Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

‘What would you have me say?’ Xaphen approached again, his gauntlet lifted as calculating indecision played across his features. He withdrew the hand, sensing if he rested it on Argel Tal’s shoulder, it would aggravate the captain, not remind him of kinship.

‘I would have you answer the question and enlighten your brothers, as your duty demands.’

Xaphen exhaled, and his patience left with his breath. ‘The gatherings of those in Black are inviolate and sacrosanct. None of us may speak of what transpires. You know this, yet still you ask? What of tradition, brother?’

Argel Tal lowered the sword. ‘What tradition?’ he laughed. ‘What of a Legion kneeling in the dust, and our primarch offering us nothing but silence for a month? The rest of us need answers, Xaphen. I need answers.’

‘By your word, captain. But all I may say are words I’ve spoken before. We look to the Word, and seek a new path. The Legion is lost, and we seek the answers to guide it again. Do you begrudge us that? Should we linger, lost in the void, cast from the Emperor’s light?’

Argel Tal felt acidic saliva stinging under his tongue. ‘Meanwhile, the Legion waits and wages war, equally blind in both states. Do the Chaplains have the answers they sought?’

‘Yes, brother. We believe so.’

‘And when did you plan to share these truths with us?’

Xaphen drew his crozius, clutching it in both hands as he turned back to the gathered squads. ‘Why do you think we came here? Purely to end these miserable blasphemers? To wipe this pathetic empire of one lonely world from the face of history?’

‘If you find my insight lacking,’ the captain spoke through clenched teeth, ‘then enlighten me.’

‘Peace, my brother. Lorgar knows the value of symbolism, and the purity of purpose. We followed a false path that ended in a city of ashes. In another city of ashes, we will take the first steps on the true path. He will show us the way, and we will perform the Rite of Remembrance as it should be performed, with honour and sincerity. Not collared by the Emperor and abused like disloyal hounds.’

This was, and wasn’t, a surprise to Argel Tal. It didn’t take a prophet to predict the primarch would speak after this compliance, but to have it framed as some first step on a new odyssey was both captivating and unnerving.

‘I lament that the Chaplain brotherhood kept this from us, but I thank you for speaking at last.’

‘There was little to tell before the primarch’s return today. It‘s no secret, in truth.’ Warmth returned to Xaphen’s craggy face as he smiled. ‘I expect word is filtering through the Legion even now. Aurelian will meet us in the heart of the city, once we’ve extinguished the last of this world’s unholy life. And this time, when the Legion kneels in the dust of a dead city, it will be because that city died in righteous flame.’

The vox chose that moment to crackle back to life.

‘Sir? Sir?’

‘This is Argel Tal. Speak, Torgal.’

‘Captain, I apologise for another unpleasant surprise, but you won’t believe what I’m looking at.’

Argel Tal swore under his breath, the clipped Colchisian syllables not carrying over the vox. He was growing tired of hearing those words on this world.

The five warriors killed in silence, their glaives spinning with the force and speed of turbine rotors, lashing through limbs and torsos with the ease of knives through mist. At last, with the Legion breaching deep into the city, Imperial forces encountered human resistance. The army of constructs seemed defeated, reduced to scattered pockets. It fell to the militia and the civilian population to die fighting, taking to the streets armed with weapons that would prove useless, seeking to squander their lives rather than surrender them.

Small-arms fire clattered from the warriors’ gold-wrought armour as they battled through the crowded street. The militia squads against them carried rifles that spat a solid shot not far removed from the smallest-calibre bolter shells. The culture’s ancestral connection to humanity’s pre-Imperial era was proven beyond dispute – and yet they were damned by their deviance.

Despite their worthless weaponry, they stood their ground in cover or arrayed in firing lines until they were overwhelmed. Their planet was finished and their final city was aflame. With nowhere to run, most simply didn’t try. They died in their uniforms, which were the same grey as the city’s architecture. Faceplates of clear glass shattered under stabbing blades as the spear-bearing warriors scythed into another phalanx of human militia.

The Custodes leader was obvious as he led the advance, his conic helm crested with a plume of red horsehair. In his hands, an immense two-handed sword span in blurring arcs, rising and falling, stabbing and carving. People tumbled away from him, some of them screaming, all of them falling to pieces in his wake. He killed and killed and killed, never missing a lethal strike, never slowing in his advance. Beneath his feet, the road ran red – the beginnings of a sick river, sourced by blood.

‘Aquillon,’ said Argel Tal from his vantage point above the carnage. He shook his head as he spoke the name. Unfeigned awe softened his voice. ‘I’ve never seen a Custodian fight.’

Several Word Bearers crouched at the lip of a roof overlooking the street. Argel Tal, Torgal, and the sergeant’s assault squad. The golden warriors moved ahead with consummate grace, the dance of their blades eclipsing anything a mortal could perform.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Torgal said. ‘Should we join them?’

From below, a shout rose above the butchery. For the Emperor – a battlecry that hadn’t left a Word Bearer’s lips since Monarchia. Strange, how it sounded almost alien to Argel Tal’s ears.

‘No,’ the captain replied. ‘Not yet.’

Torgal watched for several more moments, one finger idly stroking his chainword’s trigger. ‘There’s something about the way they fight,’ he said. ‘Some flaw that I can’t make out.’

Argel Tal watched Aquillon, the Custodian’s blade reaving its way through countless lives, and saw nothing of the kind. He said so.

Torgal shook his head, still watching. ‘I can’t form the thought. They lack... something. They’re fighting... wrong.’

And this time, as soon as Argel Tal returned his gaze to the battle in the street, he saw it instantly. The way the Custodes fought seemed almost identical to the Astartes; it took a trained eye to see the subtle differences. The captain had missed it first by focusing on a single warrior. The moment he took in the full view...

‘There,’ said Argel Tal. ‘I see it, too.’

Was it a flaw? Perhaps by the standards of the Astartes, who waged war and lived life with brotherhood etched into their genetic codes. But Custodes were the sons of a more rarefied and time-consuming process – the biological manipulation that gave birth to the Emperor’s guardians bred warriors who weren’t shackled by bonds of loyalty to anyone except their Imperial overlord.

‘They’re not brothers,’ Argel Tal said. ‘Watch how they move. See how each one fights his own war, alone, unsupported by the others. They’re not like us. These are warriors, not soldiers.’

The thought made his skin crawl. It must have had the same effect on Torgal, for he voiced the words on his captain’s mind.

‘Lions,’ the sergeant said. ‘They’re lions, not wolves, hunting alone instead of as a pack. Gold,’ he added, and tapped the chestplate of his armour, ‘not grey.’

‘Good eyes, brother.’ Argel Tal still stared intently. Now he was aware of the disunity, it was all he could focus on. Here was a weakness, a savage one, masked only by the heroic skills of each warrior and the worthlessness of the enemies they faced.