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Mortarion: The Pale King – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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One

A year ago

On the battle-barge Reaper’s Scythe

Mortarion strode the halls, and the crew scurried from his path, birds fleeing a storm. He had just returned to the ship, and was making his way from the docking bay to his quarters. He had stopped on the bridge to give terse instructions to the shipmaster, and the Reaper’s Scythe was making for the new coordinates, leaving the rest of the Death Guard fleet behind. Now, as he walked, silence spread before him, and anxiety drifted in his wake. He was cold anger and the promise of death sweeping through the gloom of the vaulted halls of his flagship. Even his sons knew better than to approach him. They all saw the thunder on his pallid brow, and gave him the solitude his fury commanded.

All of them except Calas Typhon. He had followed Mortarion from the bridge. The primarch was aware of his presence, two steps behind. Typhon was respecting Mortarion’s anger, but was also persistent with his presence. Finally, at the door to his quarters, Mortarion stopped and acknowledged the warrior.

‘Ask your question,’ he said. They were alone. Mortarion’s voice echoed off the bone-white pillars that stood like the ribs of a titanic beast down the length of the grand corridor.

‘Why are we heading back to Galaspar, my lord?’ Typhon asked.

‘Because the Emperor wills it.’

Typhon looked baffled. ‘But the conquest is done. Galaspar is compliant.’

‘The lessons we must draw from it are not done.’

Typhon said nothing for a while. His eyes narrowed in thought. They were dark eyes, deep in their hollows under his heavy brow. His mouth was half hidden behind his beard. Typhon kept his own counsel, and there were few who could read him if he did not wish them to.

Finally, he said, ‘I would have thought that we were the ones to teach others the lessons of Galaspar.’

Others. Typhon had guessed well. He had some idea of who might be waiting to meet the Reaper’s Scythe on Galaspar. Mortarion wondered how much else he had guessed and was being careful not to say.

He thought of what he could say to Typhon, though he would not. He would not talk about his meeting with his father aboard the Bucephelus.

He had never been comfortable aboard his father’s battle-barge. The golden ship was a colossus of glory. It was magnificence wrought of martial power and the artisan’s genius. To walk its halls was to be inside the fullest manifestation of strength and art. Its display was the promise of the Great Crusade, and of the Emperor’s dream for humanity. Mortarion had his part to play in that dream. But as he understood it, and in the form in which he believed in it, that role had little to do with glory. Gold was luxury, and luxury was foreign to Mortarion. It had had no place on Barbarus. There was no luxury in the necessity that drove him.

So, he had not expected laurels when he had come to the Bucephelus to meet with his father after his first conquest. He had taken Galaspar because it was necessary, not just for the progress of the Great Crusade, but for himself. He had not taken that fallen empire in the hopes of receiving his father’s praise.

What he had not expected was sorrow.

That surprised him. It confused him.

Did I not do what was asked of me?

The Emperor’s slow nod of the head. The acknowledgement that yes, Mortarion had fulfilled his task. But those eyes. The eyes of that golden being who was still, in many ways, as much a stranger to Mortarion as when He had first appeared on Barbarus. The eyes that looked at him with sorrow. And with a new commandment.

‘Perhaps we are going to deliver a lesson,’ Mortarion said to Typhon, knowing that neither of them believed that was true. ‘Two of my brothers will be waiting there for us.’

Worlds still burned in the Galaspar Cluster. The embers of the short war sparked and flared, marked by the errant snatches of signals picked up and reported by the vox-officer of the Reaper’s Scythe. Standing at the command pulpit that jutted from the raised strategium over the centre of the bridge, Mortarion could almost smell the death of the Order’s empire in the void. He had passed through the Galaspar Cluster, and the evidence of his passing was everywhere to be found. It was there in those vox fragments, marking the final dissolution of tyranny. It was there in the transponder signals from Imperial ships, freely crossing a region it would have been death to venture into a short time ago.

The signs of his passage were visible too, through the great window of the bridge, as the Reaper’s Scythe closed in on Galaspar itself. The near space of the planet, far beyond its immediate orbit, was awash with debris. Dark, scorched rubble that had been fortress monitors tumbled past the battle-barge, a silent acknowledgement of Mortarion’s work. Some of the wrecks were large enough to be recognisable ghosts of their original shape. A prow went by as Mortarion watched, turning slowly end over end. Further out was a portion of a hull, decking still attached, a cross-section of destruction. Still more of the wreckage no longer had an identity. The pieces were jagged, twisted abstractions. They were all monuments, silent and cold, to the war, and to the sweep of Mortarion’s scythe. They were the right and proper lesson of Galaspar. They were the mark of the first great act of the unified Death Guard.

I have done this, and I was right to do it.

‘The marks of our journey,’ Typhon commented, from a few feet back in the strategium.

‘The marks of our accomplishment,’ Mortarion said. He did not take pride in the aesthetic perfection of his strategy, as Fulgrim might have. That was vanity. He was proud of being able to see what was necessary, and of then having carried it out.

As the Reaper’s Scythe closed in on Galaspar, the number of Imperial ships visible or signalling their approach grew.

‘So many arrivals,’ said Typhon. ‘I trust they’re enjoying their smooth passage.’

‘They should be grateful,’ said Mortarion. They should be grateful to me, and to my Legion.

‘I remember our first voyage to the planet,’ said Typhon. ‘It was not smooth.’

I remember the sacrifices. ‘It was necessary.’

‘Multiple hails, my lord,’ the vox-officer called.

‘Who from?’

‘The Vengeful Spirit and the Red Tear, my lord.’

‘Flagships,’ said Typhon. ‘Maybe the gathering is an honour?’

Mortarion said nothing.

‘A trial?’ Typhon whispered in disbelief.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Mikhail Savier.

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