‘Why did you do this to yourselves?’ the Astartes asked.
‘Leave my world! Leave!’
He threw her aside. The fleshy pile crashed to the ground, her dynasty ended by a broken neck.
‘Burn everything,’ ordered Torgal. ‘Burn it all, and summon a Thunderhawk. We stand at the ordained hour. I will report to the Crimson Lord.’
The Crimson Lord surveyed the courtyard. Empty, but for the grounded gunship.
He lowered his claws.
Torgal reported the monarch’s downfall almost an hour before, but Argel Tal’s fervour had faded even before the announcement. With the echo of that silent scream still drifting through his skull, he stood in the shadows of his Thunderhawk, Rising Sun, abstaining from the final slaughter within the palace. With flamers and incendiary grenades, the Gal Vorbak were erasing all evidence of royal life, gutting the pillared palace from within.
Most were voxing questions to one another, coating the communication network in a buzz of aggressive, amused voices. The words Ordained Time surfaced with sickening frequency. Their blood was up, for it seemed the gods had called.
Aquillon had followed him, which was the first thing he expected, and the very last thing he needed. The four Custodes were scattered among the Word Bearers assaulting the palace. They had surely seen everything, and that was going to become a problem sooner rather than later.
Argel Tal watched the man he would soon be ordered to kill, and wondered if he were capable of the act, both physically and morally.
‘I have no answer for you,’ Argel Tal told him. ‘I do not know what happened. A momentary weakness played over me. I forced it back. That is all I can tell you.’
The Custodes sighed through his helm speaker. ‘And you are well now?’
‘Yes. My strength returned quickly. There has been no moment of similar weakness.’
‘My men report similar incidents,’ the Custodian said. ‘Many of the Gal Vorbak fell as if struck by unseen hands, at the same moment you lapsed yourself.’ Aquillon removed his helm in a gesture of familiarity. It was a gesture that went unreturned. ‘We have detected no enemy weaponry capable of creating such an effect.’
He could only meet Aquillon’s gaze with his own eyes guarded by the lenses of his helm.
‘If I knew what had afflicted me,’ Argel Tal said, ‘I would tell you, brother.’
‘We have to consider that this is some previously unknown flaw in your Legion’s gene-seed.’
Argel Tal grunted a vague noise that may or may not have been affirmation.
‘You understand,’ the Custodian continued, ‘I must report this to the Emperor, beloved by all, at once.’
Behind his faceplate, Argel Tal was drooling blood again.
‘Yes,’ he said, licking his lips clean. ‘Of course you must.’
At first, he believed the scream was returning. Only after listening to its ululating wail for several moments did he turn back towards the palace walls.
‘Do you hear that?’ he asked.
This time, Aquillon nodded. ‘Yes. I do.’
When the siren started, almost all of the Word Bearers requested confirmation of its origins. The Colchisian rune flickering across hundreds of retinal displays told a blunt, stark tale, but it was a story that made no sense.
Even among the Gal Vorbak, the red-clad warriors hesitated in their fire-bearing purges, voxing to the orbiting fleet for immediate confirmation and explanation.
In the courtyard, Argel Tal and Aquillon boarded the Rising Sun, ordering their warriors to return to their dropships without hesitation. The psychopomp’s palace no longer mattered. This entire compliance was now meaningless.
‘All Word Bearers, all Custodes, all Imperial Army forces of the 1,301st Expeditionary Fleet – hear these words. This is Argel Tal, Master of the Serrated Sun. Word has reached De Profundis from Terra itself, bearing the seal of the Emperor. The Isstvan System is in open rebellion, led by four of our own Legions. Rumours are rife, and facts are few. It is said the Warmaster has renounced his blood-oaths to the Throneworld. True or false, we will not go to war blinded by ignorance. But we will answer the primarch’s call, for Lorgar himself demands we respond.
‘Disengage from the surface attack, and regroup at your transports. Return to orbit at once. We are ordered to Isstvan, and we will obey as we were born to obey. The Word Bearers will cut to the heart of this betrayal, tearing the truth out from within. Officers, to your stations. Warriors, to your duties.
That is all, for now.’
Aquillon stood with the Crimson Lord in the gunship’s crew bay. ‘I cannot give this even a moment’s belief. Horus? A traitor?’ The Custodian ran his fingertips over the flat of his sword’s blade. ‘This cannot be true.’
‘You heard the message, just as I.’ Argel Tal blink-clicked a runic marker on his visor display, opening a vox-channel to the Gal Vorbak.
‘Confirm network security.’
Another rune twinned with the first, blinking in reassurance.
‘This is Argel Tal,’ he spoke only to his closest brothers now. ‘Aurelian calls us.’
A voice answered without the aid of vox, drifting through his senses with maddening familiarity.
They already know. They sense it.
I know this voice, he thought.
Of course we know it. It is our own voice. We are Argel Tal.
TWENTY-THREE
Traitors
Possession
The Choice
The astropath nodded.
Aquillon was too stunned to even feel rage. ‘Treason,’ he said. ‘How can this be?’
The astropath’s name was Cartik, and at his full height he cut an unimpressively short figure, only made worse by both advancing age and a tendency to hunch his shoulders like an animal about to be attacked. The psyker was pushing seventy years of age with a face cracked by time’s lines, and he’d hardly been spry even in youth. He was old now. It showed in everything he did, and how slowly he did it.
Surprisingly lovely eyes flickered about as they watched from beneath half-hooded lids, sunk into the sallow sockets of an ugly face formed by cruel genes and chubby cheeks. Upon seeing him once, a remembrancer had remarked that Cartik’s mother or father – perhaps even both – were almost definitely rodents.
He’d never been skilled at cutting comebacks. His talents simply didn’t lie in witticism. That was the last time he attempted to make friends among the newly-arrived civilians. He knew loneliness would drive him to try again, but was content to let it wait a while.
His position as personal astropath to the Occuli Imperator had brought his family on Terra a modest measure of wealth, though it had brought nothing but a lonely and boring indentured exile for himself. Such were the sacrifices made in this day and age. He was content enough to do the Emperor’s duty, safe in the knowledge that his family were well provided for.
Once or twice, remembrancers had come to him, seeking to use his position for their own ends, in their quest for stories to record and tales to tell. Cartik read the naked ambition in their eyes, as well as their utter disinterest in him, and made himself unavailable to such visitors. In truth, he’d grown used to the loneliness. He had no desire to be used just to escape it.
‘I confirm it,’ Cartik said. His speech, like his eyes, was deceptively pleasant. Not that anyone would ever know it beyond Cartik himself, but he had a wonderful singing voice, too. ‘Exalted sire, the aether has cleared a great deal in recent days, and the message from Terra was clear. It has come to treason.’
Aquillon looked at the others gathered in Cartik’s isolated chamber. Kalhin, the youngest, with barely nine names in the Emperor’s service. Nirallus, with his breastplate bearing twenty name-etchings, and the best of them all with a guardian spear. Sythran, still keeping his vow of silence sworn atop one of the few remaining mountains of Himalaya, looking up at the walls of the Imperial Palace. He viewed their assignment as penance, and would never speak a word until they returned to Terra in seven more years, at the completion of their five-decade service.