Mortarion: The Pale King Read online

  The Primarchs

  MORTARION: THE PALE KING

  David Annandale

  ALPHARIUS: HEAD OF THE HYDRA

  David Annandale

  LION EL’JONSON: LORD OF THE FIRST

  David Guymer

  KONRAD CURZE: THE NIGHT HAUNTER

  Guy Haley

  ANGRON: SLAVE OF NUCERIA

  Ian St. Martin

  CORAX: LORD OF SHADOWS

  Guy Haley

  VULKAN: LORD OF DRAKES

  David Annandale

  JAGHATAI KHAN: WARHAWK OF CHOGORIS

  Chris Wraight

  FERRUS MANUS: GORGON OF MEDUSA

  David Guymer

  FULGRIM: THE PALATINE PHOENIX

  Josh Reynolds

  LORGAR: BEARER OF THE WORD

  Gav Thorpe

  PERTURABO: THE HAMMER OF OLYMPIA

  Guy Haley

  MAGNUS THE RED: MASTER OF PROSPERO

  Graham McNeill

  LEMAN RUSS: THE GREAT WOLF

  Chris Wraight

  ROBOUTE GUILLIMAN: LORD OF ULTRAMAR

  David Annandale

  Also available

  BLOOD OF THE EMPEROR

  Various authors

  SCIONS OF THE EMPEROR

  Various authors

  SONS OF THE EMPEROR

  Various authors

  THE LORDS OF TERRA

  Robbie MacNiven, L J Goulding and Ian St. Martin

  (audio drama)

  KONRAD CURZE: A LESSON IN DARKNESS

  Ian St. Martin

  (audio drama)

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  The Horus Heresy

  Mortarion: The Pale King

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Sigismund: The Eternal Crusader’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  It is a time of legend.

  Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Mankind conquer the stars in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races are to be smashed by His elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

  The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons. Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor, as system after system is brought back under His control. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of His most powerful champions.

  First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superhuman beings who have led the Space Marine Legions in campaign after campaign. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation, while the Space Marines themselves are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

  Many are the tales told of these legendary beings. From the halls of the Imperial Palace on Terra to the outermost reaches of Ultima Segmentum, their deeds are known to be shaping the very future of the galaxy. But can such souls remain free of doubt and corruption forever? Or will the temptation of greater power prove too much for even the most loyal sons of the Emperor?

  The seeds of heresy have already been sown, and the start of the greatest war in the history of mankind is but a few years away...

  PROLOGUE

  Absyrtus burned. The thick murk of the atmosphere concealed the fire for the moment. The surface was invisible from orbit, and the initial phase of the incineration had begun at a far deeper place. On the command deck of the assault barque Fourth Horseman, Mortarion looked down on the planet he had judged. He knew what was happening below, because it was what he had decreed. He would see the fruits of his judgement soon enough.

  Absyrtus was burning from the inside out. The Fourth Horseman had launched two-stage cyclonic torpedoes. When the missiles struck the surface, their colossal melta charges stabbed through it towards the planet’s heart. The torpedoes kept going, down through crust and mantle, the heat of their advance greater than the heat of the world.

  Mortarion knew when the torpedoes reached the core. He knew without counting the moments or checking a chrono display. He knew because he was the death of Absyrtus, and the cyclonic torpedoes were the extension of his will, of his arm. He wielded them as fully as he wielded his scythe.

  ‘Now,’ he said quietly, announcing the explosions of the cyclonic plasma charges in the core of the planet.

  At his side, Cinis nodded, watching in respectful silence for the manifestation of judgement. The serf was a favoured one, more disciple than servant. She took in all of Mortarion’s lessons and taught his precepts to the thousands who laboured for the Legion. Having come from neither Terra nor Barbarus, she symbolised the unity of all aspects of the Death Guard, and her understanding was profound.

  Death burst from the centre of Absyrtus. It rose as the core destabi­lised, and the forces of dissolution struck outward. The crust was the thinnest and most brittle of skins, and it crumbled before the raging cry of the interior. The brief time passed, the time allotted for life on the surface to sense the coming of the end, and to know that it was just.

  ‘And now,’ Mortarion said, raising a hand.

  In answer to his gesture, the atmosphere flared bright orange, riven by veins of blinding light.

  Then the scream came, silent in the void and the distance. Absyrtus blew apart. Through the primary viewing shield, Mortarion watched a tiny sun blaze, the moment of its birth also the moment of its death. And when the light faded from white to glowering red, the fragments of the planet became visible, radiating out like comets, like tears, streaks of fire that trailed tumbling masses, gradually vanishing into the darkness.

  ‘It is done,’ said Mortarion. Absyrtus was gone, and so were its crimes. A world devoted to sorcery, it had been beyond saving. ‘Tell me,’ Mortarion said to Cinis, ‘what do you see out there?’

  ‘I see a task well done, my lord,’ said Cinis. The right side of her face was a metal reconstruction, and it made her voice reverberate. Her right leg was bionic as well, with no artificial flesh to adorn or disguise its reality. Her arm on that side was a mechadendrite, and she had become adept at coiling its extendable length expressively.

  ‘Do you draw a lesson from it?’ Mortarion asked her.

  ‘One of confirmation, my lord,’ Cinis answered without hesitation. ‘You do what must be done, as ever.’

  ‘As ever,’ Mortarion repeated under his breath. Absyrtus had been a trial, and a needed one. He had tried to follow a different path on this planet. He had restrained his force, during the initial landings. He had given its people more of a chance than he would have in the past. At first, it seemed as if Absyrtus would enter compliance easily, and that his experiment with mercy would be a success. But the surrender had been a false one, a pretence to cover the beliefs its people would never give up.

  Mortarion had tried to walk a path urged on him by his brothers. He had been wrong to do so. With the destruction of Absyrtus, he had erased his error, and the doubts that had fed it. ‘We are the Emperor’s scythe,’ he said. ‘To stay our hand is to stay death’s hand. It is unnatural.’

  ‘If I may speak freely, my lord?
’ said Cinis.

  ‘You may.’

  ‘You sound…’ Cinis hesitated, searching for the word.

  ‘I would advise you not to say content,’ Mortarion warned. ‘The destruction of Absyrtus is not a joyful act.’ But then, what is?

  ‘There is no joy in death,’ said Cinis, ‘but there is necessity.’

  ‘And in the recognition of necessity, there is satisfaction. Yes. Go on.’

  ‘What I was going to say, my lord, is that I sense in you a new form of resolution.’

  ‘Resolution,’ Mortarion echoed. He grunted, and that was as close to amusement as he ever came. Resolution, yes. And certainty of a kind. But along with the certainty, there were doubts and questions. Some had been born a year ago. Some had nestled in his heart for much longer than that, but he had only begun to articulate them then, and they pointed to answers that could not be contemplated. Not yet.

  Mortarion looked around the bridge of the Fourth Horseman. It was a good ship, and a brutal one. It had served him well, on Galaspar, and the way that it had was a lesson in itself, though he only realised that now.

  ‘Yes,’ Mortarion said. ‘My resolve has been tested, and sharpened. Absyrtus marks the end of a debate.’

  ‘With whom, my lord?’

  ‘With myself. And with others.’ Debate, he thought. There is a misused word. ‘You were not a witness to the debate itself, Cinis. It began on my return journey to Galaspar.’ His jaw clenched, the anger as fresh as on that day. ‘My return in triumph.’ He spat the words, every syllable coated in venom.

  ONE

  A year ago

  On the battle-barge Reaper’s Scythe

  Mortarion strode the halls, and the crew scurried from his path, birds fleeing a storm. He had just returned to the ship, and was making his way from the docking bay to his quarters. He had stopped on the bridge to give terse instructions to the shipmaster, and the Reaper’s Scythe was making for the new coordinates, leav­ing the rest of the Death Guard fleet behind. Now, as he walked, silence spread before him, and anxiety drifted in his wake. He was cold anger and the promise of death sweeping through the gloom of the vaulted halls of his flagship. Even his sons knew better than to approach him. They all saw the thunder on his pallid brow, and gave him the solitude his fury commanded.

  All of them except Calas Typhon. He had followed Mortarion from the bridge. The primarch was aware of his presence, two steps behind. Typhon was respecting Mortarion’s anger, but was also persistent with his presence. Finally, at the door to his quarters, Mortarion stopped and acknowledged the warrior.

  ‘Ask your question,’ he said. They were alone. Mortarion’s voice echoed off the bone-white pillars that stood like the ribs of a titanic beast down the length of the grand corridor.

  ‘Why are we heading back to Galaspar, my lord?’ Typhon asked.

  ‘Because the Emperor wills it.’

  Typhon looked baffled. ‘But the conquest is done. Galaspar is compliant.’

  ‘The lessons we must draw from it are not done.’

  Typhon said nothing for a while. His eyes narrowed in thought. They were dark eyes, deep in their hollows under his heavy brow. His mouth was half hidden behind his beard. Typhon kept his own counsel, and there were few who could read him if he did not wish them to.

  Finally, he said, ‘I would have thought that we were the ones to teach others the lessons of Galaspar.’

  Others. Typhon had guessed well. He had some idea of who might be waiting to meet the Reaper’s Scythe on Galaspar. Mortarion wondered how much else he had guessed and was being careful not to say.

  He thought of what he could say to Typhon, though he would not. He would not talk about his meeting with his father aboard the Bucephelus.

  He had never been comfortable aboard his father’s battle-barge. The golden ship was a colossus of glory. It was magnificence wrought of martial power and the artisan’s genius. To walk its halls was to be inside the fullest manifestation of strength and art. Its display was the promise of the Great Crusade, and of the Emperor’s dream for humanity. Mortarion had his part to play in that dream. But as he understood it, and in the form in which he believed in it, that role had little to do with glory. Gold was luxury, and luxury was foreign to Mortarion. It had had no place on Barbarus. There was no luxury in the necessity that drove him.

  So, he had not expected laurels when he had come to the Bucephelus to meet with his father after his first conquest. He had taken Galaspar because it was necessary, not just for the progress of the Great Crusade, but for himself. He had not taken that fallen empire in the hopes of receiving his father’s praise.

  What he had not expected was sorrow.

  That surprised him. It confused him.

  Did I not do what was asked of me?

  The Emperor’s slow nod of the head. The acknowledgement that yes, Mortarion had fulfilled his task. But those eyes. The eyes of that golden being who was still, in many ways, as much a stranger to Mortarion as when He had first appeared on Barbarus. The eyes that looked at him with sorrow. And with a new commandment.

  ‘Perhaps we are going to deliver a lesson,’ Mortarion said to Typhon, knowing that neither of them believed that was true. ‘Two of my brothers will be waiting there for us.’

  Worlds still burned in the Galaspar Cluster. The embers of the short war sparked and flared, marked by the errant snatches of signals picked up and reported by the vox-officer of the Reaper’s Scythe. Standing at the command pulpit that jutted from the raised strategium over the centre of the bridge, Mortarion could almost smell the death of the Order’s empire in the void. He had passed through the Galaspar Cluster, and the evidence of his passing was everywhere to be found. It was there in those vox fragments, marking the final dissolution of tyranny. It was there in the transponder signals from Imperial ships, freely crossing a region it would have been death to venture into a short time ago.

  The signs of his passage were visible too, through the great window of the bridge, as the Reaper’s Scythe closed in on Galaspar itself. The near space of the planet, far beyond its immediate orbit, was awash with debris. Dark, scorched rubble that had been fortress monitors tumbled past the battle-barge, a silent acknowledgement of Mortarion’s work. Some of the wrecks were large enough to be recognisable ghosts of their original shape. A prow went by as Mortarion watched, turning slowly end over end. Further out was a portion of a hull, decking still attached, a cross-section of destruction. Still more of the wreckage no longer had an identity. The pieces were jagged, twisted abstractions. They were all monuments, silent and cold, to the war, and to the sweep of Mortarion’s scythe. They were the right and proper lesson of Galaspar. They were the mark of the first great act of the unified Death Guard.

  I have done this, and I was right to do it.

  ‘The marks of our journey,’ Typhon commented, from a few feet back in the strategium.

  ‘The marks of our accomplishment,’ Mortarion said. He did not take pride in the aesthetic perfection of his strategy, as Fulgrim might have. That was vanity. He was proud of being able to see what was necessary, and of then having carried it out.

  As the Reaper’s Scythe closed in on Galaspar, the number of Imperial ships visible or signalling their approach grew.

  ‘So many arrivals,’ said Typhon. ‘I trust they’re enjoying their smooth passage.’

  ‘They should be grateful,’ said Mortarion. They should be grateful to me, and to my Legion.

  ‘I remember our first voyage to the planet,’ said Typhon. ‘It was not smooth.’

  I remember the sacrifices. ‘It was necessary.’

  ‘Multiple hails, my lord,’ the vox-officer called.

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘The Vengeful Spirit and the Red Tear, my lord.’

  ‘Flagships,’ said Typhon. ‘Maybe the gathering is an honour?’

  Mort
arion said nothing.

  ‘A trial?’ Typhon whispered in disbelief.

  TWO

  ‘A wasteland,’ said Sanguinius, his tone sorrowful. ‘A wasteland upon a wasteland.’

  Horus could not disagree. He and Sanguinius stood together on a ridge of fused wreckage, surveying a plain of annihilation. The rad levels were lethal, the atmosphere poison to a mortal within minutes. The air roiled brown and green, with stagnant layers of oily rainbow colours hovering like floating swamps. Craters overlapped each other. They were surrounded by the mangled remnants of engines of war. There had been tanks on the plain, thousands upon thousands. Their corpses, blackened and torn and melted, had fused with each other, creating a web of congealed metal extending to the horizon.

  ‘We could almost be looking at a sculpture,’ Sanguinius said softly. ‘Almost a work of art by design. I wonder what Fulgrim would think.’ After a pause, the Angel continued. ‘No, I do not think he would appreciate it.’

  For a moment, Horus wondered if Sanguinius might be joking. He glanced at the Angel, and saw the grim set of his mouth, and the frown of concern.

  ‘A wasteland,’ Sanguinius said again.

  ‘Worse than the moons of Baal?’ Horus asked.

  ‘In its way, yes. Those wastes are products of the fallen ages, the mire from which our father is lifting all of us. They are not the work of today, by one of us.’ He pointed behind them. ‘And they are not that kind of work.’

  They were a few kilometres from the outer walls of Galaspar’s primary hive. Months after the end of the war, smoke still poured out of the towering arcology. The cone shape of the hive was slumped too, the city deformed by the hammer blow Mortarion had struck. They were on the wrong side of the hive to see the full extent of the damage, but Horus had taken stock of it during the flight down to the surface in the Stormbird Wolf’s Eye. The devastation was colossal.

  Then there were the mounds of bodies. They were the foothills to the mountain of the hive, some fifteen metres high and more. Rad-suited workers clambered over them, engaged in no task that Horus could identify. New hills were growing as more and more corpses were carried out of the hive by cargo transports or pushed in from the plain by bulldozers.