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  ‘That belongs to one of your siblings,’ said his gene-father, seeing the question before Mortarion could ask it. ‘In time, I will find him as I found you, and he will rejoin us. My scouts have brought me encouraging data, and even now they search the galaxy for his probable location.’

  ‘How many of us are there?’ Mortarion did not look away from the other ship.

  ‘For now, too few for what is needed,’ said the Emperor, in a moment of introspection. ‘But that will change. It may take years, but in the end I will gather you all back to me. Our work… our destiny is too important to be denied.’

  Mortarion wondered what that meant, but he held back from following the thread and kept on his current tack. ‘When do I meet them?’ Before he could stop himself, something more tumbled out. ‘I have never known a… a blood-brother.’

  ‘Very soon,’ promised the Emperor. ‘Horus is particularly eager to greet you.’

  ‘Lupercal…’ Mortarion knew the names of some of his siblings, and the lord of the Luna Wolves was foremost among them. ‘The first to be found.’

  ‘He was,’ nodded his father. ‘Just over half a century ago now, by the Terran calendar. He’s led the way ever since.’ The Emperor’s searching gaze found another of the ships in the fleet. ‘Horus wanted to join me to welcome you, but I bid him to hold back a while. There’s much for you and I to discuss first… Mortarion.’

  The primarch saw the pause and called it out. ‘You hesitate over my name.’

  ‘Child of Death.’ His father spoke the meaning of it, as translated from the old Barbarun dialects. ‘It is not what I might have wished for you,’ admitted the Emperor. ‘I hope you never know the pain of having something so important as a child torn from you, that you could not even name it before it was gone.’

  The words were meant to show a father’s bond with his son, but the sentiment rebounded off Mortarion and he was unable to process it. This was an alien experience to him, freighted with conflicting emotions.

  All at once, it brought back the memory of that fateful day on Barbarus, when the Emperor’s lander had touched down outside the free city of Safehold. Mortarion and his Death Guard were returning from a failed mission to kill the High Overlord Necare, up in the toxic reaches of the highest mountain range. They found the people buzzing with tales of a magnificent visitor they called ‘the Newcomer’.

  ‘I have come to Barbarus in search of noble souls,’ the Emperor had said. ‘Glory and prosperity await. It will be the dawning of a new age.’

  In a way, that had been true. But the new age the Emperor brought to Barbarus began by unseating Mortarion from the position of leadership he had earned through struggle and blood. The primarch fumed inwardly as he thought of that day, of how he had allowed himself to be goaded into a foolish, reckless bargain.

  He told the Emperor to leave. He told Him they did not need the Imperium of Man and the light of illumination. In turn, in challenge, his gene-father had offered a wager, of a sort.

  Defeat the arch-enemy, Necare, in single combat, prove you are a worthy leader, and Barbarus will never know the Imperium’s hand.

  It was a trap.

  Mortarion took up the gauntlet, defying reason to forge his way back up into the most poisoned ranges of the mountains. And there he had called out Necare, vowing to make good on the oath he had sworn, to end him and free Barbarus once and for all.

  But you failed, said the voice in his head. As your father must have known you would.

  Mortarion had almost died up there, amid toxins so virulent that even the uncanny constitution of a genhanced warlord could not withstand them. On the brink of death, as Necare stood by and watched his adopted son choke out his last breaths, Mortarion knew the end was at hand.

  But suddenly the Emperor of Mankind was there, His great golden sword flashing like star-shine. Necare fell to a single blow, and thus Barbarus was finally liberated.

  That victory should have been yours.

  ‘You recall the day I came to you.’ The Emperor plucked the words from the air, as if He were reading Mortarion’s mind. ‘The dispatch of that creature… That was the first of many gifts I gave to you, my son. You understand that, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  No, whispered the voice. He stole your hard-fought, deserved triumph. And why? So you would be forever beholden to Him–

  Mortarion shook off the dark thoughts with a wordless mutter, as if dismissing a nagging insect.

  If the Emperor noticed, He did not mention it. Mortarion’s father had paused to study the distant, smoky sphere of Barbarus. ‘Your world has changed in the past year. It has grown larger in ways you and your adoptive people are only now coming to grasp.’

  ‘The Pale Sons and Daughters are adaptable. Resilient,’ Mortarion replied. ‘Without those traits, humans would never have survived there.’

  ‘Admirable. My adjutants inform me that the locutors dispatched from the Imperium have made great progress in illuminating the Barbarun tribes. It pleases me greatly that the assimilation has moved so swiftly.’ The Emperor’s dark eyes took in Mortarion once more. ‘And I have seen the reports of your training exercises with your Legion. Very impressive.’

  ‘They fight well,’ Mortarion said grudgingly. In truth, the legionaries were the most remarkable warriors he had ever encountered, and part of him ached to take them into real battle. To let them off the chain to fight hard and pure.

  And soon, his chosen kindred would be ready, ascended to a transhuman status that would make them as war-gods to the common men they once were.

  With them by your side, this new Death Guard will truly be a force to be reckoned with.

  ‘A question arises, however,’ said his father, nodding towards the planet. ‘I left you a contingent of my most accomplished scienticians and geoformers. Their expertise, their technologies could radically alter the atmosphere and ecology of Barbarus. Erase the lethal toxins in the air and the soil. But you refused to use them. You sent them away. Why?’

  ‘It would be wrong.’ Mortarion shook his head. ‘The children of Barbarus are not attuned to a soft life. To purify the sky and the earth… That would make my people weak. And with the Overlords all dead and gone, they still need something to fight.’

  A slow smile crossed the face of his gene-father. ‘Worry not on that account, Mortarion. The Imperium of Man has battles enough for the people of ten thousand worlds.’

  Despite himself, Mortarion felt a thin smile of anticipation pull at his lips.

  ‘I have more gifts for you,’ the Emperor went on, and He pointed to another huge vessel in close formation.

  It was a great dagger of a ship, a deadly sculpture of crenellations with a sloped prow and a hull shaded in emerald hues. It seemed to pivot at the Emperor’s silent command, and upon the ship’s cliff-like bow, Mortarion saw a massive rendering of the skull-and-sun in gunmetal grey.

  ‘A war-barge of your own,’ said his father. ‘The Endurance, first of your fleet.’

  Mortarion felt as if he could reach out with one iron-gloved hand and touch the craft. He wanted it very badly, the power it represented humming in his blood.

  ‘But before you take command there, I have something else for you.’ The Emperor nodded to Himself. ‘A last formality to mark our bonds of fealty.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Doubt immediately flooded Mortarion’s thoughts. All this generosity made him suspicious.

  ‘I will show you.’

  They left the corridor where it bisected an armoured dome emerging from the hull of the Bucephelus, and Mortarion matched the Emperor’s pace as the two of them followed a wide, spiralling ramp down into another chamber.

  ‘My mind is never at rest,’ said his father, and for a moment He seemed melancholy. Then the instant passed and He gestured around. ‘The work of governing an empire does not occupy my thoughts at all times. One must have a craft that one attends to purely for the joy of it.’

  That concept was so far beyond Mortarion’s experience as to be unfathomable, so he said nothing. Instead, he took in the space, peering into its hazy depths.

  It was a workshop of sorts, and it reminded him of the tech-nomad yards run by the gun-maker tribes and the Forge Tyrants of Barbarus. It was built on what Mortarion had come to think of as Imperial scale – ornate and over-engineered, concerned as much as with needless aesthetics as it was with the function of the place.

  Spidery automata and half-human helots kneeled before their master as He passed, before continuing in their labours. Some worked at complex devices of unknown function, others busy with items that Mortarion could see were plates of armour or huge melee weapons. Deeper into the chamber, he saw glass capsules within which churned globules of writhing energy, liquid orbs and objects that possessed no human geometry.

  ‘My studies help focus my thoughts,’ said the Emperor. ‘They give me clarity.’ He gestured to racks of prototype firearms and modified marks of Space Marine battleplate. ‘And there is method to it. When each primarch stands ready, I grant my son a token forged by my own hand. Sometimes a weapon. Sometimes a suit of armour, or another object of power.’ He spread His hands, taking in the whole of the place. ‘Your turn has come.’

  Mortarion wanted to remain disengaged, distant from all this. But the treasures he saw all around stimulated the thirst for knowledge that had always driven him. He wanted to know more.

  He saw holograms of weapons already granted to his brother primarchs hanging in the air, displayed like battle trophies. A great spike-headed mace in black and silver, sporting a baleful eye, floating beside a power sword with a winged cross-guard that
glistened with a waxy, cold light.

  There were other items half made, still in the middle of their crafting. Mortarion’s eye caught on a suit of sable-dark battle armour at one workstation, and the shell of a snarling, animalistic helmet on another.

  The more he looked, the more weapons Mortarion saw. A profusion of them, hundreds of designs and constructions, hundreds of dismantled relics and shards of millennia-old lost tech. The Emperor’s martial diversions were laid out in row after row.

  Your father sees Himself as weaponsmith as much as warlord. The insight solidified in Mortarion’s mind, and the dark gravity of it drew in resentment.

  Is that what you are? The voice of Mortarion’s doubts and distrust – so briefly silenced – now returned to him. The primarchs are His weapons.

  The Overlord Necare had considered Mortarion exactly that as he governed the life of his foundling child. Was the Emperor of Mankind so different?

  ‘My son?’ The resentment grinding in his teeth, Mortarion turned towards the sound of his gene-father’s voice and found Him offering up a menacing scimitar of broad dimension and shimmering lethality. ‘This is for you,’ He began.

  Mortarion spoke before the Emperor could say any more. ‘I already have a blade.’ He shrugged off the giant scythe from where it lay mag-locked to his power armour. ‘I do not need another.’ He walked away, deliberately ignoring the stiffening in his father’s expression. The war-scythe was firm and ready in his grip, as much a part of him now as it had been when he first forged it. Over the years, the blade had been remade, reinforced, made better. It was an extension of who Mortarion was, and nothing else – no star-born metal, no arcane blade-wright – could replace it.

  ‘You refuse my token?’ The Emperor’s words were mild but there was a warning buried among them.

  In a day of protocols broken, would this be one too many? Mortarion considered that as his gaze ranged around the room, and settled on a weapon sitting in a plasteel cradle.

  A pistol; a heavy, drum-shaped firearm made for the hands of something bigger than a man. It was cast out of copper, brass and steel, and the form of it reminded Mortarion of a craftsman’s tool. This was not the overwrought rendering of some weapon-artist. It was a killer’s device, industrial and heavyweight.

  Without asking permission, Mortarion went to the gun and gathered it up. ‘I do need a pistol,’ he allowed. He looked closely at the frame. Parts of the mechanism were disconnected, and he automatically set to the task of putting it into working order.

  The Emperor frowned. ‘The maker of that weapon called it the Lantern. He told me that before I put him to death.’

  ‘What did he do to deserve such a fate?’

  ‘The man led a cult of killers on a manufactory world called Shenlong. They said they worshipped a dragon.’ His father’s gaze grew cold. ‘It became necessary to destroy them in order to ensure compliance of that planet.’

  Mortarion found the control mechanism for the gun and activated it. The Lantern came to life in his grip, instantly bio-locking itself to his genetic imprint. It sat well in his long-fingered hand, and he sensed the raw, deadly power humming within the casing. ‘This will do,’ he intoned.

  ‘It fits you well,’ allowed the Emperor. Slowly, He put aside the scimitar. ‘Take it, then. Use the Lantern to cast the light of our Imperium into the darkness. One token serves as well as another.’ He gave a nod. ‘Once again, my son, you find your own path.’

  ‘You mean, I defy the plans others have for me?’ Mortarion said the words without looking up from the gun in his fist.

  The room seemed to grow colder in the wake of his reply, and all the unspoken things between the two of them clouded the air like ghost-smoke.

  ‘I am here,’ said his gene-father. ‘Is there something you wish to say to me, Mortarion? Speak your mind, if you will.’

  There were cords on the belt around Mortarion’s waist, and he used them to fashion a lanyard from which the Lantern could hang. ‘I have many questions,’ he said, at length. His voice rasped in the sudden quiet of the domed chamber. ‘But I will dismiss them all to know the answer to just one. Tell me why you took my victory from me on the day you came to my world.’

  A rare flash of confusion flickered in the Emperor’s eyes. ‘I did it to save my son’s life. You would have died up there on that mountain. The fiend who tormented you for so long – the only victory would have been his.’ He studied Mortarion for a long moment. ‘I could not let you perish, not after spending so long in search of you.’

  ‘And yet it was your challenge that sent me there.’

  ‘Was it? We may still have much to learn about one another, my son, but one thing is clear to me.’ The Emperor pointed at the Lantern. ‘Is there anything in your life you have done that has not been an act of rebellion? Of defiance? You faced Necare by your choice. That door was already open.’

  ‘You did not prevent me from stepping through.’

  He knew what you would do, said the inner voice. He made you, after all. Who better to know how to play you?

  A chilly, unknowable distance settled in the Emperor’s manner. ‘A father is beholden to educate his sons. You learned a valuable lesson that day. I saw I had to remind you of your humility, Mortarion. There are some enemies you alone cannot defeat.’

  Never! The silent voice bellowed the denial. Never admit defeat!

  Mortarion looked down at the weapon in his hand and considered the potential of it. For one giddy second, a dark and terrible question came to the forefront of his mind.

  What if I turned this on Him? What would happen then?

  In the next second, the unutterable, unconscionable question melted away, and in its place, there was emptiness. In the yawning abyss of his emotions, Mortarion saw a dim candle of need, an unformed want calling out for connection, for kinship.

  He crushed the sentiment without hesitation. He had brotherhood and fraternity among those he had shed blood with – and perhaps he might find it in the hearts of his primarch brethren in the days to come. Given his gene-father’s ways, Mortarion did not doubt that others of his siblings might share a measure of the ambivalence he felt towards their shared progenitor.

  The Emperor allowed you to be taken when you were just a child. Then He found you again, only to diminish you, and for what?

  To mirror what Necare had done? At least the Overlord had been honest about his cruelty.

  ‘Will you look beyond this, Mortarion?’ The Emperor offered His hand. ‘Will you fight by my side in the Great Crusade, my son?’

  ‘I will.’ He took the offer and the pact was made. ‘I have no choice,’ he added.

  ‘Walk with me,’ said his gene-father once more, leading him out of the chamber and into vast spaces beyond.

  They were in a vaulted hall now, a space so large it had its own microclimate. In the distance, at the far end of the great gallery, Mortarion saw legionaries in greenish-grey battleplate, and amid them, one as tall as he. A noble figure in robes and furs, imposing and vibrant even at a remove.

  ‘Your brother was close at hand, a few light years away in the Zhao System,’ said the Emperor. ‘When he learned I was coming here, he refused to let me travel alone.’ He beckoned the other primarch to them, and the other warrior advanced, grinning, a look of joy alight in his eyes.

  ‘Lupercal…’ Mortarion said his name. Once more that strange, ethereal sense of connection came to him, more powerful than ever before, a light shining into his soul.

  ‘My brother,’ said Horus, his voice thick with emotion. ‘Welcome home.’

  About the Author

  James Swallow is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Fear to Tread and Nemesis, which both reached the New York Times bestseller lists. Also for the Horus Heresy, he has written The Flight of the Eisenstein, The Buried Dagger and a series of audio dramas featuring the character Nathaniel Garro, the prose versions of which have now been collected into the anthology Garro. For Warhammer 40,000, he is best known for his four Blood Angels novels, the audio drama Heart of Rage, and his two Sisters of Battle novels. His short fiction has appeared in Legends of the Space Marines and Tales of Heresy.