This was, and wasn’t, a surprise to Argel Tal. It didn’t take a prophet to predict the primarch would speak after this compliance, but to have it framed as some first step on a new odyssey was both captivating and unnerving.
‘I lament that the Chaplain brotherhood kept this from us, but I thank you for speaking at last.’
‘There was little to tell before the primarch’s return today. It‘s no secret, in truth.’ Warmth returned to Xaphen’s craggy face as he smiled. ‘I expect word is filtering through the Legion even now. Aurelian will meet us in the heart of the city, once we’ve extinguished the last of this world’s unholy life. And this time, when the Legion kneels in the dust of a dead city, it will be because that city died in righteous flame.’
The vox chose that moment to crackle back to life.
‘Sir? Sir?’
‘This is Argel Tal. Speak, Torgal.’
‘Captain, I apologise for another unpleasant surprise, but you won’t believe what I’m looking at.’
Argel Tal swore under his breath, the clipped Colchisian syllables not carrying over the vox. He was growing tired of hearing those words on this world.
The five warriors killed in silence, their glaives spinning with the force and speed of turbine rotors, lashing through limbs and torsos with the ease of knives through mist. At last, with the Legion breaching deep into the city, Imperial forces encountered human resistance. The army of constructs seemed defeated, reduced to scattered pockets. It fell to the militia and the civilian population to die fighting, taking to the streets armed with weapons that would prove useless, seeking to squander their lives rather than surrender them.
Small-arms fire clattered from the warriors’ gold-wrought armour as they battled through the crowded street. The militia squads against them carried rifles that spat a solid shot not far removed from the smallest-calibre bolter shells. The culture’s ancestral connection to humanity’s pre-Imperial era was proven beyond dispute – and yet they were damned by their deviance.
Despite their worthless weaponry, they stood their ground in cover or arrayed in firing lines until they were overwhelmed. Their planet was finished and their final city was aflame. With nowhere to run, most simply didn’t try. They died in their uniforms, which were the same grey as the city’s architecture. Faceplates of clear glass shattered under stabbing blades as the spear-bearing warriors scythed into another phalanx of human militia.
The Custodes leader was obvious as he led the advance, his conic helm crested with a plume of red horsehair. In his hands, an immense two-handed sword span in blurring arcs, rising and falling, stabbing and carving. People tumbled away from him, some of them screaming, all of them falling to pieces in his wake. He killed and killed and killed, never missing a lethal strike, never slowing in his advance. Beneath his feet, the road ran red – the beginnings of a sick river, sourced by blood.
‘Aquillon,’ said Argel Tal from his vantage point above the carnage. He shook his head as he spoke the name. Unfeigned awe softened his voice. ‘I’ve never seen a Custodian fight.’
Several Word Bearers crouched at the lip of a roof overlooking the street. Argel Tal, Torgal, and the sergeant’s assault squad. The golden warriors moved ahead with consummate grace, the dance of their blades eclipsing anything a mortal could perform.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Torgal said. ‘Should we join them?’
From below, a shout rose above the butchery. For the Emperor – a battlecry that hadn’t left a Word Bearer’s lips since Monarchia. Strange, how it sounded almost alien to Argel Tal’s ears.
‘No,’ the captain replied. ‘Not yet.’
Torgal watched for several more moments, one finger idly stroking his chainword’s trigger. ‘There’s something about the way they fight,’ he said. ‘Some flaw that I can’t make out.’
Argel Tal watched Aquillon, the Custodian’s blade reaving its way through countless lives, and saw nothing of the kind. He said so.
Torgal shook his head, still watching. ‘I can’t form the thought. They lack... something. They’re fighting... wrong.’
And this time, as soon as Argel Tal returned his gaze to the battle in the street, he saw it instantly. The way the Custodes fought seemed almost identical to the Astartes; it took a trained eye to see the subtle differences. The captain had missed it first by focusing on a single warrior. The moment he took in the full view...
‘There,’ said Argel Tal. ‘I see it, too.’
Was it a flaw? Perhaps by the standards of the Astartes, who waged war and lived life with brotherhood etched into their genetic codes. But Custodes were the sons of a more rarefied and time-consuming process – the biological manipulation that gave birth to the Emperor’s guardians bred warriors who weren’t shackled by bonds of loyalty to anyone except their Imperial overlord.
‘They’re not brothers,’ Argel Tal said. ‘Watch how they move. See how each one fights his own war, alone, unsupported by the others. They’re not like us. These are warriors, not soldiers.’
The thought made his skin crawl. It must have had the same effect on Torgal, for he voiced the words on his captain’s mind.
‘Lions,’ the sergeant said. ‘They’re lions, not wolves, hunting alone instead of as a pack. Gold,’ he added, and tapped the chestplate of his armour, ‘not grey.’
‘Good eyes, brother.’ Argel Tal still stared intently. Now he was aware of the disunity, it was all he could focus on. Here was a weakness, a savage one, masked only by the heroic skills of each warrior and the worthlessness of the enemies they faced.
A ripple of unease shivered through him as he bore witness. Those ancient words of the Emperor came to him, that first creed of the Legiones Astartes: And they shall know no fear.
Argel Tal was one of those who took the creed in its most literal sense, believing the sensitivity to feel fear was rewritten out of him at the genetic level. But even so, watching these brotherless cousins fight chilled him to his core. They lacked so much, despite their individual perfection.
‘In standing free of brotherhood,’ he said, ‘they also sacrifice its strengths. The tactics of a pack. The trust in those who fight by your side. I suspect the secrets woven into their body and blood gene-bind them to a higher loyalty – perhaps their only brother is the Emperor himself.’
Torgal was as perceptive as ever. ‘You no longer admire them,’ he said. ‘I hear it in your voice.’
Argel Tal smiled, choosing to let his silence answer for him.
Beneath them, the Custodians fought on. ‘That looks like trouble,’ one of the assault squad gestured down the road. They watched as a glass construct stalked into the avenue from a side street, and began to make its way down the thoroughfare towards the golden warriors.
Now Argel Tal rose to his feet. ‘Come, brothers. Let’s see how the wolves hunt with the lions.’
‘By your word,’ they chorused in perfect unity, and ten sets of thrusters howled as one.
Aquillon’s greeting was cautious. He made the sign of the aquila across his breastplate, where the Emperor’s two-headed eagle symbol was already in ornate evidence.
‘Hail, captain.’
Argel Tal returned the salute, crashing a fist against his chestpiece over his heart – the sign of Imperial allegiance in the Terran Unification Wars.
‘Custodian. A pleasure to be of service,’ Argel Tal gestured one of his blades at the ruined construct. It lay dead in the road, cut and battered, surrounded by slain militia.
‘A curious greeting, captain, to use a salute that fell out of favour before the Great Crusade even began.’
The Word Bearers formed up behind and around Argel Tal, just as the Custodians came to Aquillon’s side. It wasn’t quite a standoff, but none of the warriors were blind to the spectre of tension between them.