But you failed, said the voice in his head. As your father must have known you would.
Mortarion had almost died up there, amid toxins so virulent that even the uncanny constitution of a genhanced warlord could not withstand them. On the brink of death, as Necare stood by and watched his adopted son choke out his last breaths, Mortarion knew the end was at hand.
But suddenly the Emperor of Mankind was there, His great golden sword flashing like star-shine. Necare fell to a single blow, and thus Barbarus was finally liberated.
That victory should have been yours.
‘You recall the day I came to you.’ The Emperor plucked the words from the air, as if He were reading Mortarion’s mind. ‘The dispatch of that creature… That was the first of many gifts I gave to you, my son. You understand that, yes?’
‘Yes.’
No, whispered the voice. He stole your hard-fought, deserved triumph. And why? So you would be forever beholden to Him–
Mortarion shook off the dark thoughts with a wordless mutter, as if dismissing a nagging insect.
If the Emperor noticed, He did not mention it. Mortarion’s father had paused to study the distant, smoky sphere of Barbarus. ‘Your world has changed in the past year. It has grown larger in ways you and your adoptive people are only now coming to grasp.’
‘The Pale Sons and Daughters are adaptable. Resilient,’ Mortarion replied. ‘Without those traits, humans would never have survived there.’
‘Admirable. My adjutants inform me that the locutors dispatched from the Imperium have made great progress in illuminating the Barbarun tribes. It pleases me greatly that the assimilation has moved so swiftly.’ The Emperor’s dark eyes took in Mortarion once more. ‘And I have seen the reports of your training exercises with your Legion. Very impressive.’
‘They fight well,’ Mortarion said grudgingly. In truth, the legionaries were the most remarkable warriors he had ever encountered, and part of him ached to take them into real battle. To let them off the chain to fight hard and pure.
And soon, his chosen kindred would be ready, ascended to a transhuman status that would make them as war-gods to the common men they once were.
With them by your side, this new Death Guard will truly be a force to be reckoned with.
‘A question arises, however,’ said his father, nodding towards the planet. ‘I left you a contingent of my most accomplished scienticians and geoformers. Their expertise, their technologies could radically alter the atmosphere and ecology of Barbarus. Erase the lethal toxins in the air and the soil. But you refused to use them. You sent them away. Why?’
‘It would be wrong.’ Mortarion shook his head. ‘The children of Barbarus are not attuned to a soft life. To purify the sky and the earth… That would make my people weak. And with the Overlords all dead and gone, they still need something to fight.’
A slow smile crossed the face of his gene-father. ‘Worry not on that account, Mortarion. The Imperium of Man has battles enough for the people of ten thousand worlds.’
Despite himself, Mortarion felt a thin smile of anticipation pull at his lips.
‘I have more gifts for you,’ the Emperor went on, and He pointed to another huge vessel in close formation.
It was a great dagger of a ship, a deadly sculpture of crenellations with a sloped prow and a hull shaded in emerald hues. It seemed to pivot at the Emperor’s silent command, and upon the ship’s cliff-like bow, Mortarion saw a massive rendering of the skull-and-sun in gunmetal grey.
‘A war-barge of your own,’ said his father. ‘The Endurance, first of your fleet.’
Mortarion felt as if he could reach out with one iron-gloved hand and touch the craft. He wanted it very badly, the power it represented humming in his blood.
‘But before you take command there, I have something else for you.’ The Emperor nodded to Himself. ‘A last formality to mark our bonds of fealty.’
‘What do you mean?’ Doubt immediately flooded Mortarion’s thoughts. All this generosity made him suspicious.
‘I will show you.’
They left the corridor where it bisected an armoured dome emerging from the hull of the Bucephelus, and Mortarion matched the Emperor’s pace as the two of them followed a wide, spiralling ramp down into another chamber.
‘My mind is never at rest,’ said his father, and for a moment He seemed melancholy. Then the instant passed and He gestured around. ‘The work of governing an empire does not occupy my thoughts at all times. One must have a craft that one attends to purely for the joy of it.’
That concept was so far beyond Mortarion’s experience as to be unfathomable, so he said nothing. Instead, he took in the space, peering into its hazy depths.
It was a workshop of sorts, and it reminded him of the tech-nomad yards run by the gun-maker tribes and the Forge Tyrants of Barbarus. It was built on what Mortarion had come to think of as Imperial scale – ornate and over-engineered, concerned as much as with needless aesthetics as it was with the function of the place.
Spidery automata and half-human helots kneeled before their master as He passed, before continuing in their labours. Some worked at complex devices of unknown function, others busy with items that Mortarion could see were plates of armour or huge melee weapons. Deeper into the chamber, he saw glass capsules within which churned globules of writhing energy, liquid orbs and objects that possessed no human geometry.
‘My studies help focus my thoughts,’ said the Emperor. ‘They give me clarity.’ He gestured to racks of prototype firearms and modified marks of Space Marine battleplate. ‘And there is method to it. When each primarch stands ready, I grant my son a token forged by my own hand. Sometimes a weapon. Sometimes a suit of armour, or another object of power.’ He spread His hands, taking in the whole of the place. ‘Your turn has come.’
Mortarion wanted to remain disengaged, distant from all this. But the treasures he saw all around stimulated the thirst for knowledge that had always driven him. He wanted to know more.
He saw holograms of weapons already granted to his brother primarchs hanging in the air, displayed like battle trophies. A great spike-headed mace in black and silver, sporting a baleful eye, floating beside a power sword with a winged cross-guard that glistened with a waxy, cold light.
There were other items half made, still in the middle of their crafting. Mortarion’s eye caught on a suit of sable-dark battle armour at one workstation, and the shell of a snarling, animalistic helmet on another.
The more he looked, the more weapons Mortarion saw. A profusion of them, hundreds of designs and constructions, hundreds of dismantled relics and shards of millennia-old lost tech. The Emperor’s martial diversions were laid out in row after row.
Your father sees Himself as weaponsmith as much as warlord. The insight solidified in Mortarion’s mind, and the dark gravity of it drew in resentment.
Is that what you are? The voice of Mortarion’s doubts and distrust – so briefly silenced – now returned to him. The primarchs are His weapons.
The Overlord Necare had considered Mortarion exactly that as he governed the life of his foundling child. Was the Emperor of Mankind so different?
‘My son?’ The resentment grinding in his teeth, Mortarion turned towards the sound of his gene-father’s voice and found Him offering up a menacing scimitar of broad dimension and shimmering lethality. ‘This is for you,’ He began.
Mortarion spoke before the Emperor could say any more. ‘I already have a blade.’ He shrugged off the giant scythe from where it lay mag-locked to his power armour. ‘I do not need another.’ He walked away, deliberately ignoring the stiffening in his father’s expression. The war-scythe was firm and ready in his grip, as much a part of him now as it had been when he first forged it. Over the years, the blade had been remade, reinforced, made better. It was an extension of who Mortarion was, and nothing else – no star-born metal, no arcane blade-wright – could replace it.