Luther: First of the Fallen, page 20
‘The lifebane? I kept it. I kept it close, for when I knew I would need it. For when I would face a foe I could not beat any other way.’
‘You speak of the Lion?’ snapped Nahariel. ‘You used this sorcerous assassin’s weapon to slay the primarch!’
‘I did not kill him,’ Luther insisted, rocking back and forward slowly. The image formed as he held out his hand, black against the skin of his palm. He heard the crack of guns and hoarse shouts. The ire of the Lion boring into him, even as a blade that had slain kings jutted from Luther’s midriff. ‘It was there, at my waist, when the Lion put his sword through me. But I could not draw it. I looked into that mask of rage and knew that I had been wrong.’
Luther started to sob, reliving his folly, the breath of his gain-brother in his nostrils mixed with blood. He almost choked on the words.
‘The gods still wanted me to make a final sacrifice. But I was always for Caliban, never for them, and I could not slay my gain-brother any more than I could strike down faithful Corswain.’
‘And Alldric? Tell me how I find him, how to stop him.’
‘Why?’ Luther’s shoulders flexed as he cried, and he sank forward, forehead pressed against the hard floor. ‘Why do you not hear me?’
‘Speak clearly and I will hear your confession,’ said Nahariel.
‘The scenery changes but your road always heads in the same direction, no matter what I say!’ snarled Luther, sitting up, face flushed with anger. ‘I warn you again and again, but you ignore me.’
He rose to his feet, arms held up, imploring.
‘This is my torment! Oh, to be an icon of falsehood that sees the truth, it is a punishment too far, I say. Release me, Lion of the Forest! I cannot save your sons! I cannot do what you need of me.’
‘It is not the Dark Angels that need salvation,’ rasped Nahariel before he stormed from the room.
‘Come back to them,’ Luther whispered to the growing shadows, the gleam of red eyes within. ‘Bring him back! Release him… He will be the salvation of us all.’
TALE OF THE HEART
The aggressive mood of his interrogators returned, so that the matter of Luther’s confession occupied them more than any intelligence they might glean from his fractured prophecies. Sometimes they used words, sometimes they used blades or fists. Neither worked, for Luther cared little for pain of the body. The torture he underwent during his stasis sleep was far more painful, to have a slow, eked-out sensation of damnation.
He tried so hard to make them see that it was not him that needed to repent. The words never seemed to come out straight. Perhaps that was the true curse the gods had placed upon him for his betrayal. One that had been so gifted at diplomacy and statecraft now mangled every thought with his traitor tongue.
Then one came that was different again.
Azrael he was called, and there was an energy about him that settled Luther. He was calm where others had been defiant. Cautious of Luther, and not sympathetic, but understanding of the manic nature of his existence. He spoke as much as he listened, telling Luther how much time had passed and snippets of news from the outside world, all the better to centre his thoughts on the present.
Yet even then it was hard to stay cogent. The more Luther dwelt on what he had become, and what the Dark Angels had turned into, the more desperate he became for his release. And so the cycle continued unabated.
After several encounters with Azrael, Luther came to his senses on his knees, hands clasped in front of him, filled with a sense of deep need. He had been begging forgiveness again, but still the Lion did not answer. Instead Azrael stood before him, his face grimmer than any Supreme Grand Master before.
He had not said a word before a memory came to Luther and he began to speak, knowing in his heart it was what the leader of the Dark Angels needed to hear, but knowing he would also never listen.
I grew up in these stone walls. These towers, the Angelicasta, great Aldurukh about it. I hear the walls speaking, of all the cruel and glad and beautiful and ugly things they have seen. They have been ripped from their home as I was.
A child in this place. A child of the Order. Proud knights, high walls and tales of beast-slaying were my upbringing. I learned to speak and wield sword and ride without ever leaving the outer walls. I loved and grieved here, for dead parents, and cried over my lost wife and child. I have laughed and sobbed, betrayed and known betrayal, with the name of Aldurukh in my thoughts.
This place knows me even better than the Lion.
And it is still here, eternal. The bastion of the Order. Fortress of the Dark Angels. Their strength given form.
This is the first occasion I have recalled this memory in all my time alive, but it is as stark now as the day it happened.
When I was but seven years old as the chroniclers of Terra count the days, I awoke one night from a frightening dream. I lay in my chamber as starlight streamed through the window and thought I heard a noise from without the door.
I left my bed and opened the door to investigate. There was something strange about the wards and dorms, a silence lay about the place. No breath or snore or creak seemed to disturb the tower where my family lived. But I did not feel afraid.
Barefoot, I padded along the stone passageway to the stairwell and started to descend.
I became aware of being observed, but no matter where I looked I saw nobody. Again, this was not fear-inspiring, it was simply a reality. I kept going down the steps, further than I thought possible, beyond any hall or kitchen or quarters I had known.
Light suffused the air around me, for I had brought no torch but encountered no darkness.
I came upon a great wooden door bound in metal, as tall as a wall gate. I thought myself in a dream, but everything was very real. The air that misted in my breath, the prickle of my skin, the weight of the door as I pushed it open.
A flurry of movement drew my eye and I saw my first Watcher in the Dark. Red eyes gleaming, it became one with the shadows, but not before I followed, slipping between the door and arch.
I realised I had dreamed this before, but this time I was no longer asleep. In my dreams I had been taken with a sensation of menace, desperate to awake, but now I felt a welcome, a silent song calling me onwards. There was warmth, not cold, and I hurried forward, eager.
My course took me through passages and rough tunnels, across caves of glittering strata and natural columns, into the very foundations of Aldurukh it seemed, but I spied not another soul on my travel. I knew I was lost, but that it did not matter for what I sought lay ahead, not behind.
Then another Watcher appeared, in the distance ahead, and I felt fear returning. I slowed, uncertain, but did not stop. I wanted to see what was beyond the next archway, a portal of total blackness. More Watchers came before me, glaring with crimson gaze, and I faltered even more.
Yet their challenge was an affront to me, raised on tales of the bravest knights. To know fear is to learn courage, I had been taught. The greater the dread, the bolder the hero to prevail. I wanted the warmth and welcome to return and resented the Watchers for driving it away.
Then came a hissing, on the edge of hearing, a discontent in the air itself. The Watchers thought to bar my path but they could not stand before me, becoming nothing but dark fog as I approached.
The arch of utter darkness was before me and cold terror froze my limbs at last.
‘Turn back,’ the whispers became. ‘Turn back.’
Defiance known only in the heart of a frustrated child welled up inside me and I stepped forward.
The darkness swallowed me, but there was no cold, no fear.
I came upon a chamber suffused with pale green light, with more archways leading from it. The light came from these openings, but in one I saw a shadow. At first it was just a flicker, a momentary dimming of the light, but it grew thicker and darker as I watched.
The shadow became a thread, became a tendril, became a serpentine limb blindly questing along the tunnel towards me. I wanted to see what the limb looked like, but equally I wanted to run. Caught between curiosity and terror, I stood rooted to the spot and closed my eyes.
I felt a draught and warmth, and then I opened my eyes again and found myself in a hall not far from my room. Red eyes glimmered for a split second in the shadows around the walls before I was alone once more. Dazed, I found my way back to my room, fell upon my cot and into a dreamless sleep.
All of Caliban is destroyed yet it lives on. It is here, in this place, in your hearts.
Luther broke from the dream-vision and found himself alone. As he suspected, his warning had gone unheeded, Azrael had departed. It seemed that the sound of his apocalyptic visions haunted the edge of hearing – flames crackling, blade striking blade, the report of weapons and shouts of the warriors that bore them.
As he waited for the moment to subside or the thought-drift to consume him, Luther examined his surrounds. He saw no shadows save for the natural darkness cast by the flickering torches in their sconces. No watchful eyes of red in deeper darkness.
The door was still open.
Stasis had not returned.
He smelled smoke. Taking a deeper breath he assured himself that it was real and not imagined. With focus came a similar certainty regarding the sounds of battle close at hand. The Rock was under attack, his captors distracted.
The door was still open.
Luther’s thoughts returned to it as he stretched painfully weak limbs.
Left by Azrael or opened by another?
He took a cautious step, and then another, and another.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The First Wall, Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs, and several audio dramas. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including Indomitus, Ashes of Prospero, Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah and the Last Chancers series, including the most recent title The Last Chancers: Armageddon Saint. He also wrote the Rise of the Ynnari novels Ghost Warrior and Wild Rider, the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Warhammer Chronicles omnibus The Sundering, and recently wrote the Age of Sigmar novel The Red Feast. In 2017, Gav won the David Gemmell Legend Award for his Age of Sigmar novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.
An extract from Alpharius: Head of the Hydra.
I do not remember my beginning.
Even for a being as unusual and remarkable as I, there was a time before reason. Or perhaps there was not. Perhaps I knew where and what I was from the moment my form was created, but these memories were stolen from me by the forces that snatched me from the place intended to keep me safe in my infancy. All that is left to me, even now, are impressions, more than anything else: gleaming, white sterility; a glowing presence that outshone all others and left a sense of loss whenever it departed; and then noise, a jumble of colours which even I lack the vocabulary to describe, and a tapping and scratching, as of talons seeking me, that still sometimes haunts my dreams even in these last days of the 30th millennium.
My first definite, clear memory is of sitting in dust under a cloud-wracked night sky, assailed by a biting wind. I was not sure where I was, or how I had come to be there, but I knew my name. It had been whispered to me at some point, of that I was certain, and so I repeated it to myself for the first time.
‘I am Alpharius.’
Some people say names have power. Mine does not. I felt no sense of rightness or surety sweeping through my body when I spoke. My name is a tool, nothing more: an identifier, a starting baseline, to be used when convenient and discarded when not.
Then again, my name has come to have power, has it not? But that is power lent to it both by my own actions, and how it has been used as a tool by others. Taken alone, it is merely syllables. As with all such concepts, the significance they have is merely that which we confer upon them.
I knew nothing of this, however, as I sat in my first moments of lucid thought. I knew the wind lashing me was many degrees below the freezing point of water, and I could taste the artificial contaminants on it; and when I looked up, I could – even in the darkness – make out the faint colour signatures of the chemicals laced into the clouds above me. I could see mountains off to my right, high and stark, their peaks lost in cloud, but I also knew the plateau on which I sat was already at a high elevation. I could taste the thinness of the air. I did not know how I knew those things, against what criteria I was measuring them, or how that knowledge came to be with me. I simply knew them to be true.
What was also undeniably true was that I could see lights approaching from the north.
I understood that as soon as I saw them, although again, I cannot truly explain how. I realised the lights were to the north of me, and the mountains were to the south. I also became aware, for the first time in my life, of the concept of threat. I didn’t know the purpose behind the lights, but I knew there was the possibility that those controlling them might be hostile, and so I took stock of my situation.
I was sitting next to a piece of ruined metal, which appeared to have been torn apart by violent forces. Some few lights were still blinking on arcane devices within, but the thing itself was clearly damaged beyond repair. Indeed, I could tell it was far from whole, that approximately half the material required to form its original shape was missing. The ground was chewed up around me, as though this thing had fallen from a height.
So, it fell from the sky, bearing me with it, and landed with force. Either the fall, or the impact, or both, attracted attention. Those who were approaching could be intending to assist, or to plunder.
I was small, and young. I recognised the thing next to me as the remnants of what had surrounded me, in the dim, swirling memories that were all I had of my life before that point. I had presumably been within it for a reason, and the fact I was there, out in the open with it ruined beside me, suggested I was not yet intended to be outside it. I could be vulnerable.
I rose to my feet, and my body obeyed me as I wished it to. I scanned my surroundings for anything I could use as a weapon, but my options were limited. There were no sizeable stones in the dirt, and the ruined metal had not sheared or splintered into serviceable lengths. I caught sight of a marking as I looked it over: two sets of crossed lines, an ‘XX’. This meant nothing to me at the time, so I dismissed the detail.
The lights were closing on me now, and I could hear, above the wind, the mechanical roar of an engine. More than one, in fact. It was time for me to leave this place. I could watch from nearby, and reveal myself if I determined that these arrivals were not hostile.
I scrambled out of the rut carved through the ground by my arrival, keeping low, and made for the nearest slight rise in the ground. I crested it on my belly and turned at the top, my skin pressed against the dust, and looked back at where my consciousness had begun.
Two vehicles rumbled up: large, heavy and tracked, of similar but not identical designs, with paintwork that was faded in some places and damaged in others. I recognised the work of wind-driven dust and sand, and of rust, and also of ballistic weapons.
Doors opened, and light flooded out into the darkness. Nine figures dismounted: bipedal, and shaped roughly like myself, but I knew at once they were no kin of mine. Their movements were slow and clumsy, and they were swaddled in protective clothes against the chill and, perhaps, other environmental dangers. Each of them wore goggles, and masks that were presumably intended to aid their breathing. I took an experimental breath of my own, focusing on it consciously for the first time, but although I could taste bitterness on the air, it posed me no problems.
Each of the figures also carried weapons. They looked to be crude projectile throwers, similar to those that had marked their transports, but I had not yet tested my body’s resiliency or powers of recuperation, and so I remained wary. I also noted to myself that I instinctively understood the purpose of these items, in the same manner as I had understood the concept of threat, and that as I was watching them move around, I could see the angles from which someone could approach whilst remaining out of view. My eyes tracked over the tableau, and my brain provided the context: approach from the north-west, use the rightmost vehicle as cover, move around the front end of it and take the nearest from behind. Draw their belt knife, sever their spine, push them into their neighbour, throw the knife at the one whose gait held a slight limp, seize the neighbour’s weapon…
It was in those moments, on that high plateau, that I first began to understand the purpose for which I had been created.
‘What in the name of all the devils is this?’ one of the figures asked, bending over the wreckage. I doubt many of his companions would have been able to hear his words had they been much further away from him, but I could understand what was said even from my vantage point.
‘Looks like Imperial tech,’ the limping one replied, extending one hand cautiously. She stopped before she touched it, however, and looked up at the mountains to the south as though expecting some form of punishment to manifest.
‘And you’d be an expert on Imperial tech,’ the first speaker snorted.
‘You ever seen anything like this before?’ the second demanded. ‘I don’t recognise any of these parts.’
‘If something Imperial just dropped out of the sky and crashed, they’ll be on their way to pick it up,’ a third speaker cut in, not without a hint of nerves in their voice. ‘Either we grab it and bail, or we just bail, but we need to not be here.’
