The Lion shook his crowned head. ‘You underestimate our father’s empire.’
‘And you overestimate humanity. Look at us. See how we’ve duelled for the last two years out here in the void. A crusade between two Legions and countless worlds that is still only just beginning. You have chased me for two years, across a hundred battlefields, and why do we meet now? Because I allow it.’
The Lion conceded to that with a slight nod. ‘You hide, like vermin fleeing the coming of dawn.’
Curze shrugged, the barest rise of one shoulder guard. ‘You will never reach Terra in time to defend it, brother. The warp will not let you. This crusade will not let you. Iwill not let you. Do you think the archives of future generations will look upon you kindly for your absence?’
Curze paused in his diatribe, wiping away a fresh trickle of blood. ‘Or will the human descendants of this Imperium look to your legend and whisper of doubt? Will they ask why you were not present to defend the Throneworld, and speak likely lies that perhaps the Lion was not as loyal and true as the mighty, perfect Rogal Dorn? Perhaps the Lion and his Dark Angels waited in the deepest reaches of space, watching, listening, and deciding to join the fight only when an obvious victor emerged.’
The Night Lord’s eyes glinted again, with both amusement and sorrow. ‘That is your fate, Lion. That is your future.’
‘Forgive me, brother.’
Curze tilted his head. ‘For what?’
Corswain was watching both primarchs yet still never saw what happened, such was the speed of the Lion’s movements. One moment the two brothers were speaking – the Lion’s features cast down in contemplation, Curze’s eyes fever-bright as he promised an ignoble fate. The next, Curze’s features twisted into a taut rictus of pain, blood running between his clenched teeth. The Lion held tight to the grip of his blade, buried to the hilt in his brother’s stomach. More than a metre of shining, bloodstained steel thrust from the back of Curze’s armour.
‘For such a dishonourable blow,’ the Lion whispered into Curze’s pale, bleeding face. ‘I do not care who knows the truth now, tomorrow, or in ten thousand years. Loyalty is its own reward.’
The Lion pulled his sword free. The Night Lord fell back.
At the same moment, the chainblade atop Sevatar’s halberd snarled to life.
X
CORSWAIN VAULTED A low wall and crouched behind it, taking aim over the top. His visor display realigned, targeting reticule skipping left and right, locking onto nothing. Sevatar and Sheng had vanished as soon as the first blow fell. Alajos and Corswain had raised their weapons, issuing a challenge to empty air. The Lion was already following the retreating, limping Curze, leaving his two warriors behind.
Alajos pinned himself to a pillar now, his breathing coming over the vox. ‘I didn’t see where they went.’
‘Nor I,’ Corswain confessed. ‘This is Corswain of the Ninth, to the Vehemence.Respond, Vehemence.’
‘Vray of the Vehemence.’ How calm she sounded. Corswain almost laughed.
‘Ware treachery in the heavens,’ he said. ‘We’ve engaged the enemy.’ Corswain caught sight of the Lion through a small forest of pillars, advancing on the retreating Curze, their weapons crashing together several times a second.
‘Do you require a teleportation recall?’ the mortal captain’s reply came back.
Corswain risked another glance over the wall, but saw no sign of Sevatar or Sheng. They’d gone to ground in the foundations of the fortress, out of sight but not out of mind.
‘No. We need to move. You won’t be able to maintain a recall lock.’
Alajos stared around the stone column. ‘Let’s go.’
Corswain followed, keeping low, trusting the wind’s roar to mask the sounds of his boots on the ground.
XI
THE PRIMARCHS DUELLED, heedless of their sons’ hunt. The Lion’s blade wove an exquisite dance, while pain acted as Curze’s catalyst. The Night Lord ignored the bloody wound in his belly, letting his arcane genetics quickly seal the injury shut. He fought as he always fought – like a killer backed into a corner. Brutal scythes slashed from their housings on the back of the primarch’s oversized gauntlets, and the air rang with the clash of metal against metal, with the fizzing crack of opposing power fields.
The Lion wrenched his blade back, the silver steel breaking through the air in lashing chops, blurring into a crescent that reflected the moons above. Each carving strike crashed against Curze’s blocking claws. Both warriors moved beyond mortal capability, with speed that defied sight. Yet one was a knight, the other merely a murderer. Curze’s grin was a brittle facade at the best of times. Now it turned to glass.
‘We never sparred, did we?’ the Lion sounded almost bored, his words still carrying over the vox. Every few seconds would see a new cut ripped open in Curze’s armour or slashed across his face. He was fast enough to avoid death at the Lion’s hands, but not skilful enough to flawlessly defend against every attack.
‘I never cared for swords,’ Curze weaved under the carving blade, thrusting out with both claws. The Lion tilted back, his balance executed to preternatural perfection. Curze’s claws shredded the ivory tabard, barely scratching the layered ceramite beneath.
‘There exists nothing of elegance inside you.’ The Lion turned the blade in his hands, parrying another dual-claw strike with his single blade. ‘And nothing of loyalty. For a time, I considered you my truest brother. No others grew untouched by civilisation, only you and I.’
Curze licked his sharpened teeth, eyes narrowed with effort. ‘You should be with us, brother. Even your own Legion senses it. The First Legion’s strife is not unknown to the Warmaster.’
‘There is no strife.’
Their blades locked in that moment, Curze catching the Lion’s sword in the net of his linked claws.
‘No?’ The Night Lord spat the word as a curse. ‘No risk of the fair Angels falling? When did you last walk upon the soil of Caliban, oh proud one?’
The Lion smiled – the first time Curze had ever seen it – but the movement of his brother’s lips still did nothing to warm his statuesque visage. Stone gave off more warmth than that smirk. He gave no answer beyond the smile.
Curze returned it, just as insincere, just as lifeless. In that moment, he stopped fighting, ceased his measured duelling, and leapt at his brother with a howl. Where the warring primarchs had represented the pinnacle of human possibility in warfare, now the Lion’s poise, skill and grace counted for nothing. They brawled as brothers, rolling across the ground, hands at each other’s throats.
When the tumbling ended, Curze knelt atop the Lion. Pinkish saliva sprayed from his pale lips as he bore down on his brother, claws clasped to strangle, to inflict that most slow and intimate of murders, when slayer and slain stare into each other’s eyes.
‘Die,’Curze breathed. Desperation ruined his voice, rasping it from bleeding lips. ‘You should never have survived that tainted world you call home.’
The Lion’s armoured hands grasped his brother’s throat in mirror response, but the Night Lord’s advantage was crystal clear. Curze shook the Lion’s neck in his fists, cracking his brother’s head against the rocky ground again and again and again.
‘ Die now, brother. History will be kinder to you this way.’