Xaphen closed his eyes, murmuring a litany from the Word. ‘Faith raises us above the soulless and the damned. It is the soul’s fuel, and the driving force behind millennia of mankind’s survival. We are hollow without it.’
Argel Tal drew his weapons. The swords of red iron slid free from their scabbards with twin hisses.
Yes. Yes...
Both blades sparked into electrical life as the captain pulled the handle-triggers. Xaphen regarded him with hooded eyes.
‘Do it,’ the Chaplain said. ‘Let it begin.’
Argel Tal whirled the blades in slow, arcing loops, their crackling power fields growing more intense, the blades emanating ozone mist as they burned and rasped through the frozen air.
‘Aurelian,’ whispered Malnor. ‘For Lorgar.’
‘For the truth,’ Torgal said. ‘Do it, and we will carry these answers back to the Imperium.’
Argel Tal looked at Dagotal; the youngest of his sergeants, only recently promoted before the Legion’s humiliation. The outrider commander’s eyes were distant.
‘I am weary of being lied to by the Emperor, brother. I am so tired of being ashamed, when what we believe is the truth.’ Dagotal nodded, meeting his captain’s eyes at last. ‘Do it.’
Three.
He stepped forward, staring at a cluster of vein-like cables twitching as they channelled artificial blood around the semi-organic tower machine.
Two.
Argel Tal span the swords, leaving blurred trails of lightning in their wake.
One.
The blades chopped down, crashing through steel, iron, rubber, copper, bronze and vat-grown blood.
Both swords exploded in his hands, their blades shattering like smashed glass and decorating his bare face with bloody cuts.
And then, for one horrific, familiar moment, Argel Tal saw nothing but burning, psychic gold.
EIGHTEEN
A Hundred Truths
Resurrection
Return
‘I heard your brother,’ Argel Tal confessed.
The primarch was no longer writing. For several minutes, Lorgar had done nothing but listen in mounting emotion as the captain relayed the events in Ingethel’s vision. Now, at these words, he released a breath he’d been holding for some time.
‘Magnus?’
Argel Tal had never heard his sire speak so softly. ‘No. The Warmaster.’
The golden-skinned giant brushed his hands over his face, seemingly afflicted by a sudden weariness. ‘I do not know that title,’ he said. ‘Warmaster. An ugly word.’
Argel Tal chuckled in two voices. ‘Of course, forgive us, Lorgar. He will not be named that for some time. He is still merely Horus. When the vision ended in golden light, we could see nothing beyond the flare. But we heard your brother Horus. The machinery was breaking down, rattling and crashing. There was gunfire. The rush of the most powerful wind we’ve ever felt. And we heard Horus’s voice – shouting, defiant, enraged. It was as if he were there with us, seeing what we saw.’
‘Stop saying “we”. You are Argel Tal.’
‘We are Argel Tal, yes. In forty-three years, Horus will speak four words that will save humanity or lead to its extinction. We know what those words are, Lorgar. Do you?’
Lorgar cradled his head in his hands, fine fingers pressed to the elegant runes inked onto his skin.
‘This is too much. Too much to bear. I... I need Erebus here. I need my fa— Kor Phaeron.’
‘They are far from here. And we will tell you something more: neither Erebus nor Kor Phaeron would struggle to accept the truths that we speak. Kor Phaeron has always kept his belief in the Old Ways hidden behind lying smiles, and Erebus drools in the presence of power. Neither of those twisted warlocks would hold their heads in their hands and panic about how the Imperium will–’
Argel Tal’s voices fell silent, quenched by the golden hand around his emaciated throat.
Lorgar rose to his feet in a smooth and effortless motion, dragging the Astartes up with him, the captain’s feet lifting from the deck.
‘You will watch your tongue when you speak the names of my mentors, and you will speak with respect when you address the lord of your own Legion. Is that understood, beast?’
Argel Tal didn’t answer. His hands clawed at the primarch’s forearm in desperate futility.
Lorgar hurled the skeletal figure against the wall. The captain crashed against the metal and tumbled to the floor.
