Graham McNeill: A Thousand Sons

was coming from the valley a haunting, relentless beat that was hypnotic and threatening at the same

time. The percussive booms of scores of drams interleaved with brutal disharmony, plucking at

Lemuel’s nerves and sending tremors of unease down his spine.

Intrigued, he walked stiffly on tired legs to join the two women at the edge of the plateau.

He put a hand on Camille’s shoulder and looked down into the valley. His eyes widened and his

jaw hung open in surprise. “Throne of Terra!” he said.

Ahriman heard the drums, recognising the dissonant notes echoing from the Mountain as those once

declared forbidden in an ancient age. Nothing good could come of such a sound, and Ahriman felt

certain that something unnatural was being orchestrated within the valley. The Sekhmet matched his

pace, their heavy suits driven on by uncompromising will and strength.

“This bodes ill,” said Phosis T’kar, as the drums grew louder. “Damn, but I do not like this

place. I am blind here.”

18

= Page 19 =

“We all are,” replied Hathor Maat, looking towards the upper reaches of the valley.

Ahriman shared Phosis T’kar’s hatred of the blindness. As one of the Legion’s Adept Exemptus,

he had attained supreme summits of mastery, aetheric flight, connection with a Tutelary, and the

rites of evocation and invocation. The Sekhmet were powerful warrior-mages, and could call forth

powers mortal men could never dream of wielding. On his own, each warrior was capable of

subduing worlds, but in this place, with their powers denied them, they were simply Astartes.

Simply Astartes, thought Ahriman with a smile. How arrogant that sounds.

Even as he scanned the valley ahead, Ahriman began forming the basis of a treatise for his

grimoire, a discourse on the perils of dependence and overweening pride.

“There is a lesson here,” he said. “It will do us good to face this without our powers. We have

become lax in making war as it was once made.”

“Always the teacher, eh?” said Phosis T’kar.

“Always,” agreed Ahriman, “and always the student. Every experience is an opportunity to

learn.”

“So what lesson can I possibly learn here?” demanded Hathor Maat. Of them all, Maat had the

greatest dread of powerlessness, and the walk into the Mountain had tested his courage in ways

beyond what they had faced before.

“We depend on our abilities to define us,” said Ahriman, feeling the bass vibration of the drums

through the soles of his armoured boots. “We must learn to fight as Astartes again.”

“Why?” demanded Hathor Maat. “We have been gifted with power. The power of the Primordial

Creator is in all of us, so why should we not use it?”

Ahriman shook his head. Like him, Hathor Maat had faced the Dominus Liminus, but his

mastery of the Enumerations was that of Adept Major. He had achieved self-reliance, but he had yet

to achieve the oneness of self and ego-extinction that would allow him to reach the higher

Enumerations. Few Pavoni could, and Ahriman suspected Hathor Maat was no exception.

“You might as well send us in unarmed and say we should fight with our bare hands,” continued

Hathor Maat.

“Someday you may have to do just that,” said Ahriman.

The ground, which had been steadily rising for the last hour, began to climb ever more steeply, and

the sound of drums grew louder, as though amplified by the soaring walls of the valley. As it always

was, Ahriman’s gaze was drawn up the incredible height of the mountain. The summit was hidden

from view by its sheer mass, an endless slope rearing into a cloudless, yellow sky that was

darkening to burnt orange.

It seemed inconceivable that this towering peak had been raised by natural means. Its

proportions were too perfect, its form too pleasing to the eye, and its curves and lines flowed with a

grace that was wholly unnatural. Ahriman had seen such perfect artifice before.

On Prospero.

The Vitravian pyramids and cult temples of Tizca were constructed using golden means and the

numerical series of the Liber Abaci. Their work had been distilled and refined by Magnus the Red to

fashion the City of Light with such beauty that all who beheld it were rendered speechless with

delight.

Everywhere Ahriman looked he saw evidence of geometric perfection, as though the mountain’s

creator had studied the divine proportions of the ancients and crafted the landmass to their design.

Spiral patterns on the ground described perfect curves, pillars of rock were equally spaced, and each

angle of cliff and cleft was artfully arranged with mathematical exactitude. Ahriman wondered what

cause could be so great as to require such magnificent feats of geomorphic sculpting.

19

= Page 20 =

The mouth of the valley funnelled the sound of drums towards them, the beats rising and falling

in what, at first, seemed a random pattern, but which Ahriman’s enhanced cognitive processes

quickly discerned was not random at all.

“Prime armaments,” he ordered, and fifty weapons snapped up in unison, a mix of storm bolters,

flamers and newly issued rotary cannons capable of unleashing thousands of shells per minute.

Their official designation was assault cannon, but such a graceless name had none of the power of

its former incarnation, and numerological study had led the Thousand Sons to keep its previous title:

the reaper cannon.

The Mechanicum had not the wit or understanding to recognise the power of names or the

mastery and fear a well chosen one could instil. With six letters, three vowels and three consonants,

the reaper’s number was nine. Given the organisation of the Thousand Sons into a Pesedjet of nine

Fellowships, it was a natural fit and the name had remained.

Ahriman recited the mantras that lifted his mind into the lower Enumerations and calmed his

supra-enhanced physiology, allowing him to better process information and react without fear in a

hostile environment. Normally this process would enhance his awareness of his surroundings, the

essential nature of the world around him laid bare to his senses, but on this mountain the landscape

was dead and lifeless to him.

Ahriman saw the diffuse glow of torches and fires ahead. The vibration of the ground was like

the heartbeat of the mountain. Was he an ant crawling on the body of some larger organism,

insignificant and easily swatted aside?

“Zagaya,” said Ahriman, and the Sekhmet formed a staggered arrowhead, with him at its point.

Other Legions knew this formation as the speartip, and though Ahriman appreciated the robust,

forceful nature of the term, he preferred the ancient name taught to him by the Emperor on Terra at

the island fortress of Diemenslandt.

Phosis T’kar moved alongside him, and Ahriman recognised the urge for violence that filled his

fellow captain. In his detached state, Ahriman wondered why he always called Phosis T’kar his

“fellow” and never his “friend”.

“What are our orders?” asked Hathor Maat, tense and on edge.

“No violence unless I order it,” said Ahriman, opening the vox to the Sekhmet. “This is a march

of investigation, not of war.”

“But be ready for it to become a war,” added Phosis T’kar with relish.

“Sekhmet, align your humours,” ordered Ahriman, using his mastery of the Enumerations to

alter his body’s internal alchemy. “Temper the choleric with the phlegmatic, and bring the sanguine

to the fore.”

Ahriman heard Hathor Maat muttering under his breath. Normally a Pavoni could balance his