THE DARK KING
Horus Heresy stories
by Graham McNeill
Where before there had been light, now there was only darkness. The hot, urgent pulse of near death surged in his veins, the bitter flavour of betrayal fully expected, yet wholly unwelcome. This was what it would come to he knew, this was the inevitable result of naive belief in the goodness of the human heart. Death filled his senses, blood coating his teeth and the sharp reek of it thick in his nostrils.
As though it were yesterday, long buried memories of years spent on the night world of Nostramo emblazoned themselves on the forefront of his thoughts: haunted darkness punctured by stuttering lumen strips that fizzed in the shimmering, rain-slick streets and the stillness of a population kept quiescent with fear.
From out of this foetid darkness had come illumination and hope, the promise of a better future. But now that hope was dashed as the bright lance of the future seared itself into his thoughts…
… the death of a world and a great eye of black and gold watching it burn…
… Astartes fighting to the death beneath a red-lit sky…
… a golden eagle cast from the heavens…
He screamed in pain as images of destruction and the end of all things paraded before his mind's eye. Voices called out to him. He heard his name, the name his father had bestowed upon him and the one his people had given him, in the fearful watches of the dark.
He opened his eyes and let the visions fade from his mind as the sensations of the physical world returned to him. Blood and salty tears stung his eyes and he looked over to the sound of voices calling his name.
Horrified faces stared at him in fear, but that was nothing new. Babble spewed from their mouths, but he could make nothing of it, the sense of the words lost in the screaming white noise filling his skull.
What sight could be so terrible? What could evoke such horror?
He looked down as he realised he squatted atop another, living, breathing figure.
A giant in torn golden robes, his bone-white hair spattered with gleaming ruby droplets.
A mantle of red velvet trimmed with golden weave spread out beneath him like a bloodstain.
Tanned, iron flesh. Opened and bleeding.
He took in the destruction wrought on the body beneath him, raising his hands, balled into fists. Blood dripped from his fingertips and he could taste the warm richness of the genetic mastery encoded into every molecule upon his teeth.
He knew this giant.
His name was legendary, his stony heart and mastery of war unmatched.
His name was Rogal Dorn.
He looked up again as he heard his own name, given voice by a warrior in the golden plate armour of the Imperial Fists who bore the black and white heraldry of its First Captain.
He knew this warrior too…
'Curze!' cried Sigismund. 'What have you done?'
The emptiness of space shimmered in the glow of distant suns beyond the armoured glass, faraway planets and unknown systems turning in their prescribed arcs without thought for the dramas being played out on the stage of human endeavour. What did those who lived beneath these suns know of the Cheraut system and the blood that had been shed to pacify it in the name of the emergent Imperium of Mankind?
Curze stifled the anger such questions provoked, staring into his reflection with cold, obsidian eyes that resembled empty sockets in his pallid, sunken features. Lank hair hung to his neck like black ropes and spilled across his wide, powerful shoulders, he turned from his reflection, uncomfortable with the dreadful disappointment he saw there.
Glinting metal caught his sullen gaze: his armour, standing in a shadowed alcove on the far wall. He crossed the chamber and placed his hand on the skull-faced helmet. The gem-like facets of its lenses winked in the low light and the sweeping dark wings rose from its sides like the pinions of some avenging angel of night. The burnished plates were dark, as befitted the Primarch of the Night Lords, each one contoured perfectly to his form and worked with gold edging that caught the starlight.
Turning from his battle armour, he paced the hard, metallic floor of the gloomy, cavernous chamber that confined him. Thick steel columns supported a great vaulted ceiling, its upper reaches lost in shadow, and the hum of the mighty starfort's reactor beat like a pulse in the metal.
This aesthetic of functional austerity was typical of the Imperial Fists, whose artifice had constructed this mighty orbital fortress as a base of operations with which to begin the compliance of the Cheraut system.
The Emperor's Children had held their traditional victory feast before the first shot had been fired and together with Fulgrim's Legion and the Night Lords, Rogal Dorn's Imperial Fists had broken open the defences of the belligerent human coalition that resisted the coming of the Imperium. Within eight months of hard, bloody fighting, the eagle flew above the smoking ruins of the last bastion, but where Dorn lauded Fulgrim's Legion, the conduct of the Night Lords had earned only his ire.
Matters had finally come to a head amid the silver ruins of Osmium.
Pyres of the dead stained the skies black and Curze had watched his chaplains orchestrating the executions of defeated prisoners when Dorn marched into his camp, his lean face thunderous. 'Curze!'
Never once had Rogal Dorn called him by his forename.
'Brother?' he had replied.
'Throne! What are you doing here?' demanded Dorn, his normal, affable tone swallowed in the depths of his outrage. A phalanx of gold-armoured warriors followed their lord and Curze had immediately sensed the tension in the air.
'Punishing the guilty,' he had answered coolly. 'Restoring order.'
The Primarch of the Imperial Fists shook his head. 'This not order, Curze, it is murder. Order your warriors to stand down. My Imperial Fists will take over this sector.'
'Stand down?' said Curze. 'Are they not the enemy?'
'Not any more,' said Dorn. 'They are prisoners now, but soon they will be a compliant population and part of the Imperium. Have you forgotten the Emperor's purpose in declaring the Great Crusade?'
'To conquer,' said Curze.
'No,' said Dorn, placing a golden gauntlet on his shoulder guard. 'We are liberators, not destroyers, brother. We bring the light of illumination, not death. We must govern with benevolence if these people are ever to recognise our authority in this galaxy.'
Curze flinched at the touch, resenting the easy friendship Dorn pretended. Bilious anger bubbled invisibly beneath his skin, but if Dorn was aware of it, he gave no sign.
'These people resisted us and must pay the penalty for that crime,' said Curze. 'Obedience to the Imperium will come from the fear of punishment, you know that as well as anyone, Dorn. Kill those that resisted and the others will learn the lesson that to oppose us is to die.'
Dorn shook his head, taking his aim to lead him away from the curious stares their healed discussion was attracting. 'You are wrong, but we should speak of this in private.'
'No,' said Curze, angrily shrugging off Dorn's grip. 'You think these people will bend the knee meekly to us because we show compassion? Mercy is for the weak and foolish. It will only breed corruption and eventual betrayal. Fear of reprisals will keep the rest of this planet in check, not benevolence.'