Aaron Dembski-Bowden - The First Heretic

‘We saw you fight,’ said the other. ‘The “blessed sons” indeed.’

Argel Tal sighed, still enjoying the world’s air instead of the filtered oxygen of his warplate. ‘I was spiteful to you before the battle, master. I ask forgiveness.’

Erebus’s smile didn’t reach his lips, but the momentary warmth of sincerity showed in his gaze. ‘Master no more.’

Argel Tal broke the look to stare out over the battlefield. Thousands and thousands of armoured bodies. Hundreds of wrecked tanks. Gunship hulls, still burning in their craters. Roaring cheers from the ranks of the World Eaters as they gathered skulls. The buzzing grind of chainblades as the warriors of seven Traitor Legions looted the dead for trophies and relics.

‘I do not regret taking the sword instead of the crozius all those years ago. As I’ve proven so many times since, I lack the words to be a preacher.’

Erebus came alongside his former pupil, looking out over the desolation. His armour showed clear signs of the battle, cracked and scorched all over. Erebus was never one to send his warriors into battle without leading them in himself. The bas-relief etchings of his deeds in neat Colchisian were discoloured by burn markings and stripped paint showing flashes of metallic ceramite beneath.

‘I believe that night may have been the very first incident of an Astartes seeking to kill another Astartes.’

Argel Tal remembered it well. ‘The primarch told me, long ago when I last stood in the City of Grey Flowers, that you had forgiven me for that night.’

‘The primarch was right.’

Argel Tal narrowed his eyes. ‘I never asked for your forgiveness. Not for that.’

‘It is yours, nevertheless. You still believe I went too far in my methods. I do not. We will never agree upon it. Do you believe you were right in your reaction? To draw a weapon against a brother? To seek to slay a Chaplain of your own Legion?’

‘Yes.’ Argel Tal’s gaze was unwavering. ‘I still believe that. I would have killed you, had I the chance.’

Erebus remained impassive. ‘Beside that first and last betrayal, you were a better student than you give yourself credit for. Loyal, intelligent, and strong of both heart and will.’

Loyal.

Raum’s thought was somnolent, barely formed in a veil of fogged weariness. It brought Argel Tal on guard, as he expected the daemon’s intent had been.

‘Sometimes I wonder,’ he said, ‘just how much of our loyalty is written into our blood.’

Erebus wasn’t blind to the inference. ‘The gene-seed changes every Legion, but the Word Bearers would not follow Aurelian into damnation and triumph with equal passion. We follow him because he is right, not because we must.’

Argel Tal nodded, neither agreeing nor arguing.

‘I need answers,’ the Gal Vorbak commander said. His tone was cold and clear, and Erebus turned upon hearing it.

‘Is this really the time?’ he asked.

Argel Tal fixed his former mentor with a cynical scowl. ‘We stand in the midst of two Legions brought to extinction by traitorous hands, and walk the first battlefield of an Imperial civil war. There will never be a better time to talk of betrayal, Erebus.’

The slightest edge of a smile coloured the Chaplain’s lips. ‘Ask.’

‘You already know what I would ask, so spare me speaking the question.’

‘The primarch.’ Erebus was utterly neutral once more, ever the statesman. ‘You would have me relay what we have done in the main Legion fleet for forty years? There is no time for such discussion. Much of what we learned is contained within the Book of Lorgar. ’

A curl to his lips showed how little Argel Tal liked that answer. ‘Which, it seems, you have written half of,’ the Gal Vorbak lord said.

Erebus acquiesced to this with a shallow nod. ‘I have added to the rituals and prayers within, yes. As has Kor Phaeron. We have learned much, and have guided the primarch as often as he has guided us.’

Argel Tal growled his displeasure. ‘Be clearer.’

‘As you wish. A moment, please.’ Erebus knelt to slide his gladius into the throat of a twitching Raven Guard warrior. As they walked on, he wiped blood from the blade with an oiled cloth from his belt pouch.

‘You do not know what it was like, Argel Tal. After venturing into the Great Eye, Lorgar was... distraught. His faith in the Emperor was already destroyed, and the truth he found at the galaxy’s edge tormented him as much as it inspired him. Indecision gripped him for months. Kor Phaeron took command of the fleet for a second time, and we did little but vent our wrath across the worlds we came across. Despite Lorgar’s return, the Legion felt no joy from the primarch’s presence. In truth, Aurelian wasn’t certain humanity was ready to learn of such... horror.’

Argel Tal’s skin crawled. ‘Horror?’

‘The primarch’s own word, not mine.’ Erebus nudged another body with his boot. When a rasping breath wheezed from its mouth grille, the Chaplain repeated his execution, cleaning the blade again afterwards. ‘The Legion never struggled to adopt the new faith. We are philosophers as much as warriors, and take pride in such. All could see how the gods had seeded their worship into our culture from generations in the past. The constellations. The cults that always looked skyward for answers. The Old Ways themselves. Few Word Bearers resisted the truth, for most had always felt it on some level.’

‘Few resisted...’ An uncomfortable thought climbed Argel Tal’s spine with prickling fingers. ‘Was there a purge? A purge of our own ranks?’

Erebus weighed his answer before giving it voice. ‘Not all wished to turn on the Imperium. They believed that stagnancy was strength, that stasis was preservation. No such reluctance remains in the Legion now.’

So Word Bearer had slain Word Bearer, unseen by the eyes of other Legions. Argel Tal breathed slowly, not wishing to ask yet unable to resist. ‘How many died?’

‘Enough.’ Erebus took no joy in confessing it. ‘Not many – nothing like the numbers of those who were culled from the faithless Legions – but enough.’

They moved around the charred hull of a Sons of Horus Rhino. The armoured personnel carrier’s tracks were shattered and scattered like teeth punched from a jaw, while the sloped green hull was pockmarked with bolter fire. Erebus glanced inside. The driver was dead, slain by the shell that destroyed the tank’s front plating, his sea-green ceramite ruptured with shrapnel as he lay slack in his seat.

‘Why do I sense that was not your only question,’ he muttered.

Argel Tal scratched his cheek, and the motion turned into a subtle check, feeling his face for any further changes. He was himself again, at least for now. The mutations were locked inside his genetic code as the daemon slumbered. He knew they’d return soon enough. Just dwelling on the thought was enough to set Raum stirring, the daemon slowly writhing in its repose, like a creature shifting in its sleep.

‘The Custodes,’ he said. ‘We have suffered a long exile to keep them alive. Xaphen’s ritual kept them silenced. Tell me why, Erebus. We have ached to be by the primarch’s side.’

‘So has every Word Bearer in every one of the Legion’s fleets.’

‘We are the Gal Vorbak.’ Argel Tal crashed a fist into the Rhino’s flank, denting the armour plating.

‘Temper, Argel Tal.’

‘We,’ the commander repeated, ‘are the Gal Vorbak. We brought the truth to the primarch at the cost of our own souls. I am not demanding glorification. I am asking for a reason why we were kept in exile.’

Erebus walked on, leaving the tank, and the two Salamanders warriors it had crushed, behind. ‘You came to reflect a side of the primarch’s doubts, until Kor Phaeron and I were able to reignite his conviction. We travelled to those first worlds we conquered – the ones that we’d allowed the Old Ways to in secret remain out of respect. On those worlds, Lorgar’s passion to enlighten the Imperium was reforged anew.’