The foul irony of the moment settled on his shoulders, feeling grotesquely apt. He couldn’t move his legs. His body was a temple to nothing but pain. He could barely even see his executioner, for his psychic efforts had left him quivering with both weakness and a vision-blurring ache in his mind. A faint outline met his gaze, the blurred image of scythe-blades raised high.
‘Do it!’ Lorgar screamed at his brother.
The claw fell, and struck opposing metal.
Corax looked to meet eyes as black as his, in a face as pale as his own. His claw strained against a mirroring weapon, both sets of blades scraping as they ground against each other. One claw seeking to fall and kill, the other unyielding in its rising defence.
Where the Raven Guard primarch’s features were fierce with effort, the other face wore a grin. It was a smile both taut and mirthless – a dead man’s smile, once his lips surrendered to rigor mortis.
‘Corax,’ said the other primarch.
‘Curze,’ Corax said the name as the curse it was.
‘Look into my eyes,’ said the progenitor of the Night Lords Legion, ‘and see your death.’
Corax sought to wrench his claw free, but Curze’s second gauntlet closed on his brother’s wrist. ‘No,’ Curze’s laughter as was joyless as his smile. ‘Do not fly away, little raven. Stay. We are not finished, you and I.’
‘Konrad,’ Corax tried. ‘Why have you done this?’
Curze ignored the plea. He turned his void-like eyes on the prone Lorgar, with disgust written plain across his carcass face. ‘Rise from your knees, you accursed coward.’
Lorgar sought to do just that, using his brother’s midnight-blue armour as a crutch to haul himself to his feet. Curze bared his sharpened teeth. ‘You are the foulest weakling I have ever seen, Lorgar.’
Corax was not idle as this exchange took place. He fired his flight pack, burning his fuel reserves to escape Curze’s grip. The Raven Lord’s claw ripped free, and Corax soared skyward, carried on jet thrust away from Curze’s rising laughter.
On the ground, Curze shook himself free of Lorgar. ‘Sevatar,’ he spoke into the vox. ‘The Raven comes to you, to free his men.’
Battle sounds. Bolter fire. The roar of tank engines. ‘We will deal with him, lord.’
‘See that you do.’ Curze shoved Lorgar back towards his Word Bearers. Around them both, the grey Legion warred with the warriors in black. ‘I am done with you, golden one. Go back to killing Astartes with your pretty hammer.’
Lorgar’s preternatural biology was regenerating his damaged tissue with alacrity, but the primarch was shivery and weak as he reached for the fallen crozius.
‘Thank you, Konrad.’
Curze spat at Lorgar’s feet. ‘I will let you die next time. And if you...’
The Night Lord trailed off, his black eyes narrowing as he watched the figures appearing at Lorgar’s side. Their armour was crimson ceramite and ridged bone. Great claws, both metallic weapons and fleshy, jointed talons, extended from bestial arms. Every helm was horned. Every faceplate was split by a daemon’s skullish leer.
‘You are so much more than merely foul,’ Curze turned his back. ‘You are rancid in your corruption.’
Lorgar watched his brother stalking back through the ranks of Night Lords and Word Bearers, wading through them to reach the Raven Guard once more. Soon enough, the silver claws began to rise and fall as they always had, shearing through the armoured bodies of Curze’s enemies.
Lorgar turned to the Gal Vorbak. ‘Argel Tal,’ he smiled at one of them, knowing him instantly.
The creature grunted, twitchy with the need to shed blood. ‘It is I, sire.’
‘The warriors I would need,’ Lorgar murmured the old words with awe tainting his breath. ‘Truly, you are blessed by the gods. Go. Hunt. Kill.’
The Gal Vorbak withdrew from their lord, launching themselves back into the battle with leaps and snarls. Argel Tal lingered. A claw of ceramite and bone closed on Lorgar’s arm.
‘Father. I could not reach you in time.’
‘It does not matter. I live still. Hunt well, my son.’
The daemon nodded and obeyed.
Thunderhawk gunships in the colours of the Raven Guard and the Salamanders exploded at the launch site as the Iron Warriors turned their weapons from the slaughter and targeted the loyalists’ only avenues of escape.
Despite the grind of battle, dozens of the landing craft managed to make it back into the air. Most of these were soon sent spiralling back down to earth, streaming black smoke from lascannon wounds in propulsion systems. The Iron Warriors fired with impunity, caring nothing that many of the downed gunships fell groundward into the battle still being waged. The burning hulls of destroyed Astartes craft rained onto the killing fields, pulverising Word Bearers and Night Lords more often than they crashed into the few remaining pockets of Raven Guard and Salamanders survivors.
When contacted by Legion commanders protesting the careless destruction, the Iron Warriors captains replied with laughter that bordered on betrayal.
‘We are all bleeding today,’ an Iron Warriors captain voxed back to Kor Phaeron. ‘Have faith, Word Bearer.’ The link went dead to the sound of chuckling.
Time ceased to have any meaning for Argel Tal. When he was not killing, he was moving, hunting, seeking something else to kill. His claws savaged any Raven Guard warrior that came within his grip. Corax had thinned the ranks of the Gal Vorbak before Lorgar’s intercession, but enough of the chosen sons remained to form a feral pack that led their Legion, cutting into the diminishing foe.
In battle, he changed. His was not the ascendant consciousness. He ceded a measure of control to Raum, the surrender coming as naturally as breathing: it seemed simply a function of his new form. The daemon in possession added strength to even his lighter blows, and tore chunks from his enemies even as Argel Tal sought only to clutch onto them. His every motion was made feverish, hungrier somehow, drenched in blood and inhuman needs. As he wrapped his claws around a Raven Guard’s throat with the intent to strangle, his talons sank into the warrior’s neck and hooked around his spine. Every motion was instinctively more violent, breeding more pain in those foolish enough to stand before him.
Many of the Raven Guard sought to run. Argel Tal let these live, knowing his grey-armoured kin would cut these down with their bolters. It was a chore to resist the animalistic need to chase down prey – just seeing them flee from him was enough to tense his muscles into the desire for pursuit – but he knew his role in this war. He was a warrior, not a hunter.
A connection he’d not known existed went hollow and cold, and he felt, rather than saw, Dagotal die.
You are all bound. Blessed and bound.
A second of pain, like the memory of an old wound, and a curious loss stole over him. It was a lessening, as if the warmth of the sun had fallen behind a greying sky. The momentary chill passed, but the knowledge of his brother’s demise was etched into him, as cold as a stone in his skull.
He died in fire. Raum’s voice was as ecstatic as it was breathless. A cascade of chopping images flickered in Argel Tal’s mind, showing Dagotal engulfed in flame, surrounded by Raven Guard bearing flamer units. They bathed him in the corrosive fire, layering chemical propellant over his mutated armour, stoic against the unbelievable stench their murder was making.
The images flashed away, and Argel Tal dropped the corpse he’d strangled. Immediately, the need took him again. Like a hunger, a need for satiation, he physically ached unless he was moving toward prey. And he knew this ferocious need was the only emotion the neverborn could ever feel. This was how their minds worked – in stunted, brutal instinct.