Fulgrim (53 page)

L
ESSER TROOPS WOULD
have given up and accepted their fate in the face of such overwhelming opposition, but the warriors of the Salamanders and Raven Guard were Astartes. So they fought like never before, knowing their doom was at hand, and desiring to make the traitors pay in blood for every one of their number that fell.

Caught between two armies, the first wave of the loyalist forces was being systematically massacred. Unrelenting gunfire from the Iron Warriors at the drop-site, and the resurgent forces along the Urgall Depression crushed the Salamanders and Raven Guard in a terrifying vice, and cut them to pieces in a murderous storm of fire and blood.

Warriors of the Alpha Legion and Word Bearers followed their leaders onto the black plains of Isstvan V, their guns blazing and their chainswords bright as they cast off the last remnants of their loyalty to the Emperor and turned their weapons on their brothers.

The
Dies Irae
killed scores with every shot of its mighty weaponry, striding like a giant daemon of legend through the benighted slaughter. White-hot fire blossomed amongst the loyalists and killing flames sawed across the black desert, vaporising men and turning sand to glass. Traitor tanks roared from the Urgall Hills, weapons blazing and crashing the wounded beneath their tracks. The Iron Hands were lost, the fate of their primarch a mystery as his last known position was overrun by hordes of screaming enemy warriors.

Let slip from his false retreat, Angron carved a bloody path through the loyalists, his swords reaping a bloody tally through the ranks of his enemies. The Red Angel fought in a barbaric frenzy, his mind lost to all but the killing rage that drove his blades. His warriors hacked and chopped their foes like butchers, in a killing frenzy of berserk rages, slathering their armour in the blood of the fallen.

If the noise of battle had been incredible before, it was deafening now, no voices heard that were not screams of pain or hate. Individual sounds were lost amid the constant roar of gunfire and rambling explosions, melding into one long immense howl of murder. What had begun as a battle had become a massacre, each pocket of loyalist resistance gunned down with overwhelming superiority of fire, before the shredded survivors were hacked apart with bloody chainswords.

Mortarion harvested loyalists with great sweeps of his scythe, his ragged cloak billowing in the hot winds of the battlefield’s fires, as the Death Guard crushed their foes beneath the relentless pounding of marching feet and the disciplined volleys of gunfire.

At the forefront of the Emperor’s Children, Lord Commander Eidolon and the swordsman Lucius led a contingent of their warriors into the heart of the enemy, killing with wondrous displays of bladework and howling shrieks of raw sonic power. The swordsman danced through the battle, his Terran blade carving a screaming, bloody path as he laughed in time with music only he could hear.

Marius Vairosean and his orchestra of damnation ploughed the bloody sand with their terrifying harmonics, ripping open flesh and metal with shrieking chords and howling scales. In contrast, Julius Kaesoron took little part in the fighting, expending his energies in the mutilation and defilement of the corpses left in his brother’s wake. Trophies of flesh hung from his armour, each violation he wreaked on the flesh of the enemy more extreme than the last.

Apothecary Fabius picked his way through the carnage like a vulture, pausing here and there at fallen Astartes to perform some gruesome extraction. A coterie of warriors protected him and hideous homunculi assisted him in his loathsome labours, the fruits of which were borne behind them in a vile procession of bloodstained organ bearers.

Fulgrim was nowhere to be seen, the magnificent primarch lost amid the destruction of the Iron Hands’ Morlocks, but even without him, his warriors fought with savage and exquisite glee.

With victory in his grasp, the Warmaster took to the field of battle, surrounded by Falkus Kibre and his Justaerin Terminators. The remnants of Horus’s Mournival fought alongside him, the Warmaster’s magnificent black armour and amber chest adornment gleaming bloody in the firelight.

The killing fields of Isstvan V ran red with the blood of the loyalists, their brave attempt to halt the rebellion of Horus little more than ragged flesh and blood that fought for the last shreds of honour left to them.

Here and there, fierce resistance overcame the traitorous forces and desperate bands of heroes fought their way clear of the trap, dragging their wounded with them towards the few surviving drop-ships.

A band of Raven Guard smashed through a cordon of Emperor’s Children who shrieked in orgasmic pleasure as they were cut down, too immersed in the sensations of their own pain and death to fight back. A black-armoured captain led the breakout, fighting his way towards a miraculously undamaged Thunderhawk as his warriors bore the grievously wounded body of their primarch towards escape.

Of Vulkan there was no sign, his warriors cut off and surrounded by the Night Lords and Alpha Legion. Gales of bolter fire hammered the brave warriors of Nocturne and obliterated them. Not all the Salamanders were so cruelly slaughtered, others following the Raven Guard’s example and battling their way to their aircraft and the hope of escape.

The few remaining Iron Hands, bereft of their primarch’s leadership, banded together with the Salamanders and a brave few managed to break out of the hideous massacre, but such successes were the merest fraction of the battle.

Within hours the slaughter was complete and almost the entire strength of three complete Legions lay silent and dead on the tortured sands of Isstvan V.

T
HE ONCE
-
GREY
skies of the planet burned orange with the reflected glow of a thousand pyres. The firelight bathed the rippling, glassy sands in a warm radiance, and towering pillars of black smoke from the burning corpses filled the air. Lucius watched the blizzard of ash fall like snow from the skies and stuck out his tongue to taste the greasy, ashen tang of the dead.

Beside him, Lord Commander Eidolon, the skin of his face stretched and waxen over his bones, watched the cremation of the dead with dull, glassy eyes.

‘We need to be moving again soon,’ said Eidolon. ‘We have no time to waste with pointless ritual.’

Privately, Lucius agreed, but he kept his counsel as the thousands of Astartes loyal to Horus filled the broken desert of the Urgall Depression. They gathered before a great reviewing stand, constructed by the dark priests of the Mechanicum with astonishing speed. As the sun began to sink beyond the horizon, the smooth black planes of the stand shone with a blood red glow.

The stand was erected as a series of cylinders of ever decreasing diameter, one standing atop another. The base was perhaps a thousand metres in width, constructed as a great grandstand upon which the Sons of Horus stood, their pre-eminent position as the elite of the Warmaster in no doubt after this great victory. Each warrior bore a flaming brand, and the firelight cast brilliant reflections from their armour.

Atop this pedestal of flame was another platform, occupied by the senior officers of the Legion. Lucius could see the familiar, hulking form of Abaddon together with Horus Aximand. The others he didn’t recognise, but his attention was drawn higher before he could linger on their identities.

Above the senior officers of the Sons of Horus stood the primarchs.

Even rendered miniscule by distance, the sheer magnificence of such a gathering of might was breathtaking. Seven beings of monumental power stood on the penultimate tier of the reviewing stand, their armour still stained with the blood of their foes, their cloaks billowing in the winds that swept the Urgall Depression.

He had known Angron and Mortarion since the bloody days of Isstvan III. Their might had been demonstrated to him time and time again during that campaign. His own primarch had been a source of inspiration to Lucius for decades, though Fulgrim stood curiously apart from his brothers on the podium, as though disdainful of them.

But the others… the others had been unknown to him until now, their power and presence filling the plain before the stand with a hushed awe.

Lorgar of the Word Bearers, who had only recently arrived, stood proud and tall with his red cloak wrapped around his granite grey armour like a shroud. Alpharius, resplendent in purple and green held himself erect, as though attempting to match the beings around him in stature. Grim-faced Perturabo stood apart from his brothers, the firelight reflecting red from the burnished plates of his armour and mighty hammer. The lightning-streaked armour of Night Haunter seemed darker even than the black podium, his skull-faced helmet a spot of white amid the shadows that wreathed him.

Finally, the uppermost tier of the reviewing stand was a tall cylinder of crimson that stood a hundred metres above the primarchs. The Warmaster stood on top of it, his clawed gauntlets raised in salute. A furred cloak of some great beast hung from his shoulders, and the light of the pyres reflected from the amber eye upon his breastplate.

The Warmaster was illuminated from below by a hidden light source, bathing him in a red glow that gave him the appearance of the statue of a legendary hero, as he stood looking down on the endless sea of his followers from the towering platform.

As the sun finally dipped below the horizon, a flight of assault craft roared over the Urgall Hills, their wings dipping in salute to the mighty warrior below. Solid waves of cheering crashed against the reviewing stand, howls of adulation torn from tens of thousands of throats.

Lucius found himself swept up in the glory and added his voice to the din, his enhanced senses screaming in pleasure at the sheer, deafening volume of the cries. High, screaming voices from the Emperor’s Children echoed weirdly over the plain, ecstatic shrieks of pleasure and debasement like nothing that should ever have been given voice by a mortal throat.

No sooner had the aircraft passed overhead than the massed Astartes began to march around the reviewing stand, their arms snapping out and hammering their breastplates in salute of the Warmaster. At some unseen signal a flame ignited on the northern slopes of the Urgall Depression and a blazing line of phosphor leapt across the ground in a snaking arc that described the outline of an enormous blazing eye upon the hillside.

The adulation soared to new heights as the Eye of Horus seared itself into the sands of Isstvan V, the Warmaster’s forces roaring themselves hoarse in his praise. Super-heavy tanks fired in salute of Horus, and the towering immensity of the
Dies Irae
inclined its massive head in a gesture of respect.

The ashes of the dead fell like confetti over the Warmaster’s mighty army. Lucius felt a huge surge of purpose fill his heart and made a vow to never once rest in the service of the power Horus represented. Not even death would contain his might. He gripped the hilt of his sword tightly as loudspeakers placed around the desert erupted with sound, the booming, stentorian voice of the Warmaster sweeping over the Astartes.

‘My brave warriors!’ began Horus. ‘We have achieved much, but there is still more for us to do. With courage, vision and power we have defeated those who sought to prevent us from realising my great dream, but our victory here will count for little if we do not press onwards.’

Horus punched his clawed gauntlet into the air and shouted, ‘The road to Terra is open. The time has come for us to take the war to the Emperor in his most impregnable fastness! We will make immediate preparation for the invasion of Terra and an assault on the Imperial Palace. Make no mistake, and it will be ours, my brothers! This will be no easy task, for the Emperor and his deluded followers will fight hard to prevent us from interfering with his plans for godhood. Doubtless much blood has yet to be spilled, theirs and our own, but the prize is the galaxy itself…’

Horus paused as he let the weight of the stakes sink in before bellowing across the fields of Isstvan V, ‘Are you with me?’

Lucius joined the cheering as it reached into the fire-lit skies, and cries of ‘Hail Horus! Hail Horus!’ resounded long into the darkness.

W
ITHIN THE RUINED
keep of Isstvan V, shadows cast by the funeral pyres were thrown out on the smooth, basalt flagstones. Dust motes shaken from the ceiling and walls by the rumble of thrusters hung heavily in the air as the Warmaster’s army took its leave of the fifth planet. Horus watched as yet another squadron of Stormbirds lifted off in clouds of dust lit by blue fire, satisfied that all was proceeding as he desired.

His brother primarchs were mustering their forces for the invasion of Imperial space, and he was certain that each and every one understood the need for unquestioning obedience to his orders. As Warmaster, the armies of the Imperium had been his to control, from the mightiest fleet of battleships to the lowliest Army soldier, but to see such martial power gathered in one place was truly inspiring.

Not since Ullanor had he witnessed such a gathering of heroes, and his mood soured as he thought once again of the devastated greenskin world and the last time he had seen his father. Time had moved on and revealed much that had been hidden, but still the unease that events were moving too fast for him to control gnawed at the furthest corners of his mind.

He turned from the window and poured himself a cup of wine from a brass pitcher he lifted from a nearby table. He drained the wine in a single swallow and poured another as a rapid knocking sounded at the chamber’s entrance.

Horus looked up, his mood souring further as he saw Fulgrim standing in the doorway, a gilt inlaid box held before him.

Once they had shared a brotherhood as close as any, but in the years since they had fought together, something had changed within Fulgrim. His brother had been a warrior of perfection, but now he simply revelled in the sensations of battle and the adrenaline high of ferocious combat instead of the precise application of force.

His brother wore his battle armour, the plates gleaming and new once again, as though he had never set foot upon a battlefield. He wore a long cape of fiery golden scales at his shoulders, and a mail shirt of glittering silver hung beneath his breastplate. What had once been a magnificent, all-enclosing suit of armour now resembled a theatrical costume. ‘Warmaster,’ said Fulgrim.