The Talon of Horus

192 Pages·2016·1.67 MB·English

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the
Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million
worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power
from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand
souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets
cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by
the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his
name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space
Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum
and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the
Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold
off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most
bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and
science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and
understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars,
only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
For my brother Rob, who knows everything worth knowing. With a special thanks for that month we
(read: he) spent constructing the most sacred of gaming rooms: The Aaronorium.
And as always, for my son Alexander, whose first birthday was a few weeks before I started writing this
brain-eating daemon of a novel, and whose second was a few weeks before I finished it. My heart beats
for you, Shakes.
‘//’’#
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
In alphabetical order

THE ANAMNESIS
Advanced machine-spirit reigning over the warship Tlaloc, born of Forge Ceres on Sacred Mars.
- , ‘ ’
ASHUR KAI QEZREMAH THE WHITE SEER
XV Legion warrior, born of Terra. Sorcerer of the Kha’Sherhan warband and voidseer of the warship
Tlaloc.
CERAXIA
Mechanicum Adept, born of Sacred Mars. Governess of the foundry world Gallium, and Lady of Niobia
Halo.
DJEDHOR
XV Legion warrior, born of Terra. Lost to the Rubric of Ahriman.

EZEKYLE ABADDON
XVI Legion warrior, born of Cthonia. Former First Captain of the Sons of Horus, former High Chieftain
of the Justaerin. Commander of the warship Vengeful Spirit.
, ‘ ’
FABIUS THE PRIMOGENITOR
III Legion warrior, born of Chemos. Former Chief Apothecary of the Emperor’s Children, and
commander of the warship Pulchritudinous.
, ‘ ’
FALKUS KIBRE WIDOWMAKER
XVI Legion warrior, born of Cthonia. Chieftain of the Duraga kal Esmejhak warband, and commander
of the warship Baleful Eye. Former commander of the Justaerin.
GYRE
Daemon, born from the Sea of Souls. Bound to Iskandar Khayon.
IMPERIOUS
The Solar Priest; Avatar of the Astronomican, born of the God-Emperor’s will.

ISKANDAR KHAYON
XV Legion warrior, born of Prospero. Sorcerer of the Kha’Sherhan warband and commander of the
warship Tlaloc.
KADALUS ORLANTIR
III Legion warrior, born of Chemos. Sardar of the Emperor’s Children 16th, 40th and 51st Companies
warband, and commander of the warship Perfection’s Lament.

KUREVAL SHAIRAK
XVI Legion warrior, born of Terra. Warrior of the Duraga kal Esmejhak warband and member of the
Justaerin.
, ‘ ’
LHEORVINE UKRIS FIREFIST
XII Legion warrior, born of Nuvir’s Landing. Leader of the Fifteen Fangs warband, and commander of
the warship Jaws of the White Hound.
MEKHARI
XV Legion warrior, born of Prospero. Lost to the Rubric of Ahriman.
NEFERTARI
Eldar huntress, Trueborn of Commorragh. Bloodward to Iskandar Khayon.

THE RAGGED KNIGHT
Daemon, born from the Sea of Souls. Bound to Iskandar Khayon.

SARGON EREGESH
XVII Legion warrior-priest, born of Colchis. Chaplain of the Brazenhead Chapter.

TELEMACHON LYRAS
III Legion warrior, born of Terra. Subcommander of the Emperor’s Children 16th, 40th and 51st
Companies warband, and captain of the warship Threat of Rapture.
TOKUGRA
Daemon, born from the Sea of Souls. Bound to Ashur-Kai Qezremah.
’
TZAH Q
Mutant (Homo sapiens variatus), born of Sortiarius. Strategium overseer aboard the Tlaloc.

UGRIVIAN CALASTE
XII Legion warrior, born of Nuvir’s Landing. Soldier of the Fifteen Fangs warband.
, ‘ ’
VALICAR THE GRAVEN
IV Legion warrior, born of Terra. Guardian of the foundry world Gallium, and commander of the
warship Thane.
TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT
999.M41
Before the beginning, there was an end.
As I speak these words, a quill scratches quietly on parchment, faithfully recording everything I say.
The soft sounds of writing are almost companionable. How quaint, that my scribe uses ink, pen and
parchment.
I do not know his true name, or if he even possesses one any more. I have asked several times but the
scratching quill is my only reply. Perhaps he has nothing more than a serial code. That would not be
uncommon.
‘I will call you Thoth,’ I tell him. He offers no response to this courtesy. I inform him it was the name of
an ancient and renowned Prosperine scribe. He doesn’t reply. Imagine my disappointment.
I do not know what he looks like. My hosts, caring and gracious souls that they are, have blinded me,
shackled me to a stone wall, and invited me to confess my sins. I am reluctant to call them my ‘captors’,
when I walked unarmed into their midst and surrendered without violence. ‘Hosts’ seems a fairer term.
On the first night, my hosts took my first and sixth senses, leaving me sightless and powerless in the
dark.
So I do not know what my scribe looks like, but I can guess. He is a servitor, doubtless like millions of
others. I hear his heart, as passionless as the stately ticking of a musician’s metrogauge. His cyborged
joints whirr and click as he moves, and his breathing is a verse of measured sighs through a slack mouth. I
never hear him blink. Most likely his eyes have been replaced by augmetics.
Commencing a chronicle like this requires honesty, and these are the only words that feel true. Before
the beginning, there was an end. This is how the Sons of Horus died. This is how the Black Legion rose.
The Black Legion’s story begins with the assault on Canticle City. That was where everything changed,
where the sons of several Legions went to battle together against a blasphemy we could not allow to
stand. It was the last time we went to war in the colours of our old Legions.
But such a tale requires context.
There is an era recorded in the annals of Imperial history that has suffered as all recollections must
suffer in time, with its details twisted into a mockery of remembrance. This was an age of relative peace
and prosperity, when the fires of the Horus Heresy had settled down to ash, and mankind’s empire ruled
over the galaxy with an unchallenged grip.
What few archives survive to record this ‘golden age’ in any detail now hearken back to it in reverent
whispers as the chronometers tick closer to midnight in this last, dark millennium.
Picture that domain, if you can. An empire across the stars, united and invincible – its foes destroyed,
its traitors scoured. Any soul crying out against the worship of the ‘divine’ Emperor suffers the ultimate
punishment, forfeiting life for the sin of speaking blasphemy. Any xenos-breed within Imperial space is
hunted down and slaughtered with merciless impunity. Mankind had a strength then that it lacks now. The
true decline of the Emperor’s interstellar domain hadn’t yet begun.
Still, a tumour lingered. The Imperium hadn’t destroyed its foes. Not completely. It had merely forgotten
them. Forgotten us.
Peace, for the first time in humanity’s long history, had been built upon the proud ignorance that follows
the bitterest victory. Already, mere generations after the galaxy burned, the Heresy and the Scouring that
followed were falling into legend.
The High Lords of Terra – those worthies who ruled in their ‘ascended’ Emperor’s name – believed us
gone. Believed us ruined or slain, in our shameful exile. Amongst themselves, they sowed stories of our
banishment to an underworld, dwelling in eternal torment inside the Great Eye. After all, what mortal
could survive within the greatest warp storm ever unleashed across reality? A vortex of annihilation in the
galaxy’s heart made for a convenient method of execution: a pit into which this new empire could cast its
traitors.
In those earliest days, the fortress that would become the war-world of Cadia was a neglected outpost
of cold rock and complacence. It needed no vast battlefleet to patrol its domain in the void, and its
population was spared the fate it suffers now, as its governor-militants feed the population into the flesh-
grinders of the Imperial Guard, swallowing children and spitting out soldiers destined to die.
The Cadia of that lost age needed nothing at all, for it was scarcely threatened. The Imperium was
strong because its foes no longer raised blades to bring down its False Emperor.
We had other wars to wage. We were fighting each other. These were the Legion Wars. They raged
across the Eye with a fury that made a mockery of the Horus Heresy.
We were forgetting the Imperium as much as the Imperium was forgetting us, though over time our
battles began to spill into real space. Hell itself couldn’t contain the grudges we bore each other.
I have promised to reveal everything, and I am a man of my word, no matter the sins that my jailors
believe stain my soul. In return, they have promised me all the ink and parchment necessary to document
my words. They have crucified me, knowing it will not kill me. They have stolen the sorcery from my
blood, and they have torn my eyes from their sockets. But I do not need eyes to dictate this chronicle. All I
need is patience and a little slack on my chains.
The Black Legion’s tale is the story of the lost souls who came together in Abaddon’s name, forming
new bonds of brotherhood. And the Black Legion’s rise from the ashes is, first of all, the story of the
search for the one we would call Warmaster.
Here I commit to parchment the first chapter of a tale that lasts ten thousand years, with moments of
loss, triumph, ruination and vindication. The rolls of the dead list the names of some of my closest
brothers and sisters, their lives sacrificed in this sacred war. I dream of them now, when once I dreamed
of wolves.
It falls to me to tell this tale. So be it.
I am Iskandar Khayon, born of Prospero. In the Low Gothic of the Terran Urals region, you would speak
Iskandar as Sekhandur, and Khayon as Caine.
The Thousand Sons know me as Khayon the Black, for my sins against our bloodline. My Warmaster’s
forces name me Kingbreaker – the mage who brought Magnus the Red to his knees.
I am the Warleader of the Kha’Sherhan, a Lord of the Ezekarion, and a brother to Ezekyle Abaddon. I
shed blood with him at the dawn of the Long War, when the first of us stood armoured in black beneath the
rising red sun.
Every word on these pages is true.
From shame and shadow recast.
In black and gold reborn.