. Ferrus Manus charges the spur, his brother upon it.

My father is a brawler, brute strength and undeniable power, but Fulgrim’s technique is choreographed like a dancer’s. Even with Forgebreaker, he is swift and precise. He rains blows against my father’s defence, smashes him down time and again. Ferrus Manus will not be bowed. Anger fuels him, and Fulgrim feels the heat of it. His smile wavers, turning to an uncertain frown.

I am weakening; my body is shutting down. My mind clings on by the thinnest skein. I have to see this. I need to know...

They circle, two demi-gods surrounded by the last of my dying kin. My father’s pauldron is dented by a glancing blow. The return is quick and two-handed, and leaves a fiery split in the Phoenician’s war-plate. The Gorgon recoils, the haft of Forgebreaker smashed into his pugilist’s nose. He replies with a downward slash that Fulgrim dodges; a second cut clips the primarch’s cheek and he snarls. He thrusts out with the hammer, a jab that punches the air from my father’s lungs and leaves him gasping. A desperate cross-cut keeps Fulgrim at arm’s length as the Phoenician leaps back to avoid Fireblade’s sting. One-handed, Fulgrim loops the stolen hammer around for a murderous blow, but Ferrus Manus blocks it. Sparks cascade, lightning crackling from both weapons.

I hear thunder, and imagine the very earth trembling against the fury of this duel.

For a moment they are locked, brother versus brother, Fireblade grinding against Forgebreaker’s haft.

With a roar, Ferrus Manus throws Fulgrim off, but the Phoenician is quick to recover. He spins away from the thrust aimed at his chest and lands a punch against the Gorgon’s exposed jaw. He shrugs it off and draws a cut down Fulgrim’s flank. Hard to tell for certain – my vision is starting to blur and the pain has ebbed to a dull ache that will soon become an endless cold – but I swear that the Phoenician exhaled in pleasure at that last wound.

Truly, he is depraved.

Mocking laughter erupts from Fulgrim, his arrogance boundless even in the face of incandescent hatred. Savagely, my father lashes out and rips the shoulder guard from Fulgrim’s otherwise pristine armour. If I could make a fist in triumph, I would. With gathering momentum, the Gorgon turns inside the Phoenician’s guard and makes to thrust with Fireblade.

My eyes widen in anticipation of victory...

But Fulgrim counters, faster than any warrior has a right to, and turns the blow aside before crafting one of his own that strikes my father’s skull.

Anguish rises with the blood in my gorge, but I dare not look away. I could not even if I wanted to.

Ferrus Manus is staggered, bowed on one knee but resolute. Blood is streaming from his head, drenching him in a red shroud. Gritting his teeth, he finds a gap in the Phoenician’s otherwise flawless guard and cuts deep across his torso.

Fulgrim falls back, Forgebreaker no longer in his grasp as he clutches at his body. On their knees, they stare at one another, but I am struck by the Phoenician’s apparent melancholy. I suspect lucidity has already fled, for I look upon Fulgrim and see true sadness. It is usurped by acceptance as Ferrus Manus rises to his feet.

Fireblade hangs aloft like a frozen comet, burning.

I am about to commit myself to duty’s end. Death has stayed its hand and I am thankful for it.

But the fatal blow does not fall. I blink and wonder if I have missed some crucial moment.

A silver blade flashes in Fulgrim’s grip. It halts Fireblade mid-swing, but the burning sword is descending all the same.

A harsh flash of light hurts my eyes, but I no longer have the strength to look away. An aura, dark and eldritch, has enveloped both primarchs – I see Fulgrim on his feet and my father back on his knees, his armour parted as though it were parchment.

I want to cry out, to rage at the wrongness of it. Fate has been thwarted. As I near death, I see it, I see the thing inside the Phoenician. It is writhing and serpentine, yet the flesh-host around it is staggering, bereft of his usual finesse.

Fulgrim’s eyes widen, and as they meet my own, I see his terror. I see the desperate urgency in him that screams not to kill his brother.

The blow falls. I cannot stop it. Iron skin shears apart, cleaved by amethyst fire.

I detect the reek of something spoiled, rotten meat and old flesh. Rolling over the slopes, surging from some unseen place come katabatic winds. They wash over me, over the dead, and I hear voices trapped within them.

They are screaming.

There are voices within the screams, beckoning me on. They come from the Land of Shadows, from Medusa, where the revenants of old, long forgotten lives still walk. They come for me, the slain warriors of the Clan Avernii, reaching out to take me with them, to grant me peace.

I recoil as their faces change, as noble Medusan sons devolve into wraithly phantoms. Fingers wither into talons, eyes shrink into orbless sockets. They seek to drag me into the darkness, and I have just enough will left to deny them their soul-feast.

Upon the Isstvan plain, a chilling tempest rages, with my dead father and his killers at the heart of it. I see the essence of life leaving the Gorgon through his severed neck. His head lies separate from it, glassy-eyed and etched with rage.

As the wind dies, I feel my torment just beginning.

Fulgrim stoops, although it isn’t the Phoenician. With one hand, he seizes my father’s cropped hair and presents the bloody head to me.

I do not see a primarch – I behold a monster. My closeness to death has gifted me that truth.

And in that moment, as my heart beats its last and a final breath saws painfully through my lungs, I realise what faces us. I can see it clearly. I see that we–

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Vulkan Lives, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio drama Censure. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Space Marine Battles novel Damnos, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Time of Legends novel The Great Betrayal. He lives and works in Nottingham, and has a rabbit.

As the Great Crusade continues to conquer the galaxy Fulgrim, primarch of the Emperor’s Children Space Marine Legion, leads his warriors into battle against a vile alien foe.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2013 in The Imperial Truth anthology.
This eBook edition published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS UK.

The Phoenician © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2013, 2015. The Phoenician, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN 978-1-78251-984-3

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