Corswain had broken horses as part of his squire training back on Caliban. Instinct made him tense the first time a horse bucked beneath him, and his rigid muscles had seen him easily thrown from the beast’s back. To break a horse, especially the proud and muscled chargers so prized by the home world’s knights, required as much grace and care as it did raw strength. The key was to move with the horse, to stay balanced, for the rider to keep his muscles loose and flexible in order to adapt to whatever tricks the creature might try. Corswain hadn’t thought of those days in a long time, but the bucking, thrashing ride he endured now brought it all rushing back. He knew he couldn’t have been on the primarch’s back for more than a handful of seconds, but it already felt like an age.
Curze twisted again, with enough force this time that the Angel lost his grip on the heavy chain. Corswain ended his tumbling fall by crashing against a stone pillar, the impact of his armour plating taking a huge chunk from the dense stone. He’d been shrugged off like a bothersome insect. Even strangled, beaten, bleeding, cut and stabbed, Curze had hurled him aside with almost no effort at all.
He hurt. Blood of the Emperor, he hurt. But he scrambled back to his feet, reaching for his sword in the dirt. If he could–
The shadow fell over him. Something hit – a mountain avalanche against his left side – throwing him back into the air. The ground spun, became the heavens, became both earth and sky at once. Corswain felt himself thudding along the rocky earth until he crashed to a rest against a stone wall.
For a moment, all he could taste and see was dust and blood, blessedly knocked insensitive to the protests of his tormented body.
The dull-witted invulnerability passed all too quickly, leaving him at the mercy of his injuries. His head was a swollen globe of blunt pain, contained by the helm that prevented his skull from coming to pieces. Agony replaced strength in his body; his entire left side felt shattered, literally broken into fragments. When he rose, it was with a scream of spasming effort. Only one leg and one arm obeyed his needs. One shattered eye lens showed a flawed, lagging view of the foundation site. The other showed nothing at all. He was blind in that eye, feeling something hot, wet and useless now occupying the broken socket. Three teeth fell from his lips as he voiced a second scream. They rattled at the base of his helmet.
Through what remained of his vision, he saw his liege lord standing once more. The Lion, a bleeding statue, advanced on Curze with sword in hand. In turn, Curze readied his claws. Several of the talon-blades were broken, scattered over the ground. They came together yet again, weapons sparking and flaring.
Corswain’s muscles ached with the sudden influx of chemical stimulants as his armour’s internal systems sought to keep him alive. He doubted it would work for long. Something dense and heavy hung in his chest, turning each breath into breathing fire. Something had burst within him, he was certain of it. Acidic spittle ran from his lips, pooling at his sealed collar. He’d drown in his own blood and spit if he didn’t get his helm off soon, or at least unseal the mouth-grille.
A figure obstructed his view of the primarchs. A figure with a spear in its hands.
‘Not much left of you, is there?’ Sevatar chuckled in a low, crackling vox-voice.
‘The moons are crying,’ Corswain breathed, and crashed down to his knees. His fading eye stared skywards, watching as the moons wept fire.
XVI
THE FIRST DROP-pod hammered home into a gravel slope, sending ashy stones spraying out in a burst of debris. Heat-shielding on its black hull glowed from the atmospheric descent, while the whining turbines hissed with vented steam. Sealant bolts popped with gunshot cracks, and the pod’s sides opened with all the crude grace of a mechanical flower. The Dark Angels emerged with their bolters up and firing.
The second landed cleaner, followed by the third and fourth. All three struck home across the crater, spilling their knights onto the construction site.
‘How quickly the tide turns.’ Corswain was grinning bloodily behind his helm now. The shadows vanished. Sevatar and Sheng fled as abruptly as they’d descended.
Rattling like hailstones, more drop-pods fell from above. Some were blackened by allegiance, others by the atmospheric fire. Both fleets in orbit disgorged warriors onto the surface, even as they were surely battling in the void. Here on the ground, Corswain could barely see anything at all. He heard the Legions meeting in the skidding clashes of chainblades on ceramite, and the insistent crash of bolters, but saw precious little. With the hand that still obeyed him, he dragged his helmet off, wincing as the cold night air hit his savaged face.
The Lion was in similar ruin, surrounded by his black-clad warriors. Blood sheeted down the back of his head, a liquid cloak down his shoulders. Corswain had no idea how he still lived with so little of his skull intact.
Curze laughed – at least, he began to – before his own warriors began to drag him back just as the Angels dragged the Lion. The two primarchs staggered back from one another, cursing each other above their sons’ heads, both hindered by weakened limbs and grievous wounds that made the air stink with their genetically divine blood.
The great sword impaled the ground as it fell from the Angel Lord’s grip, while Curze could no longer lift his claws.
Corswain felt himself sliding back down to the ground despite his attempt at moving to the primarch’s side. Strong hands pulled at him, hauling him up, forcing him to do what his muscles wouldn’t allow. He turned his head, seeing with his good eye.
‘Alajos,’ he said.
‘The captain is dead, Your Grace. It is I, Sergeant Tragan.’
‘Sevatar is here. Watch for him. He is here, I swear it. He killed Alajos. I saw it happen.’
‘Yes, Your Grace. Come… this way. Thunderhawks are inbound.’ Across the vox, he yelled to every surviving soul, ‘First Legion, fall back!’
Corswain limped in his brother’s arms, vaguely wondering if he was dying. It felt like it, though never having died before, it was a guess.
‘You’re not dying, Your Grace,’ Sergeant Tragan laughed now. Corswain hadn’t realised he was murmuring out loud.
His last vision was of the primarchs, both near driven to their knees, surrounded by growing phalanxes of their armoured sons. Curze reached his claws for the Lion, snarling and cursing, too weak to resist his Legion dragging him from the field. The Lion’s reaction was a foul mirror, made all the more hideous because of the warlord’s majesty. He screamed oaths from his bleeding, angelic face, pulled back from the battle by his own sons.
Above the battle, he heard Sevatar’s cry. ‘Death to the False Emperor! Death to his Angels in Black!’His skin crawled in the wake of those words. Such conviction. Such hate.
‘The Thramas Crusade,’ Corswain sighed. ‘They are right, all of them. This war is just beginning.’
‘Your Grace?’
‘My sword,’ Corswain reached a hand out, as if he could touch the opposing groups of warriors.
‘Where is it, Your Grace?’
‘Gone,’ Corswain closed his remaining eye. ‘I left it in a primarch’s spine.’
XVII
THE BEAST NEVER dies in his dreams.
He watches it slink through the trees, keeping its sinuous body low to the ground, its movements fluid enough to be sickening and boneless. Its ears rake back flat against its head, while its clawed paws are silent on the deep snow. The creature hunts, eager but passionless, its dead cat’s eyes glinting with emotionless hunger.