War Without End Read online

  ‘Death of a monarch,’ answered Ferrus, his voice drawing Fulgrim’s attention back to him. ‘That’s what it means.’

  ‘It also refers to the death of an emperor,’ the Phoenician countered, finding his confidence again as he marshalled his Empress into position. ‘Not only that, brother, but the just and lawful execution of said monarch or emperor, following trial.’ He licked his lips and the susurration from the atmospheric recirculation briefly intensified. ‘I find it an intriguing notion.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Ferrus, his attention back again on the board.

  A trap was forming, his awareness of it evident in his tense facial expression. It also revealed that he could not discern the nature of the trap – only that one existed.

  Still so blind...

  By moving his Empress, Fulgrim had left his Emperor open to attack.

  ‘Yes,’ he continued. ‘Intriguing that an emperor can be considered subject to the same laws and strictures that bind ordinary men. That any act of harm put to such a being can be considered lawful and just.’

  ‘You believe it should not be so?’

  ‘I believe it suggests that a leader, or even a father, can be flawed.’

  ‘All men have flaws, it’s what makes them men. The ability to see and mitigate one’s own flaws is a measure of a man’s greatness. Only good leaders possess such self-awareness.’

  How ironic, Fulgrim wanted to say, but instead he said, ‘Now who’s stalling, brother?’ deliberately turning Ferrus’s earlier words against him in the hope of gaining a psychological advantage.

  ‘I am not stalling.’ Some of the anger returned, visible in the Gorgon’s clenching and unclenching of his fists.

  ‘Then act.’

  ‘You are trying to hurry me into a mistake.’

  No goading is required, dear brother.

  Ferrus’s gauntleted hand poised over the Tetrarch. One angular move, and he could kill the identical piece in Fulgrim’s army. It was a move called ‘the Swordbreaker’ and in this version of Regicide it would turn Ferrus’s conquering Tetrarch into a Primarch, a piece of much greater manoeuvrability and, therefore, power.

  ‘You’re hiding something,’ he said, still wavering.

  ‘And you’re behaving distinctly out of character, brother.’ Fulgrim snarled, baring his teeth.

  Ferrus seemed not to notice. Instead, he stared at the board, wracked by indecision.

  ‘Do I kill him?’

  How many times did I ask myself that very question?

  After making his move, Ferrus would have to withstand whatever attack Fulgrim crafted next, but with another Primarch at his side. He scrutinised the board, but saw no potential danger.

  ‘You have nothing...’ he muttered, smiling. ‘As ever, you opt for obfuscation instead of a solid strategy.’

  ‘Then show me yours,’ invited Fulgrim. ‘But before you do, answer my question. Are you the Tetrarch or the Emperor?’

  Ferrus looked up, his face a mask of defiant belligerence.

  ‘No one can be Emperor, save the Emperor himself,’ he declared and thrust his Tetrarch forwards, killing the opposing piece and substituting for his new Primarch. ‘As I play, I imagine myself as the Tetrarch.’

  And there’s the brother I know.

  ‘Without pretension to rule, only to serve,’ said Fulgrim.

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘And now Primarch.’

  ‘Again, yes. It’s your move, brother.’

  ‘Becoming what you appear to be.’

  ‘Is there not honour in that?’ asked Ferrus, but his pride bled through in the words.

  ‘Much. Dissembling is for less obvious minds than yours, dear brother.’

  That was a mistake. Fulgrim hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Perhaps he was not as in control of the situation – and himself – as he thought?

  Ferrus scowled, annoyed. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

  Words could not be unsaid, so Fulgrim went with them. With an open hand, he gestured to the board and the game in progress. There was a faint undercurrent of sadness to the Phoenician’s tone as he made his final move.

  ‘That you fail to see what is in front of you.’

  The Citizen he had positioned earlier came adjacent to Ferrus’s new Primarch and revealed itself to be an Ecclesiarch. Both of Fulgrim’s Divinitarchs and his second Ecclesiarch were also adjacent. None could take the Primarch, for their specific permitted moves across the board combined with their relative positions did not afford this opportunity. They did, however, allow for something else.

  Ferrus’s eyes widened as he finally saw the trap. ‘Too late,’ he murmured, ‘too late...’

  You were, both of you. And too weak...

  Fulgrim started for a moment, unsure as to where the thought had come from, but quickly recovered.

  ‘This,’ he said, tapping the place over his chest beneath which his heart was beating fast, ‘was your downfall. Too rash, too eager. Undone by your anger, your arrogance. Are you so impatient, Ferrus? You speak of flaws, of the traits of great men. Are we not great men? So then, are we so aware of our own inherent flaws? Are you?’

  Ferrus had no answer. He could only stare mutely, grasping for comprehension.

  That was the second fault.

  Fulgrim simmered with displeasure, but had to play this out.

  ‘Why did you not heed me, brother?’ he asked. ‘We were bonded you and I, beneath the slopes of Mount Narodnya. You with Fireblade and I with Forgebreaker. Now, what has become of those noble weapons and the ideals we craved as we forged them?’

  Ferrus looked up from the table, a frozen fist around his heart.

  ‘The Traitor’s Gambit?’ he asked, not because he didn’t recognise the strategy but more out of disbelief that Fulgrim had used it against him.

  Anger. This was something that the Ferrus before Fulgrim could understand.

  ‘You sound annoyed, brother,’ the Phoenician hissed.

  ‘Because you try to turn me!’

  ‘I have turned you, Ferrus. You have fought and bled, wrought a piece with significant power for your efforts, and now I have taken it for my own.’

  Ferrus shoved the table back so it jabbed Fulgrim in the stomach, and rose to his feet.

  ‘Brother!’ Fulgrim shifted backwards himself and tried to look shocked.

  He is unravelling again, just like before.

  ‘You dare...’ accused Ferrus. He slammed his fist down on the board, scattering the pieces.

  ‘I dare what? We are merely playing a friendly game.’

  ‘You dare this?’ Ferrus clenched his jaw. Fulgrim could hear his brother’s teeth grinding hatefully, but he stayed where he was for now.

  ‘How have I insulted you? Please sit down.’ He gestured to Ferrus’s stool, but it was upended and rolling away from the board now. ‘Return to the game.’

  ‘Your game,’ Ferrus snarled. ‘One in which you try to turn my hand. I am a loyal son of the Emperor. As were you.’

  He reached for a weapon, but there was no scabbard at his hip and no hammer at his back.

  ‘Perturabo has Forgebreaker now,’ Fulgrim said with resignation. ‘His anger towards me eclipses your own, brother, as hard as I’m sure that is for you to believe.’

  Seismic cracks appeared in the Gorgon’s stolid countenance as he struggled to comprehend everything that Fulgrim was saying.

  ‘Where is Perturabo?’ Ferrus demanded. ‘Where is my hammer? Tell me!’

  The ruse is over, said the voice in Fulgrim’s head that had hijacked his most recent thoughts. ‘I agree...’ Fulgrim muttered sadly.

  ‘With what?’ snapped Ferrus.

  ‘That this is done.’ Fulgrim glanced to the shadows and the silhouette standing there. ‘I am very disappointed in you,’ he murmured,
then turned his ophidian gaze back to Ferrus, ‘And as for you...’

  Ferrus seemed not to understand. ‘Explain yourself.’

  Fulgrim did as Ferrus requested, five words that drained away the Gorgon’s wrath and left him stunned.

  ‘You are not my brother.’

  Savagely, Fulgrim gripped the Regicide table in both hands and threw it aside. The pieces clattered noisily to the floor, Emperors and Citizens alike toppled and slain in seconds. The game was over, and Fulgrim was revealed in all of his infernal beauty.

  Ferrus backed away as the other primarch rose to his full height, dwarfing him.

  He gasped, ‘Monster...’

  Fulgrim’s reply was sibilant and insidious. ‘I prefer exalted.’

  Where Ferrus had known him as a being of immortal perfection, a handsome warrior-king of Chemos, the creature that Fulgrim had become scarcely echoed that former ideal.

  A purplish hue affected the pallor of his skin now, and there were ridges of scale in kind with Fulgrim’s serpentine body. His upper torso and face still remained much as it once had been, though the eyes looked distinctly reptilian and sharp, needle-like fangs filled a mouth that seemed, at times, oddly distended. His legs were no more, his dancing swordman’s gait surrendered in preference to the coiled agility of a viper’s tail, the two limbs conjoined by some terrible alchemy.

  Fulgrim knew his appearance well. He had often studied it narcissistically in one of his many mirrors. He had beheld it in the shimmering blood of his enemies. Seen it reflected in the eyes of those he was about to kill.

  It was murderous. It was beautiful.

  It was perfection.

  Unlike this wretched specimen.

  Ferrus was overcoming his revulsion, and bunched his fists.

  ‘That won’t be necessary...’ uttered Fulgrim flatly, and sprang at him.

  Ferrus roared as Fulgrim clamped his maw around the Gorgon’s neck and bit deep. In a panic, those strong, gauntleted hands wrapped around his upper and lower jaws and tried to pull them open.

  Fulgrim was spitting blood as Ferrus’s carotid artery gushed even more vigorously. The Gorgon’s grip was firm, his face a mask of pained hatred. Fulgrim raked him with his talons, tearing deep rents in his armour, but Ferrus clung on desperately.

  Like a beast tamer wrestling his charge, Ferrus used the power in his hips to fling Fulgrim onto his back where the monster writhed and hissed.

  ‘I remember now...’ he snarled, blazing Medusan anger to meet his cold, iron hatred. ‘Your betrayal.’

  He slowly prised open Fulgrim’s jaws like they were a vice.

  ‘You coward!’

  Fulgrim thrashed, unable to speak, seized by the very real possibility that significant harm might yet come to him. He twisted, trying to free himself, but Ferrus would not let him go.

  ‘I should have killed you at Isstvan,’ Ferrus said, ‘I should have–’

  He does remember. Everything, just as Fabius had promised he would.

  ‘I...’ Ferrus stumbled, losing his grip as he stared down dumbly at the thing that his brother had willingly become.

  He remembered too much.

  ‘You tried,’ said Fulgrim, grief-stricken and slurring the words.

  With a ferocious twist of his serpentine body, Fulgrim threw Ferrus off. He staggered, going down on one knee, but didn’t move far. His trailing hand, supporting his body, scraped against an armoured boot. In confusion, Ferrus looked down behind him into the shadows.

  He saw a figure there. Recognising its physiognomy, he looked back to his brother.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked, struggling with his ambivalent emotions.

  Fulgrim righted himself and stabbed his dumbstruck brother through the heart with his barbed tail, piercing the weak spot he had raked earlier with his talons.

  ‘I think it’s closure,’ Fulgrim answered with quiet resignation. ‘Or sometimes torture.’

  And so Ferrus Manus, the Gorgon and Primarch of the Iron Hands, died.

  Again.

  Fulgrim glared at the corpse, unable to hide his disgust.

  ‘He was imperfect. How many times now is it that you have failed me, Fabius?’

  The silhouette watching from the shadows shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘My lord,’ began a rasping, obsequious voice.

  ‘Don’t answer, I can see for myself.’

  Lumen globes fixed in alcoves and the domed ceiling above flared into life in perfect unison. Revealed starkly in their glow were bodies. Huge, armoured, primarch bodies. Corpses. The coppery stench of their spilled and cooling blood was almost overwhelming. Fulgrim had ordered nullifying agents pumped into the chamber to mask the smell, but seeing it seemed to bring it back.

  Ferrus Manus lay dead. His imperfect clones littered the chamber floor in their dozens, a silent and broken audience. Fulgrim regarded them disappointedly.

  Apothecary Fabius’s hololithic image flickered nearby, but cast no light that he might observe without disturbing his primarch. Even with practised indifference disguising much of the emotion of his wizened face, Fabius looked relieved that he was not actually in Fulgrim’s presence.

  The flesh-maker was in his usual garb. A shawl of rough, leathern skin draped purple and gold armour and a necrotic-looking armature sprouted from his back. The chirurgeon’s limbs were folded, though the many surgical instruments, diffusers and injection-philtres were still visible.

  ‘It is not easy, my lord,’ he tried again, peering through tangles of dirty white hair, taking advantage of the primarch’s distraction. ‘And corrupt samples yield imperfect results.’ He paused to lick those dry, cadaverous lips. ‘As you can see, cloning a being like a primarch – well, it is a process that borders on requiring the Emperor’s own scientific genius to perfect.’

  A marble table, with a Regicide board carefully arranged upon it, stood alone and unmolested some metres away. The last one. Fulgrim eased his immense serpent body down next to it, taking his position as he had many times before.

  Repetition was important, Fabius had informed him. It was the only way to control the many variables. Subtle changes would garner more conclusive results.

  ‘I can hear your pride from several systems away, Fabius.’

  Fabius bowed. ‘It is complex, but not impossible.’

  ‘Then what about his hands?’ Fulgrim snapped. ‘They were like flowing mercury, not gauntleted. He must be perfect! I need this Fabius. I need it. When Ferrus died I was a prisoner in my own flesh. I have to speak to him. I have to tell him...’ he trailed off.

  ‘Replication is not easy,’ said the Apothecary, filling the brief silence with his squirming excuses. ‘As I said, a corrupt sample–’

  ‘The blood from my blade shall have to suffice!’

  ‘Yes, my lord, but the problem I am trying to–’

  ‘Shut up. I’m bored.’ Fulgrim sneered at the hololith. ‘You are an unpleasant creature, Fabius. So full of bile.’

  ‘As you wish, my lord. Are you ready to try again?’

  Fulgrim nodded curtly and the lights dimmed once more, a single globe staying lit over the Regicide table as the rest of the chamber was drowned in darkness. From below there came the sound of gears and servos, a great mechanism at work. A hatch slid open, large enough to admit a hulking figure in black war-plate sitting upon a simple stool.

  As the clone reached the chamber, the platform filled the hatchway and Ferrus opened his eyes.

  ‘Brother,’ it said warmly, awareness lighting up its face. ‘Are you ready to play?’

  I am ready... hissed the voice in Fulgrim’s head.

  Have I not silenced you?

  You can no more silence me than you can silence yourself, dear host.

  You are subservient to me.

  For now...

  Fulgrim c
lenched a fist, but the daemon would have to wait. He wasn’t surprised that it had resurfaced. This had as much to do with it as it did Fulgrim and his brother.

  Ferrus seemed not to notice the delay, his awareness held in mental stasis until Fulgrim gestured to the board. The Phoenician smiled as Ferrus looked down to consider his move.

  ‘Do you consider yourself the Tetrarch or the Emperor?’ asked Fulgrim, and the game began.

  Again.

  Unlike most of his brethren, Fabius preferred isolation to the company of others. He had always regarded his pathology as unique amongst the Emperor’s Children – whenever he flayed a subject or pinned back its flesh to reveal the complex anatomy of its internal organs, there was an end in mind. Knowledge, reason. It separated him from his more... self-indulgent siblings.

  Fabius desired sensation. He wanted to experience all of it, but he wanted to do that forever. He also knew that his great work would take time. Millennia, perhaps, despite the fact he had already made significant progress.

  By returning to the Pride of the Emperor, he had to sacrifice certain ‘freedoms’ to experiment, proscriptions he had not been bound by on the Andronius, but it was a large ship and Fulgrim had much to occupy him already. If this latest fascination with the Gorgon was anything to gauge by, Fabius could operate more or less with impunity.

  If he was careful.

  In the antechamber where he currently toiled, secrecy was of prime importance. A gene-coded key was required to access it, something Fabius altered every few cycles. It was also hidden deep in the bowels of the ship and would not appear on any schematics or auspex scans. It was, for all intents and purposes, a dead zone.

  The irony of that particular nomenclature amused the Apothecary. He smiled, seeing himself reflected grimly in the outer glass on the caskets he had under observation.

  In one, a mutated freak with tiny winged appendages of gristle and wasted flesh. It mewled in the briny solution of the casket, blind and forever drowning. Another bore its organs on the outside, a ruddy scum collecting at the bottom of its casket as it raged impotently with its shrivelled fists against the glass. The samples numbered in the dozens, each in varying stages of evolution and genetic success.