‘Look up,’ the primarch spoke softly.
Xaphen obeyed. They all did. The warp storm wracking the region shrouded most of the night sky, a great spiral stain of reds and purples staring down like an unblinking eye.
‘The storm?’ Vendatha asked. ‘Their eyes are violet because of the storm?’
Lorgar nodded. ‘It has changed them.’
Xaphen rested his crozius on his shoulder as he still stared into the sky. ‘I know the warp can infect psychics with the flesh-change, if their minds are not strong enough. But normal humans?’
‘They are impure,’ Vendatha interrupted. ‘These barbarians are mutants...’ he gestured with his spear at the approaching tribes, ‘...and they must be destroyed.’
Argel Tal glanced to his left, where the Custodian stood with his halberd lowered. ‘Does this not fascinate you, Ven? We stand on a world at the edge of the greatest warp storm ever seen, and its population comes to us with eyes the same colour as the tortured void. How can you damn that before asking why it happens?’
‘Impurity is its own answer,’ said the golden warrior. He refused to be drawn into debate. ‘Primarch Lorgar, we must cleanse this world.’
Lorgar didn’t look at the Custodian. He merely sighed before speaking.
‘I will meet these people, and I will judge their lives myself. Pure, impure, right and wrong. All I want is answers.’
‘They are impure.’
‘I am not slaughtering the population of an entire world because my father’s war hound whined at the colour of their eyes.’
‘The Occuli Imperator will hear of this,’ Vendatha promised. ‘As will the Emperor, beloved by all.’
The primarch took a last look at the blazing sky. ‘Neither the Emperor, nor the Imperium, will ever forget what we learn here. You have my word on that, Custodian Vendatha.’
The first of the barbarians approached.
Draped around her shoulders was a cloak of discoloured peach-brown, heavy like bad leather, bound by crude black stitching. Her eyes, that beautiful and disquieting violet, were ringed by white paint, daubed in tribal runes over her face. The symbols meant nothing to Vendatha.
But the cloak did.
‘Degenerates...’ the Custodian hissed over a closed vox-channel. ‘That is human skin. Dried, cured, worn like a cloak of honour.’
‘I know,’ Argel Tal replied. ‘Lower your weapon, Ven.’
‘How can Lorgar deal with these creatures? Flayers. Primitives. Mutants. They coat their skin in meaningless hieroglyphs.’
‘They’re not meaningless,’ said the captain.
‘You can read those runes?’
‘Of course,’ Argel Tal sounded distracted. ‘It’s Colchisian.’
‘What? What does it say?’
The Word Bearer didn’t answer.
Lorgar inclined his head in respectful greeting.
The barbarian leader, at the head of over a hundred ragged people dressed in similar rags and armour of disquieting ‘leather’, showed no trepidation at all. More tribes were still converging from across the plainsland, but they held back, perhaps in deference to the young woman with the raven hair.
Skulls tied to her belt rattled as she moved. Despite reaching the primarch’s waist, she seemed utterly at ease as she lifted her mutated eyes to meet the giant’s own.
When she spoke, a heavy accent and clipped syllables couldn’t disguise the language completely. It had come far from its proto-Gothic roots, but the Imperials recognised it, some with greater ease than others.
‘Greetings,’ the primitive said. ‘We have been waiting for you, Lorgar Aurelian.’
The primarch let none of his surprise show. ‘You know my name, and you speak Colchisian.’
The young woman nodded, seeming to muse on the primarch’s deep intonation, rather than agreeing with Lorgar’s words. ‘We have waited many years. Now you walk upon our soil at last. This night was foretold. Look west and east and south and north. The tribes come. Our god-talkers demanded it, and the warchiefs obeyed. Warchiefs always heed the shaman-kind. Their voices are the voices of the gods.’
The primarch watched the crowd for signs of such respected tribal elders. ‘How is it that you speak the tongue of my home world?’ he asked their leader.
‘I speak the tongue of
Despite the burning skies and the surprises the girl brought, Lorgar smiled at the stalemate.
‘I am Lorgar, as you foresaw, though only my sons call me Aurelian.’
‘Lorgar. A blessed name. The favoured son of the True Pantheon.’
Through great effort, the primarch kept his voice light. No stray nuance could allow this first contact to go wrong. Control was everything, all that mattered.
‘I do not have four fathers, my friend, and I am not of woman born. I am a son to the Emperor of Man, and no
