Squares up with Valdor

‘Constantin!’ Russ cried out, throwing himself from the still-racing Land Raider and crunching heavily to the ground. His blade, the one Imperial scholars called Balenight, but which the Wolves themselves called Mjalnar, gleamed with a malignant silver-white spitefulness.

The Wolf King marched up to the captain-general, pelts swinging about him. Other warriors jumped down from skidding Land Raiders – Varagyr Terminators bearing axes and frostblades, their liberally bloodied armour hung with fur scraps and bone totems.

Valdor waited for him, flanked by his own honour guard. The Custodians were taller than their counterparts, and no doubt more accomplished in some of the finer arts of combat, but there was something in the Varagyr’s latent menace, bleeding from them with every swaggered move, that chilled the blood.

‘What took you so damn long?’ Russ demanded, hawking up a gobbet of spittle and loosing on the ground. He went helmless, the only one of them there who did – a statement of arrogant confidence that struck Samonas as borderline crazed. ‘We’ve been killing witches without your Sisters to blunt their fangs.’

Valdor stiffened a little. ‘It was your wish to engage first, lord,’ he said.

‘True.’ Russ laughed. There was a strange light in those bestial eyes – Samonas thought he looked half mad. ‘True! But you took your time when the order came.’

Order. No living man gave the captain-general an order, save the one who had created him. ‘Our landings are completed,’ Valdor said calmly. ‘We advance on all fronts, and the Knight Commander’s sisterhoods are now deploying throughout the city.’

Russ growled low in his throat, a sound that made Samonas’ spine tingle. ‘This will throttle them now. This will crush them. Hel’s eyes, I have learned to hate these bastards, but still he eludes me.’

‘Is he even on this world?’ asked Valdor doubtfully. ‘We have detected nothing.’

Russ drew up to Valdor then. He was a little shorter, much broader, his armour stained and smeared where Valdor’s was pristine. ‘Oh, yes,’ he hissed, smiling in a disconcertingly feral manner. ‘I can smell him now. I can smell him hunkering down in his own filth, fearful of me.’

Valdor remained unmoved. ‘Even now, I would see him taken to Terra, if it could be done. I would wish to know why.’

Russ laughed, a coarse bark that sent more spittle flying into Valdor’s faceplate. ‘You’re still clinging to that? Ha!’ He turned away, swinging his greatblade casually. ‘I’ve known since I first saw this world that we would face one another. I did not come here for prisoners, Constantin. If my Father had truly wished for such, He would not have sent me.’

‘You were not sent alone, Lord Russ.’

Russ glanced back at Valdor, a sly smile on his fanged face. ‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ He laughed again, but it was an ice-cold sound. ‘You have the power of Magisterium, and wish to cling to it.’ Russ paced back to him again. He was always moving, restless, like a tempest bound up inside the sham-form of a man. ‘Don’t try to invoke the Lex with me. You claim to speak for my Father, but you’re not His blood, are you? Not like we are. That’s what really gets you, isn’t it? You’re His instruments. He’d toss you aside in an instant if He cared to. We, though. We. We’re family.’ Russ gave out a great belly-laugh then, amused by the idea. ‘You’ll never understand that.’

Valdor didn’t reply for an instant, seemingly genuinely nonplussed.

‘There are so many errors there,’ he said eventually, ‘I do not even know where to start.’

But a reply never came.

‘They stir!’ Russ roared joyously, running back to the Land Raider and leaping onto its chassis. The Wolves were crying out battle-cant, slamming their blades against their armour and slavering for action once more. ‘Try to keep up, Constantin – you’ll have to get your armour dirty sooner or later.’

And then the column powered up and thundered down the shattered avenue, followed by loping packs of Grey Hunters and whole contingents of bound Auxilia.

Samonas watched them go. The Aquilon guard remained static around them, their helm-faces magnificently blank. ‘Is he… in his right mind, lord?’ he ventured, looking up at Valdor enquiringly.

Valdor didn’t respond immediately. He watched the Wolves race into battle, whooping and hollering. It was impossible to gauge what he thought behind that ornate mask of auramite and carnelian.

‘Primarchs,’ he said finally, a single, withering expletive that sounded as close to a curse as the captain-general of the Ten Thousand would ever get.

Magisterium