Dan Abnett - Know no fear. The Battle of Calth

‘Yes.’

‘A civil war?’

‘The civil war,’ replies Cxir, as though proud of it.

‘Warmaster Horus has turned against the Emperor?’

Cxir nods.

‘News takes time to travel,’ he says convivially. ‘You will hear of it soon enough. Except you won’t. None of you. None of the XIII. Accept the fact that you have just hours to live.’

‘If you allowed yourself to become a captive just so you could try to threaten us,’ says Sullus, walking up to join them, ‘then you are a fool.’

‘I am not here to threaten you,’ says Cxir. ‘I would have preferred to have died, but I have a duty as commander. A duty to offer you terms.’

Sullus draws his sword.

‘Give me permission to silence this traitor,’ he says.

‘Wait,’ replies Ventanus. He looks at the Word Bearer. Cxir’s expression is scornful and confident.

‘He knows we won’t hurt him while he is a captive, Sullus,’ Ventanus says. ‘He has mocked us for it. He has mocked our civilised code and our principles. He taunts us for having humanitarian ethics. If that’s the worst thing he can say, let him.’

Sullus growls.

‘Seriously, Teus,’ says Ventanus, ‘he thinks that’s an insult? That we have moral standards and he does not?’

Cxir looks Ventanus in the eyes.

‘Your ethical stance is admirable, captain,’ he says. ‘Do not misunderstand me. We of the XVII admire you. We always have. There is much to be admired about the august Ultramarines. Your resolve. Your sense of duty. Your loyalty, especially. These comments are not intended to appear snide, captain. I am being genuine. What you stand for and represent is anathema to us, and we have taken arms against it. We will not rest until it is dead and overthrown. That does not prevent us, all the while, from admiring the strength with which you champion it.’

Cxir looks from Ventanus to Sullus and then back again.

‘You were everything we could not be,’ he says. ‘Then the truth was revealed to us. The Primordial Truth. And we realised that you were everything we should not be.’

‘His jabbering bores me,’ Sullus says to Ventanus.

‘You are creatures of honour and reason,’ says Cxir. ‘You understand terms. That is why I refrained from seizing a death I was happy to embrace, and undertook this humiliation. I have come to offer you terms.’

‘You have one minute to express them,’ says Ventanus.

‘In failing to take the palace and destroy you,’ Cxir begins, ‘I have disappointed my field commander. Leptius Numinus was identified as a primary target. Do you understand what I’m saying, captain? Just because you’ve defeated my force, it will not prevent others from coming. At the time of my capture, Commander Foedral Fell was advancing on Leptius with his battlehost. They can’t be long away. Fell will crush you. You barely broke my force. His is twenty times the size. And he is not a creature of honour, captain, not as you understand the principle. Surrender now. Surrender to me, and I will vouch on your behalf. You, your forces here, their lives will be spared.’

‘Spared for what?’ asks Sullus. ‘A life spared under those terms is not a life I’d care for.’

Cxir nods.

‘I understand. I anticipated as much. There can be no rapprochement between us. We have waded into blood too far.’

‘Then what did you expect?’ asked Ventanus. ‘That we would surrender to you? Side with you, with the XVII, with – if what you say is true – Horus? Against Terra?’

‘Of course not,’ replies Cxir. ‘But I did, perhaps, expect that you might at least listen to our truth. It is not what you think, captain. It is beautiful. Your understanding of the galaxy will change. A paradigm shift. You will wonder why you ever thought the things you think. You will wonder how and why they ever made any sense.’

‘Cxir,’ says Ventanus. ‘I have listened to your terms, and I have heard your offer. I formally reject both.’

‘But you will die,’ says Cxir.

‘Everyone dies,’ replies Ventanus, turning away.

‘It will not be a good death,’ Cxir calls after him. ‘There will be no glory in it. It will be a sad and miserable end.’

‘Even in glory, death is miserable,’ Ventanus replies.

‘Fell will punish you! He will punish you in unimaginable ways! He will trample your flesh into the earth!’

‘Ignore him,’ Ventanus says to Sullus.

‘Just like we did to your primarch!’ Cxir yells. ‘We will cut you and bleed you and kill you, like we cut and bled him! He begged for death in the end. Pleaded for it! Begged us like a coward! He wept! He pleaded for us to finish him. To end his pain! We just laughed and pissed on his heart because we knew he was afraid.’

Ventanus can’t stop him. Sullus moves like a blur. Cxir’s torso is slashed open from the left hip to the throat in one ripping cut. The end of Sullus’s sword embeds itself in the underside of Cxir’s jaw.

Blood pours out of the Word Bearer. He sways. Black blood floods from the wound, down his legs, back down the wedged blade and up Sullus’s arm. It streams from Cxir’s mouth. His mouth is half-open. Ventanus can see the fine steel edge of the sword blade running between two of the lower teeth.

Cxir is laughing.

He murmurs something, choking on blood, gagged by the sword.

Ventanus pushes Sullus away and grasps the sword to wrench it out and deliver the mercy of a quick kill.

‘Finally,’ Cxir gurgles. ‘I w-wondered w-what it w-would take... I knew o-one of you would have the balls...’

He begins to collapse, dropping to his knees before Ventanus can withdraw the sword. The blood pools around him on the dry earth, rolling out like a purple mirror in all directions. The four Ultramarines guards step back in quiet disapproval. Sullus is staring, cursing himself for letting his anger out.

Something else is being let out, too.

Cxir is laughing. The laughter throbs tidal surges of blood out of his mouth. It is thick. There are clots in it. Shreds of tissue. The laughter is a gurgle, like a blocked storm drain.

Cxir divides along the line of the sword wound. He splits from the hip to the throat. Then his skull parts too in a vertical line, like a pea-pod dividing. Flesh tears and shreds apart like fibrous matter. The sword, unseated, falls onto the bloody earth.

Cxir is on his knees, opened from the waist like a bloody flower. He is still, somehow, laughing.

Then he turns inside out.

Ventanus, Sullus and the guards recoil in dismay. Blood spatters them. Cxir’s backbone sprouts like a calcified tree trunk, growing weird branches that look as if they are composed of arm bones. His ribcage opens like skeletal wings. His organs pulse and grow, smearing tissue and sinew across the reshaping skeleton.

Cxir becomes a vessel. Whatever is hidden inside him, whatever is germinating and shooting through him from the warp, is much much bigger than his physical form could have contained.

Sprouting limbs turn black and scaly. They grow bristles and thorns. They stretch out like the legs of a giant arachnid. Scorpion tails twist and thrash like a nightmare wreath as they grow out of the open ribs. Stings glitter like knives.

Cxir’s new head buds and unfolds, slowly turning up from a bowed stance. Mouthparts chatter. Huge multi-faceted eyes twinkle and glitter, iridescent. Horns sprout from the cranium; the huge, upright horns of some ancient Aegean bull-daemon.

Cxir is still laughing, but it’s not Cxir any more.

The air is full of blowflies, like a storm of buzzing ash.

‘Samus,’ laughs Cxir. ‘Samus is here!’