‘This is not the time for old grudges.’
‘Laxity like that is why you will never carry a crozius,’ the Chaplain said.
The nepotism behind Kor Phaeron’s ascension to the First Captaincy was no secret. As the primarch’s spiritual counsel and foster father during the years of Lorgar’s youth away from the Imperium, Kor Phaeron had helped shape the growing demigod in ways his true father had not. They stood together through the years of sacrifice and revolution, through the holy wars that threatened to tear Colchis apart before its unity under the benevolent rule of Lorgar.
When the God-Emperor came to Colchis over a century before to offer Lorgar command of the XVII Legion, Kor Phaeron had been far too old to receive the organ implantations and prepubescent genetic manipulations necessary to grow into one of the Astartes. Instead, through rejuvenat surgery, costly bionics and limited gene- forging, Kor Phaeron was exalted above humanity as a sign of the value placed in him by the primarch.
Despite leaving humanity behind, he had not ascended to the ranks of true Astartes. Argel Tal watched him now, this pinnacle of genetic compromise. Respect stilled his tongue, even if admiration did not.
Kor Phaeron spat onto the broken ground. The acidic gobbet of saliva hissed as it ate into the ruined stone. Only then did Argel Tal reactivate the vox-channel to Xaphen by blink-clicking his brother’s name-rune.
‘Are you galled only by the First Captain’s impurity? Or is it his complete lack of Legion discipline, and that his victories eclipse yours and mine put together?’
Xaphen chuckled, the sound low and dark. His crozius hammer was in his fists, its mace head resting on the ground.
‘He is at the primarch’s side for each campaign. He commands the First Company, the Legion’s finest, and wears the armour of the Terminator elite. It would take a fool to fail in those circumstances.’
‘I have heard him preach, brother. As have you. I do not like him, but I respect him. He speaks the Word with an insight possessed by no other, and his wisdom pours fire into my blood. He orchestrated victory in a planet- wide civil war when he was merely a human priest. Do not underestimate him now.’
Xaphen’s voice was sterner. ‘Impurity cannot be forgiven.’
‘The primarch chose him,’ the captain’s tone also grew stonier in response. ‘Does that mean nothing to you?’
‘I do not doubt our father’s judgement,’ came the reluctant reply.
Just when Argel Tal sensed more to come, Xaphen fell silent, perhaps detecting an implied lecture in his brother’s disapproval.
‘Stand ready,’ Kor Phaeron growled, his grinding voice at odds with his cadaverous face. ‘The primarch comes.’
As those words hung in the air, the ramp beneath the cockpit of the golden Stormbird began to ease down on smooth gears.
Argel Tal breathed out, slow and tense, feeling his primary heart thud faster. Although he wasn’t in battle, his secondary heart started a slower counter-beat to the hammering of his first.
The figure descended the ramp alone, and the Seventh Captain felt the stinging threat of worshipful tears even as he kept his gaze on the ruined ground. He’d not seen his primarch in almost three years. To be cast away from his radiance, even in the name of sacred duty, was to walk in shadow, devoid of inspiration.
The vox came alive with thousands of muted voices as countless Word Bearers breathed their father’s name. Many thanked fate for the chance to stand within his presence once again. Reverent chants ghosted over the communication channels, never rising above whispers. Argel Tal was one of the few that remained silent at first, thanking fate in voiceless piety.
Three years. Three long, long years of fighting in the darkness, praying for this moment to come. All doubt, all concern, all suspicion of the Ultramarines’ summons was erased in a dual beat of his twin hearts.
The figure stopped walking. Argel Tal knew this from the cessation of footsteps on blackened earth.
Only then did he speak. A single word: a name used only rarely beyond the warrior-sons who carried Lorgar’s blood in their veins, as they conquered an ignorant galaxy by crozius and bolter.
‘Aurelian,’ the captain said, the word drowning in so many similar whispers.
Argel Tal raised his eyes at last, to see the son of a living god standing in the heart of a necropolis.
THREE
Blood Demands Blood
Sigillite
The Master of Mankind
The Seventeenth Primarch was known to the emergent Imperium by many names. The worlds left in his Legion’s triumphant wake knew him as the Anointed, the Seventeenth Son, or more elegantly, the Bearer of the Word.
To his primarch brothers he was simply Lorgar, the name given to him on his home world of Colchis during the years of turmoil before the Emperor’s arrival.
Yet as with many primarchs, he also bore an informal title – a term of respect often used by the eighteen Legions. Where Fulgrim of the III Legion was known respectfully as the Phoenician, and Ferrus Manus of the X Legion carried the Gorgon as his title, the lord of the XVII Legion was the Urizen – a name pulled from the half- forgotten writings of ancient Terran myth.
None of the one hundred thousand warriors gathered spoke those names now. As the Word Bearers Legion stood at its full, unbelievable strength in perfectly ordered ranks, every one of his sons chanted his true name in sibilant whispers, as if the syllables were an invocation.
