Warmaster
John French


‘Warmaster…’

 	The word hung in the silence as it left Horus’s lips. Beyond the high crystalflex windows, the light of distant stars hung in sickly folds of gas and dust. Armoured and enthroned, the Primarch of the XVI Legion gazed into the shadows as though waiting for an answer.

 	‘The title is heavy around my neck. Horus. Lupercal. Father, son, friend, enemy – all are lost beneath the weight of that one word.’

 	He turned his head, looking to the black iron arms of the throne. His eyes moved over the bronze of a mace as tall as a mortal man. It was called Worldbreaker, and he had accepted it from his father’s hand along with the title of Warmaster and command of the Great Crusade. His gaze came to rest upon the eagle-head pommel. A ghost of a smile touched his lips.

 	‘Our father never spoke of what it meant, only the limits of its authority. A dangerous word to leave unqualified. Perhaps he intended me to discover its meaning. Perhaps he did not care what it meant, as long as it freed him from us, his sons. Perhaps he did not know what it would mean for his Imperium.’

 	Horus raised his hand, and a column of hololithic light filled the air before the throne. The shapes of men and women formed in the grainy projection – twisting, shouting, dying, their pleas and screams looping over and over as the thunder of bolter fire rolled through the silence.

 	‘He knows now.’

 	He nodded to himself, the reflected light of the hololith flickering across the liquid black of his eyes.

 	‘The fire is lit, and all that was is cast to the wind. We are committed – he and I, my brothers and our Legions. All humanity’s futures bound together in this circle of blood. We are all the storm now. The Imperium will fall and rise by my hand. Or fall, and fall, and fall.’

 	Slowly he stood, his armour whispering and clicking. He gestured again, and more cones of cold light surrounded him, turning with images of blind faces. Some screamed, with words, blood and smoke spewing forth from their mouths, while others droned on in their dead, monotonous voices. Horus inclined his head, listening.

 	‘All is blood and the screams of change. Anarchy is this age’s king. We fall apart and this war slips from our fingers to spin into oblivion,’ he said, his voice clear even over the cacophony.

 	Horus turned, watching the holographic recordings bloom around him, and the throne room danced with the ghost-light of a thousand messages.

 	‘Isstvan was supposed to burn in silence so that our war could be won before it ever truly began. The Angel’s wings were to be broken at my feet. And still failures come tumbling one over the other. And on, and on.’

 	He paused, his eyes fixed upon the image of a shrunken astropath.

 	‘Calth burned, yet our brother lives. Roboute. Wise Roboute. Roboute with his scratching quills, his plans and his hope. Too understanding, too strong. Too damned perfect.’ Horus let out a long breath, and turned back to his empty throne. ‘I wish he was with us.’

 	With a flick of his bladed fingers, the throng of images vanished and silence flowed back with the returning shadows. Horus shook his head, his eyes still fixed upon the throne.

 	‘You would say that I listened too much to Alpharius and Lorgar – that a war fought with deceit is doomed to fail. Perhaps you would be right. The Hydra does not see all, and now his blindness places a knife at his own back. Corax would not have made such an error.’

 	He gave a mirthless laugh.

 	‘Strange is it not, that so many I wish beside me stand against me, while at my back are only the flawed and damaged. I am a master of broken monsters.’

 	Slowly he began to circle the edge of the great hololithic table, the sound of his footsteps lost in the echoing silence.

 	‘I cannot control them or their sons, and they know it. Mortarion and Perturabo and the rest, they can all feel it. They all know that this war is no longer something that can be guided, only ridden out. But they never understood me, not truly, and they understand less with each passing second. They doubt. They think that I have lost my way. I can see it in their hearts – the pettiness, the pride, the seeds of ruin driving them on, feeding the tempest. With such creatures must I remake the future!’

 	He stopped again at the foot of the throne, and reached out. His hand closed over Worldbreaker’s haft. With casual ease he raised it up, so that the chamber’s thin light caught every dent and scar on the polished metal.

 	‘A thousand battles. Ten thousand. Ten times ten times ten thousand, to bring about the new age. All of the certainties of the past torn down, all the beliefs that made them turned to ashes. War on every front, stretched across time until none can know when the final blow will come. There is no disaster, for all disasters serve me alone. The storm rises only so that the thunderbolt may fall.’

 	He looked down at the throne again, shaking his head sadly. His arm relaxed and Worldbreaker rested at his side. His gaze shifted, as though he were looking at something beyond what lay in front of him.

 	‘No other would have dared this. Not even you. Perhaps that is why our father chose me. Perhaps that was his only moment of honesty.’ Then his gaze focused and hardened, black eyes like reflective pools in the face of an unforgiving king. 

 	Upon the arm of the throne, the skull of Ferrus Manus stared back at Horus with empty sockets that had once been eyes. A thin fracture-web of cracks ran across the perfect dome of the slain primarch’s crown, spiralling back to a splintered pit in its temple. Even reduced to polished bone, the skull still seemed to radiate strength and defiance.

 	‘It does not matter how the galaxy burns, only that it does. Warmaster – that is what it means, my brother. The strength to do what must be done.’