‘I… record.’ Thorn gestured at the mechanical orb, which hummed to itself as it moved to watch both of them. ‘I write.’ He produced an electro-quill and the shimmering ghost-hologram of a screen appeared projected from a jewel on one of his gloves. ‘It is my honour to document the Emperor’s actions for posterity, so that later generations might know His deeds…’ Thorn seemed to recover some of his earlier self-confidence and leaned closer. ‘I hope to do the same for you, Lord Mortarion.’ He smiled insincerely. ‘I wish to learn more about the ways of your adoptive people, and the nature of your most challenging planet! Barbarus, you call it, yes?’
‘Barbarus is many things,’ Mortarion replied, looking Thorn up and down. Thorn’s patronising tone irritated him, and judging from the man’s physique, the primarch estimated that this ‘remembrancer’ would not survive a day down on the surface of his home world. ‘You could call it challenging.’
He pushed past Thorn and took the last two steps up to the top of the dais, hearing a mutter of disapproval move through the assembled crowd. Another protocol he had transgressed, no doubt, but Mortarion did not wait to learn what it was.
‘Where is my father?’ he demanded, stepping into an oval of brilliant light cast from illuminators far overhead.
‘Are you so eager to see me once again? I am pleased,’ said a voice, and from the corner of his vision, the primarch saw the velvet curtains parting. A towering figure in golden robes stepped forward, and seemed to radiate a brighter glow than the lights above.
Somewhere behind him, Mortarion heard Lackland Thorn choke off a gasp and drop to the deck in reverence. Armour clattered against steel as the ranks of soldiery did the same. Only the Custodians remained standing, forever ready, their devotion needing no such act to affirm.
Mortarion wanted to defy the same compulsion to show obeisance, but he could not. He looked briefly at his father and went down on one knee, before bowing his head. The actions happened as if preordained, as if already written into history.
‘Rise, my son,’ said the Emperor, and there was a cautious smile on His weathered, tanned face. His patrician gaze took in the wholeness of Mortarion with a single glance, and the primarch wondered what his gene-father was seeing. How deep could the Emperor’s vision penetrate? Did His sight-beyond-sight see the colours of Mortarion’s true psyche? Did He know His son’s inner thoughts?
No, said the voice in his head. If He did, things would be different.
Wouldn’t they?
Mortarion came back to his feet and saw the Emperor’s smile widen. ‘You defy expectation at every turn.’ He nodded towards the crowd. ‘Forgive me. This sort of thing does not interest you, I should have considered that.’ Concern shaded His eyes. ‘You’ve lived through so much hardship. Such pomp and ceremony must seem needless and wasteful.’
‘I’m sure it has value to some.’ Mortarion glanced at Thorn.
‘Indeed.’ The Emperor’s smile returned, and He placed a hand on His son’s shoulder, drawing him away. ‘Walk with me.’
His father dismissed His retinue, all but for a single Custodian Guard who followed them at a distance of twenty paces, and He strolled from the landing bay with Mortarion at His side. They crossed through an airlock hatch and emerged into a long, tubular corridor.
The passageway was spun out of a kind of crystalline glass: long curved sheets of vitreous material suspended on frames made of white metal. Mortarion saw that the corridor ran the length of the great ship’s spine, ranging from the dock at the bow of the Bucephelus all the way to the gigantic command castle rising up from the stern.
Out through the curved windows, Mortarion saw other ships in the fleet that had borne the Emperor back to Barbarus after His year-long absence. Many of them were golden in hue, decorated with lightning bolts and double-headed eagles, craft as big as leviathans floating in the silent dark.
Others had differing liveries and they bore sigils that Mortarion did not recognise. One of them – showing the device of an opened book bearing a flame – hove close as a chain of transport lighters moved from it to the Emperor’s flagship.
‘That belongs to one of your siblings,’ said his gene-father, seeing the question before Mortarion could ask it. ‘In time, I will find him as I found you, and he will rejoin us. My scouts have brought me encouraging data, and even now they search the galaxy for his probable location.’
‘How many of us are there?’ Mortarion did not look away from the other ship.
‘For now, too few for what is needed,’ said the Emperor, in a moment of introspection. ‘But that will change. It may take years, but in the end I will gather you all back to me. Our work… our destiny is too important to be denied.’
Mortarion wondered what that meant, but he held back from following the thread and kept on his current tack. ‘When do I meet them?’ Before he could stop himself, something more tumbled out. ‘I have never known a… a blood-brother.’
‘Very soon,’ promised the Emperor. ‘Horus is particularly eager to greet you.’
‘Lupercal…’ Mortarion knew the names of some of his siblings, and the lord of the Luna Wolves was foremost among them. ‘The first to be found.’
‘He was,’ nodded his father. ‘Just over half a century ago now, by the Terran calendar. He’s led the way ever since.’ The Emperor’s searching gaze found another of the ships in the fleet. ‘Horus wanted to join me to welcome you, but I bid him to hold back a while. There’s much for you and I to discuss first… Mortarion.’
The primarch saw the pause and called it out. ‘You hesitate over my name.’
‘Child of Death.’ His father spoke the meaning of it, as translated from the old Barbarun dialects. ‘It is not what I might have wished for you,’ admitted the Emperor. ‘I hope you never know the pain of having something so important as a child torn from you, that you could not even name it before it was gone.’
The words were meant to show a father’s bond with his son, but the sentiment rebounded off Mortarion and he was unable to process it. This was an alien experience to him, freighted with conflicting emotions.
All at once, it brought back the memory of that fateful day on Barbarus, when the Emperor’s lander had touched down outside the free city of Safehold. Mortarion and his Death Guard were returning from a failed mission to kill the High Overlord Necare, up in the toxic reaches of the highest mountain range. They found the people buzzing with tales of a magnificent visitor they called ‘the Newcomer’.
‘I have come to Barbarus in search of noble souls,’ the Emperor had said. ‘Glory and prosperity await. It will be the dawning of a new age.’
In a way, that had been true. But the new age the Emperor brought to Barbarus began by unseating Mortarion from the position of leadership he had earned through struggle and blood. The primarch fumed inwardly as he thought of that day, of how he had allowed himself to be goaded into a foolish, reckless bargain.
He told the Emperor to leave. He told Him they did not need the Imperium of Man and the light of illumination. In turn, in challenge, his gene-father had offered a wager, of a sort.
Defeat the arch-enemy, Necare, in single combat, prove you are a worthy leader, and Barbarus will never know the Imperium’s hand.
It was a trap.
Mortarion took up the gauntlet, defying reason to forge his way back up into the most poisoned ranges of the mountains. And there he had called out Necare, vowing to make good on the oath he had sworn, to end him and free Barbarus once and for all.