Саймон Спуриэр - Lord of the Night

Should he act? Should he attempt to intervene? Would it do any good?

The cannons opened fire, great pounding slabs of sound that echoed about the caverns like the laughter of giants. And like geysers of metal and smoke, like a field of angry mushrooms of bloody-red fire that snarled and blackened as they capered upwards, the island was swallowed whole.

The Shadowkin died like vermin, and as his kingdom was toppled before his eyes Sahaal found himself sinking to his knees, overcome, wracked by such powerful emotions that he couldn't define where horror became grief, where loss became madness, and where insanity became rage.

He stood abruptly, body rising in a single movement, discarding the captive majordomo at his feet, forgotten.

Rage. Yes... He could focus on rage.

He knew where he was with rage.

His claws sprung from their sheaths with a relish he could barely contain, and he threw back his head and screamed: a primal shriek that burned away every thought, that stripped clean his body and his mind of everything but pure, unpolluted, uncontainable fury.

He would kill them all for what they had done to his people. He would rip apart the tanks with his bare hands, he would rise on thermals of death and glory, and show these pitiful humans what it was to cross the Talonmaster! He would—

Would—

It was too much. His brain was not meant for this. His mind had not been shaped to deal with a slumber of a hundred centuries, to withstand the barrage of loss and uncertainty that he had encountered, to feel compassion for the creatures beneath his dominion.

Kill! the voices shrieked. Burn the world! Kill them all!

He was a thing of war. He was a weapon of terror, to be aimed and released. He had never intended to be so lost from his brothers, to grow so isolated from the path of the Night Haunter. He had never been intended to be so subject to human emotion.

He was weak.

He was going insane. And he knew it.

Hidden at the mouth of the secret tunnel, bathed in the shadows of shifting firelight, Zso Sahaal's mind convulsed with the alien sensations — confusion, loss, uncertainty, loneliness — that it could never hope to withstand. His empire had been taken from him, his grip upon sanity had crumbled with it, and he spiralled away into a great darkness without end.

He fell to floor like some contemptible, shellshocked little human — a total breakdown without escape — and unconsciousness devoured him whole.

On Tsagualsa, the Night Haunter spoke his name, and selected him above all others as his heir. How had he felt, in that frozen moment? How had his selection ignited his mind?

He felt... unsurprised. He felt as though he had always expected it.

He was the Talonmaster. He was his master's truest son. It was natural.

The brute Acerbus left without comment.

On Tsagualsa the Night Haunter dismissed his remaining captains, and to his throne he led Zso Sahaal.

Yours, one day. One day soon!

And he had told Sahaal how it would happen, how he had seen it: burned upon his dreams like a cruel pantomime, played out over and over every night. An assassin of the Callidus shrine would come for him, slinking in the dark, creeping across the writhing galleries of the living palace with her heart hammering in her ears, her fists clenched tight.

There would be no opposition. No attempts to stand in her way. She must be allowed through to enact the final grisly scene.

The Night Haunter, baleful eyes shining, lipless mouth trembling, turned to Sahaal then and made him vow it. Arms interlocked, eyes meeting in shadowed pools.

There would be no intervention. The assassin would fulfil her role. She would play out her part in the endless comedy. Sahaal vowed it, and hated himself. And the Night Haunter, Konrad Curze, his master, made him vow to watch it all. To stare from the shadows to see it happen. He made him vow it on the sacred hatred of the Legion, on the insult that must he repaid, and Sahaal could no more break his oath than he could kill his lord himself. He would watch his master die. And when the she-bitch was gone — her bloody task complete — he would step from his vantage and lift from his master's corpse the Corona Nox. He would take it for himself. He would show it as his symbol of office, and he would lead the Night Lords ever onwards. He vowed it.

He would lead them as his master had done, with boundless hate and endless patience. He would unite them in crusade upon the Traitor Emperor, and all would be well.

And his master turned to him and asked him if he knew, if he understood, what it was that made the Night Lords weak. What was the flaw that crippled their hearts?

Sahaal did not know, so Konrad Curze sat and smiled, and told him.

It had something to do with power. It had something to do with rage. It had something to do with the fear that the Legion grasped, the terror they used as a weapon to destroy their foes.

Fear must be a means to an end, he said. It must be used as an instrument in pursuit of a goal, whether it be obedience or peace or genocide. Just as the Night Haunter had been used as his father's ugly tool, so too must the Legion use fear.

But to sow terror without cause, to horrify without goal — that way lay corruption. The fear ceased to be a means to an end and became an end in itself: seeking dominance over others, seeking to terrify them into submission for the simple fact of their obeisance. Seeking carnage and fear with spite and pleasure.

That way lay megalomania.

That way lay the seduction of power, and it was the flaw in the blood of every Night Lord. It was the flaw he had spent his life struggling to defeat, bearing in its womb madness and venom, begetting the fits that had plagued his waking hours, taunting him with visions of his own end.

That way lay Chaos.

'It festers in our blood... It makes us fools, my heir...'

The Night Haunter would not allow his Legion to succumb so easily to the whispers of the Dark Gods. Chaos had served him well as an ally — as a deadly fire to be hurled at his enemies — but he would not countenance its digestion of his Legion.

Their leader must be strong. Not in arm or in courage — that was the remit of those like Krieg Acerbus — fine warriors, mighty heroes: but too burdened by pleasure at their dark acts to lead. Too joyous in their work. Too hungry for supremacy.

He had asked Sahaal if he had understood, therefore, why he alone had been chosen, and Sahaal had lied with a nod.

The Night Haunter said he had chosen Sahaal as his heir because his strength lay in that holiest of disciplines, that mightiest of fields:

Focus.

He would not waver from the Haunter's vision. A vision of a united Legion. A vision of focused hatred. A vision of blue-black ships assaulting Terra itself. A vision of Night Lord claws closing upon the withered neck of the Traitor Emperor.

Vengeance for the ultimate treachery. Vengeance for a Father's betrayal of his own son.

And then, peace. Efficiency and peace through obedience. The Imperium would prosper beneath nocturnal skies.

All in the Night Haunter's name.

That was the goal. That was the focus.

All this Konrad Curze imparted, and Sahaal left him with a storm of vows clouding his mind, awaiting the coming of the assassin with baited breath.

Sahaal awoke to the crisp bark of gunfire, the acrid stink of ozone, and the unexpected prickle of cold air against his face.

Someone had removed his helmet.