Fulgrim (54 page)

Horus detected a subtle difference in his brother’s tone, something so slight that it would have escaped anyone else’s notice but his. He lifted his cup and drank a mouthful of wine, beckoning Fulgrim into his chambers.

‘You requested a private audience with me, Fulgrim,’ he said. ‘What is so important that you could not tell me in front of our brothers?’

His brother smiled and bowed before opening the box he carried. ‘My esteemed lord and master of Isstvan, I have brought you a trophy.’

Fulgrim reached into the box and withdrew a grisly prize lifted from the field of battle. Horus felt a momentary shiver of horror as he saw the severed head of Ferrus Manus.

The flesh was grey and dead, his erstwhile brother’s silver eyes plucked from his head, and the sockets raw and bloody. His jaw hung open and a splintered nub of bone projected from where his skull had been caved in on one side.

Ferrus had become an enemy, but to see his flesh violated so brutally was repugnant to Horus, though he was careful to keep his feelings veiled.

With a casual flick of the wrist, Fulgrim tossed the bloodied object at Horus’s feet. Ferrus Manus’s head rolled across the black floor and came to rest with the ravaged eye sockets staring up at Horus in blind accusation.

Horus looked up from the head and turned his gaze on Fulgrim, seeing again the insouciance that had infuriated him so when his brother had returned in failure from his attempt to win over the Primarch of the Iron Hands.

As distasteful as it was, he knew he would have to offer congratulations. ‘Well done, Fulgrim. You have slain one of our greatest foes as you said you would, but I fail to see why you make this presentation in so private an audience. Surely you would wish our brothers to revel in your triumph?’

Fulgrim laughed, but there was a timbre to his brother’s amusement that sent a chill down Horus’s spine as he recalled where he had heard such ancient malice before… in the voice of Sarr’Kell, the entity Erebus had summoned in the heart of the
Vengeful Spirit
.

‘Fulgrim?’ asked the Warmaster. ‘Explain yourself.’

The Primarch of the Emperor’s Children shook his head and wagged his finger at Horus. ‘With the greatest respect, mighty Horus, you do not address Fulgrim any more.’

Horus looked into his brother’s dark eyes, seeing beyond the arrogance and superiority to what lay within. Darkness filled his brother’s core, an ancient darkness that had torn itself from the womb of a dying race with a bloody birth scream.

Its existence was as old as the heavens and as fresh as the dawn. Its life was immortal and its capacity for malice infinite.

‘You are not Fulgrim,’ he breathed, suddenly wary of this intruder in his midst. ‘No,’ agreed the thing with his brother’s face. ‘Then who are you?’ demanded Horus. ‘A spy? An assassin? If you are here to kill me then I warn you I am no weakling like Fulgrim. I will break you before you can lay a hand upon me!’

Fulgrim shrugged and tossed the box he carried onto the floor with a clatter. It landed next to Ferrus’s severed head. Horus let the energised claws of his gauntlets slide out in warning.

‘Perhaps you can defeat me,’ said Fulgrim, crossing the room to pour himself a cup of wine, ‘but I have no wish to test either of us in such a fruitless and wasteful trial of combat. On the contrary, I am here to pledge myself to your cause.’

Horus glanced towards Fulgrim’s waist, and relaxed as he saw that this thing masquerading as his brother had come before him unarmed. Whatever its purpose in unveiling itself, it had not come with violence on its mind.

‘You still have not answered my question,’ said Horus. ‘Who or what are you?’

Fulgrim smiled and licked his lips with a long sweep of his tongue. ‘Who am I? I should have thought that would be obvious to one who has had dealings with other creatures of my ilk.’

Once again, Horus felt the chill that he had experienced when the Lord of the Shadows had manifested in the stone-walled lodge, raised in the heart of his flagship.

‘You are a creature of the warp?’ he asked.

‘I am indeed. What your insufficient language might call a “daemon”. A poor word, but it will have to suffice. I am a humble servant of the Dark Prince, an emissary come to aid you in your little war.’

Horus felt his anger towards this impudent creature grow with every patronising syllable that dripped from its lips. It had usurped the body of one of his underlings, the fate of the galaxy was at stake, and it dared to call such a conflict ‘little’!

The Fulgrim thing turned away from him and paced the length of his chambers, as though it had never seen a room quite like it. ‘I have claimed this mortal shell as my own, and I must admit that it is most pleasing to me. The sensations one experiences when clothed in flesh are quite unique, though I daresay I shall have to make some alterations to its form in time.’

Horus felt his skin crawl at the idea of such a hideous violation. ‘What of Fulgrim? Where is he?’

‘Fear not,’ laughed the warp creature. ‘We have a long and… involved history, Fulgrim and I, and I certainly do not wish him any lasting ill. For some time I have been his conscience, quietly advising him in the lonely watches of the night, advising him, cajoling him, comforting him and steering his course of action.’

Horus watched as the daemon ran its hands along the sand-blown walls of the chamber, its eyes closing as it enjoyed the rough texture of the stone surface.

‘Steering his course of action?’ prompted Horus.

‘Oh, yes!’ exclaimed the warp creature. ‘I made him believe that he should not doubt your course of action. Of course, he resisted, but I can be very persuasive.’

‘You made Fulgrim join with me?’

‘Of course! Did you really think you were
that
good an orator?’ chuckled the daemon. ‘You have me to thank for clouding his perceptions and adding his strength to yours. But for me, he would have run to his Emperor screaming of your imminent betrayal.’

‘And you think I owe you something, is that it?’ asked Horus.

‘Not at all, for in the end, Fulgrim was weak, too weak to finish what his own desire had begun,’ explained the creature. ‘His obsession led him to launch the deathblow at his brother, but his weakness would not allow him to land it without my help. I merely gave him the strength to do what he wanted to do.’

‘But where is he now?’

‘I have already told you, Horus,’ cautioned the daemon. ‘Fulgrim’s anguish at what he had done proved too great for him to bear. He begged me to help him extinguish his life, but I could not destroy him, that would have been far too prosaic. Instead, I gave him eternal peace, though not, I think, in the way he actually desired it.’

‘Is Fulgrim dead?’ asked Horus. ‘Answer me, damn you!’

‘Oh no,’ smiled the daemon, tapping an elongated finger with a sharpened nail against his temple. ‘He is here inside me, utterly aware of all that transpires, though I do not suppose that he is happy pressed into the furthest reaches of his soul.’

‘You have already claimed his flesh,’ snarled Horus, taking a thunderous step towards the daemon-Fulgrim. ‘If he is of no more use to you then let him die.’

The daemon shook his head with an amused sneer. ‘No, Horus, I shan’t be doing that, for his cries of horror are a great comfort to me. I am unwilling to let him fade away, since our discussions offer me much amusement and I do not suppose I shall ever tire of them.’

Horus felt nothing but revulsion at the fate his brother suffered, but forced his disgust to one side. After all, had not the daemon already pledged its allegiance to him? It was patently a creature of great power, and to allow the knowledge that their primarch was as good as dead, would certainly cost him the loyalty of Emperor’s Children Legion.

‘You may have Fulgrim for now,’ said Horus, ‘but keep your identity a secret from all others, or I swear I will see you destroyed.’

‘As you wish, mighty Warmaster,’ said the daemon-Fulgrim, nodding and giving an unnecessarily ostentatious bow. ‘I have no particular desire to reveal myself to others anyway. It will be our secret.’

Horus nodded, though he made a silent vow to free his brother as soon as he was able, for no one deserved to endure such a terrible fate.

But what power could unmake a daemon?

O
RBITAL SPACE AROUND
Isstvan V was as busy as any fleet docking facility around the lunar bases, with the vessels of eight Legions assuming formation prior to transit to the system jump point. Over three thousand vessels jostled for position above the darkened fifth planet, their holds bursting with warriors sworn to the Warmaster.

Tanks and monstrous war machines had been lifted from the planet with incredible efficiency and an armada greater than any in the history of the Great Crusade assembled to take the fire of war into the very heart of the Imperium.

The fleets of Angron, Fulgrim, Mortarion, Lorgar and the Warmaster’s own Legion would rendezvous at Mars, now that word had come from Regulus of the planet’s fall to Horus’s supporters within the Mechanicum. With the manufacturing facilities of Mondus Gamma and Mondus Occullum wrested from the control of the Emperor’s forces, the forges of Mars were free to supply the Warmaster’s army.

The eager warriors of the Alpha Legion were singled out by Horus for a vital mission, one upon which the success of the entire venture could depend. Following the Warmaster’s misdirection of Leman Russ, the Space Wolves were known to be operating in the region of Prospero after their attack on Magnus’s Thousand Sons. In the nearby system of Chondax, the White Scars of Jaghatai Khan were sure to have received word of Horus’s rebellion and would no doubt attempt to link with the Space Wolves. Horus could not allow such a grave threat to appear, and so the warriors of Alpharius were to seek out and attack these Legions before they could join forces.

Night Haunter’s fleet had already departed, bound for the planet of Tsagualsa, a remote world in the Eastern Fringes that lay shrouded in the shadow of a great asteroid belt. From here, the Night Lords’ terror troops would begin a campaign of genocide against the Imperial strongholds of Heroldar and Thramas, systems that, if not taken, would leave the flanks of the Warmaster’s strike on Terra vulnerable to attack. The Thramas system was of particular importance, as it comprised a number of Mechanicum forge worlds whose loyalty was still to the Emperor.

The ships of the Iron Warriors prepared to make the journey to the Phall system where a large fleet of Imperial Fists vessels were known to be regrouping after a failed attempt to reach Isstvan V. Though Rogal Dorn’s warriors had played no part in the massacre, the Warmaster could not allow such a powerful force to remain unmolested. The enmity between bitter Perturabo and proud Dorn was well known, and it was with great relish that the Iron Warriors set off to do battle.

With his flanks covered and the forces that could potentially reinforce the heart of the Imperium soon to be embroiled in war, the gates of Terra were wide open.

One by one, the fleets of the Warmaster’s rebellion began the long journey to the planet from which they had begun the Great Crusade, each Legion’s ships diminishing to silver specks in the darkness before vanishing utterly.

Soon, only the Sons of Horus remained in orbit over Isstvan V.

From the strategium of the
Vengeful Spirit
, the Warmaster looked down upon the dark orb through the circular viewing bay above his throne, his expression unreadable as he watched the elliptical curve of the fifth planet recede.

He turned as he heard the sound of footfalls behind him and saw Maloghurst limping towards him with a data-slate in his hand.

‘What do you bring me, Mal?’ asked Horus.

‘A communication, my lord,’ replied his equerry.

‘From whom?’

Maloghurst smiled. ‘It’s from Magnus the Red.’

L
A
F
ENICE
WAS
a ruin. The daemon that had claimed Fulgrim’s body strode through the wreckage of Bequa Kynska’s last and greatest performance, smiling as it remembered the scenes of destruction and wanton lust enacted here. The glow of a handful of dim footlights flickered in the gloom. The air stank of blood and lust, and the parquet was sticky with fluid and strewn with bone.

The power of its dark prince had poured through the mighty theatre and entered every living thing within it, breaking down the barriers of inhibition between desire and action.

Truly it had been a great performance, and the lesser avatars of its master had feasted well on the excess of sensation unleashed, before discarding their borrowed flesh and returning to the warp.

All around it were the signs that its master’s power had been unleashed: the remains of a defiled carcass, a gaudy masterpiece of blood and ordure daubed on the wall or a sculpture of flesh formed from a multitude of body parts.

Outwardly, the daemon still resembled the body it had stolen, but already there were hints that the flesh was soon to be reshaped in an image more pleasing to it. An aura of power vibrated the air around it and its skin held a soft shimmer of inner luminosity.

The daemon hummed the opening bars of the
Maraviglia
’s overture and drew the sword sheathed at its waist, the golden hilt shimmering in the fading glow of the wavering footlights. It had retrieved the anathame from Ostian Delafour’s studio, surprised and amused to find another body impaled on its lethal point. The shrivelled husk of flesh was barely recognisable as Serena d’Angelus, but the daemon had honoured her corpse with the most sublime ruin before making its way to
La Fenice
.

It held the sword up to its face and laughed as it saw the tortured soul of Fulgrim behind its eyes reflected in the shimmering depths of the blade. The daemon could hear his pitiful cries echoing within his skull, the torment in every desperate shriek the sweetest music.

Such things pleased the daemon, and it stood for a moment to savour the fruits of its influence on Fulgrim. The fools who served in the III Legion had no idea that their beloved leader was clawing ineffectually at the bondage in which he was held.