Echoes Of Eternity, page 18
‘I have sought you for many years,’ said the Emperor. And behind those words, Sanguinius sensed the cheering of crowds and the burning of worlds. His blood ran cold in the desert heat.
‘I’ve seen shades of this meeting many times in my dreams,’ Sanguinius confessed. A heavier gust blew from the east. He instinctively lifted a wing to shield himself from the gritty air.
The Emperor’s eyes followed the movement. He began to circle Sanguinius in a slow walk, one gauntleted hand reaching out, fingertips running down the Angel’s feathers. Sanguinius’ pale gaze tracked his circling father, but his wings rippled with discomfort each time the Emperor moved behind him, out of sight.
‘You are uneasy,’ said the Emperor. ‘That is natural, my son. I have come not only to liberate you from exile, but to ease your heart and mind with all you need to know.’
Sanguinius felt a lifetime of questions trapped on his tongue. There was one, however, that was always going to break free first. One question above all others had plagued him and haunted his people, since the Tribe of Pure Blood had discovered him in the wild lands. They worshipped him for his strength and beneficence, but they feared him for the question that now lay unspoken between father and son.
‘Ask,’ said the Emperor. ‘Ask the question I sense lying upon your tongue.’
The Angel pulled back from his father, not furling his wings but spreading them. With sudden passion, he beat a fist against the animal hide of his breastplate. A lone feather, swan-white, drifted in an arcing dance down to the dusty earth.
‘What am I?’
‘You are my son,’ said the Emperor. And, again, meanings and concepts danced beneath those words. You are my son was overlaid by you are a primarch, and you are my Ninth General, and you are a component of the Great Work and you were stolen by the enemy, and – most unsettling of all – you may have been changed by them.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You will,’ the Emperor assured him.
‘You are the death of faith,’ Sanguinius replied. ‘That I know.’
The Emperor regarded him before speaking. ‘Yes,’ his father agreed, ‘and also, no. How do you know of such things?’
‘I told you, I have dreamed of this day. Fragments. Shadows. Suggestions. Sometimes they come to me, fierce with emotion yet raked clean of detail.’
‘Faith is a weapon,’ said the Emperor. ‘A weapon that the species cannot be trusted to wield.’
‘My people revere me as their god,’ Sanguinius replied. ‘That brings them a measure of peace. No doubt to you and your sky-sailing kind, we are nothing but primitives. Roaches in this poisoned desert. But I reward their faith in me. I am their servant. I am mercy when my people need it most, and I am death to their enemies.’
‘That does not make you a god, my son.’
‘I never said I was a god. I said my people believe me to be one.’
Sanguinius stared into his father’s inhuman, too-human eyes.
‘My people, the Pure, are to be left in peace. Whatever pacts you and I swear this day, my inviolate condition is this – no ship will enter Baalfora’s heavens without my mandate, and no interference will be permitted to the Clans of Pure Blood without my permission. We have carved out the solace of peace here, together. You will not threaten it, father.’
The Emperor nodded, not in agreement, but in sudden understanding. ‘That is why you fear me, is it not? You fear the endangerment of what you have achieved here.’
‘I speak of loyalty and love,’ the Angel said gently. ‘And you speak of achievement.’
‘Am I wrong?’ asked the Emperor.
‘I fear for the lives of my people, who deserve only peace. A peace we have fought so hard for. Behind your words, I hear the triumph of cultures that see you as their saviour. But I also hear the razing of cities and the burning of worlds. I hear the dirges of faiths now forbidden, and the mourning of those nations that followed them. Am I wrong?’
The Emperor said nothing.
Later – many times over the decades to come – Sanguinius would think back on those words. For all the purity of the Emperor’s intent, there were so many compromises. Faith could not be tolerated… except for when it could. Religions were drowned in the ashes of defiant worlds… except when their usefulness aligned with the Great Work. The Emperor needed the Martian Mechanicum, and he allowed them to worship Him as the Omnissiah, the incarnated avatar of the Machine-God. Perhaps necessity carves holes in everyone’s principles, human and god alike.
But all of this would come later. There on the desert sands, that day, the Angel had more questions.
‘You keep looking at my wings. Wings, I note, that you and your followers do not possess.’ Sanguinius scanned the men and women still waiting by the landing craft, then looked to the Emperor once more. ‘Do I bear these by your design or by some twist of misfortune?’
The Emperor looked at him with the keen eye of an inventor assessing a prototype, as well as the forgiving gaze of a father. A seamless blend.
‘You are exquisitely wrought,’ said the Emperor. ‘Exquisitely and pain-stakingly.’
Which was no answer at all.
‘What am I?’ Sanguinius asked again, this time with an edge to his tone.
The Emperor’s voice softened, as did His expression. Only His eyes were unchanged, remaining lit by inseparable, uncountable souls.
‘You are a gamble against the death of hope, my son. You are a roll of the dice at the end of the game. What do you call yourself?’
He called himself by the names his people had given him. First, the nicknames of youth. Then the name he’d received as he grew to lead the Clans of Pure Blood. A name sacred to the tribe that had come to view him as their god. A name that marked him as theirs in spirit, if not in birth, meaning Of the Pure Blood.
‘Sanguinius.’
The Emperor nodded. ‘Sanguinius. You are a primarch. A component of the Great Work, stolen from me and torn from its place, denied to me all these years. I have need of you, my son. Humanity has need of you. You are instrumental to the species’ salvation. I have come to lift you from these dry roots, to take you into the stars – to give you a Legion to command, and a future to fight for.’
Once more Sanguinius heard the adulations of crowds in bright sunlight, and the cries of populations on burning worlds.
He asked then what no other primarch had given voice to. Even Angron, upon his discovery, would act without asking the question Sanguinius now asked.
‘What if I refuse?’
The Emperor seemed to weigh this. ‘You will not refuse. I know your soul. Here, you’ve saved tens of thousands of lives. With me, you will save billions of lives on millions of worlds. You will save the life of every human yet to be born. That is not something you could turn your back on.’
They stared into each other’s eyes, father and son, creator and created. Neither argued against the truth of the Emperor’s words.
‘I want something from you. I want your oath.’
The Emperor was silent, allowing His son to continue.
‘Do you swear, on whatever oaths hold value to you, that you will leave the Clans of Pure Blood in peace? Untouched by your designs unless they desire otherwise. Free to exist as they already exist, believing whatever they choose to believe.’
The Emperor hesitated. Sanguinius saw the calculation in his father’s eyes, and he wondered: is He taken aback by the love I bear for my people, or is He merely considering alternate avenues around this obstacle in His Great Work?
The Emperor finally spoke. ‘You have my promise.’
Sanguinius closed his wings. ‘Then let us speak of the future, father.’
And so, they did.
Lord of the IX Legion
Three years later, during the Great Crusade
Sanguinius
It was raining the night he met his Legion. The stories would be wrong about that, as well – many of them painted a picture (sometimes literally, rendered upon canvas) of the Angel standing in sunlight before the arrayed ranks of his magnificent sons. The truth was that monsoon season was in its full throes across the northern hemisphere of the planet Teghar Pentaurus. Rain scythed against the descending gunship, storm winds swiping at armour plating still gleaming with the heat of atmospheric entry.
Sanguinius stood within the Thunderhawk’s crew bay, ringed by warriors in pristine white. Thoughts of Baalfora were foremost in his mind, beginning the chain of events that led him to this time and place. Three years of fighting at his brother Horus’ side had finally brought him here. Three years of learning the ways of the emerging Imperium, in all its infinite complexity. Three years of waging war alongside the warriors surrounding him now. The crescent moon and lupine face of the Luna Wolves marked their armour plating. They were, without doubt, the finest warriors – the finest men – he had ever known.
‘Nervous, lord?’ one of them asked.
‘No, Ezekyle.’ Sanguinius turned to the warrior as he replied with that harmless lie. ‘But I thank you for your concern.’
‘I’d be nervous if I were you,’ one of the others said with a grin. ‘Surely you’ve got used to a certain quality by now, lord. What if they’re not the fighters we are? Won’t that just break your heart?’
‘Tarik is right,’ Ezekyle added, flashing his teeth in a smile, more hesitant with his informality. ‘Perhaps we’ve spoiled you, these last years.’
‘I can only hope, little Wolves, that if the warriors of my Legion lack your tenacity on the battlefield, they also lack your immense capacity for vanity.’
They laughed at that, and Sanguinius had to mask his sorrow at the sound. He would miss his time with his brother’s beloved XVI Legion, that was no falsehood. They were, in the parlance of Baalfora, warriors to walk to the wastelands with: loyal, steadfast, disciplined. Horus had fashioned his Terran gangers and Cthonian barbarians into a weapon of beautiful precision and intimate nobility.
Nervous wasn’t the right word for the feeling that clouded his heart, but it wasn’t entirely wrong. Many were the tales told of the Immortal Ninth, the Revenant Legion, the Eaters of the Dead – and Sanguinius harboured no doubts as to the fighting prowess of the warriors he was about to meet for the first time. Their propensity for violence was, in fact, the only reassurance he had regarding their conduct.
‘It’s been good, lord,’ said Tarik, leaning on one of the crew railings. The gunship juddered around them as it started its landing cycle. ‘Fighting with you, I mean.’
‘An honour,’ added Ezekyle. ‘We will miss you.’
Their affection brought a more sincere smile to his features. He regarded them both, and then the squad of warriors behind them, each one gripping the overhead railing against the threat of turbulence.
‘The honour was mine, my nephews.’ He almost added a wish for there to always be this bond between their two Legions, but with the future so in doubt, it felt worse than trite. He settled for the sincerity of what he’d already said. It would do for now.
Soon enough, the gunship shivered as it landed. Sanguinius heard the cycle-down of the engines, their diminishing whine replaced by the lash of monsoon rain against the hull. He felt the eyes of the Luna Wolves upon him, felt their wonder at the moment’s mundane majesty, and sensed their curiosity over what he would say once the gang ramp came down.
Surprising no one, Tarik dared to interrupt the last seconds of reflective silence before a son of the Emperor met the thousands of warriors forged from his genetic code. The idea of ceremony was often lost on Tarik Torgaddon, centurion of the Second Company.
‘Is your speech ready, lord? Lupercal gave us a grand old lecture when we gathered to meet him that first time. Brotherhood, duty, responsibility… It had it all. Rather warmed the heart, let me tell you.’
‘You jest,’ Abaddon pointed out, ‘but you wept with the rest of us that day.’
Torgaddon’s reply was a low chuckle, but Sanguinius didn’t smile that time. He faced forward, as if he could see through the gunship’s iron skin to the ranks of waiting warriors beyond.
Ezekyle, clad in ceremonial white tonight rather than the combat black of his Justaerin elite, watched Sanguinius with a touch more reverence than Tarik.
‘Do you know what you’ll say to them?’ he asked.
Three years, thought Sanguinius. Three years, and not an hour has passed within that span that I’ve not thought about what I might say.
He’d watched the picter footage of Horus first meeting the Luna Wolves and studied his brother’s words, his body language, and the emotion that enriched both. Speeches and chants and lectures and even sermons – of an admittedly bloodless and secular kind – had run amok through his imagination in preparation for what was to come next. He’d written entire scrolls worth of meticulous honesty and discarded whole tomes worth of aborted sentiment. Every imagined sentence was a possibility that might be given voice within the next few minutes.
‘No, Ezekyle. I confess, I do not.’
That was enough truth to silence even Torgaddon. Sanguinius heard the joints of their armour purring as the Luna Wolves shared unspeaking glances behind his back.
‘What about the war for Teghar Pentaurus?’ Tarik pressed. ‘Will you want us to stay, do you think?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Sanguinius.
A second silence reigned. This one was even worse.
Mercifully, the pilot’s voice crackled across the vox – ‘Clear, clear, clear!’ – and down went the gunship’s ramp on growling hydraulics. In came the hissing rain.
Sanguinius stepped out into the storm. Behind him came the Luna Wolves. Before him, standing in ranks, stood the Revenant Legion.
They waited in formation, statues at attention in the storm. Helmetless, they were graven in his image, several thousand faces resculpted through technomagical genetics to resemble that of the father they’d never met. Their various skin shades hid nothing, and variant colours and styles of hair didn’t conceal the fact, either; each one of them bore his visage. Sanguinius had been cognisant of this possibility without truly expecting it. Many of Horus’ Luna Wolves grew to take on his features as they ascended to the Astartes state, but it was by no means ubiquitous among the Legions. Here, Sanguinius looked not on mere similarity, but simulacrum. Horus’ sons resembled their primarch as a son might take closely after a father. Sanguinius’ sons resembled their gene-sire as his own face would look back at him in a cracked mirror. War had scarred them… but they were him, to the life.
And they were afraid of him. He could read it in eyes that matched his own, and he could sense it in the tautness of features he knew so perfectly well. The torment of expectation had goaded him to believe his sons might rejoice at their first sight of him, but the reality was altogether more tense. They feared what he represented, and the many changes to come.
Free of the gunship’s confines, he stretched his wings in the rain. Nothing more than instinct, the way someone might raise a hand against a breeze or roll their shoulders to prepare for a task. But when he did it, as his white-feathered pinions flexed, several warriors in the front rank flinched. They didn’t just fear what he represented, Sanguinius realised. They feared him. Perhaps they feared the mutation he bore on his back, but the primarch didn’t think it was anything so simple. They feared his very presence.
Why?
The rain slashed, unceasing, content to fill the terrible silence with the hiss of its impact. Sanguinius felt the gaze of the Luna Wolves behind him as surely as he saw the stares of the Immortal Ninth facing him. Keeping his wings close to his body, for convenience rather than caution, he started walking along the rows of gathered warriors in their storm-washed grey. He met their eyes as he passed, and marked well the scars of war on their ceramite plate and transfigured flesh.
In turn, they gazed up at him with the desperate hope he had been expecting, coupled with a defiance he had not. They wanted this, they’d ached for this moment, but everything rode upon it. The pressure was practically a physical thing, bearing down on all of them.
In their faces, he read their records of the Great Crusade. The drinking of blood and the eating of flesh: for tactical advantage, for survival, and rarely – but not rarely enough – for pleasure. He read the stories told by the scars that marred their beauty; the chronicles of subterranean campaigns against mutated hordes and scarcely human populations harvested for desperately needed reinforcements. In their narrowed, awed eyes, he saw the discretionary refusals of the Divisio Militaris to supply them with munitions and armour battalions to match the other newborn Legions, for fear of the Revenants’ degeneracy. He saw the Imperial decrees breaking them apart to serve in splinter-fleets, fragments of fragments attached to other Legion forces; the primary reason it had taken so long to gather the Legion here in its entirety. He saw the hardships of their crusades and the compromises made when fate had forced their hands. In the tilt of their heads and the set of their lips, he saw the sanctions levied against them by other, nobler Legions. He saw the sins they’d committed against their own empire, and the scorn they’d endured because of it. He saw how they wore that disregard as a badge of unwanted honour.
In short, he saw them for what they were: cannibals and killers with the faces of angels.
Last of all, gleaming in their brazen stares was the knowledge of their own extinction. Their time was coming to an end. Even without Sanguinius here before their gathered ranks, the lifespan of the Immortal Ninth was decidedly mortal, after all. The other Legions, no matter their degrees of savagery, were reliable weapons in the Emperor’s arsenal. To carve a planet apart with fear, he sent the Eighth. To drown a rebellion in the blood of their own dead, he sent the Twelfth. The ruthlessness of these wild Legions was still contained within the framework of the Great Plan.
