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Son of Sek – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Son Of Sek

John French

Sartusa Shrine City, Cabal Epsilon, 777.M41
(the 22nd year of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade)

‘All the sons and daughters, rolled down the red river,

When will they return?

When will they sing again?’

– from the Song of Founding, Vervunhive

I

I will hear his voice.

Knowing this remakes me. There are many deaths and doors which wait for our souls. I will pass through them all, bright and shining, because of what he has already given me. And now I will hear the voice. I will drown in it. I will have no voice. I will come to this existence anew. I will be a son for a second time.

I am waiting. I have waited for many markings of time. The bowls of oil have burnt dry seven times since I came to this antechamber. The smoke from the flames is sweet. It is the smoke of Sartusa, taken from it while it was newly quieted. The first jars of oil drawn from the render-pits are brought to him, so that he can smell the worlds his sons have quieted. That this oil burns now, for me, is an honour.

Sartusa’s silence was a thing of beauty. The flames cupped in the bowls send their shadows shivering up the walls. Each red and golden tongue is a child of the fire we made on that blessed world. We took the city’s voices one by one, cut by cut, shot by shot, until there was red flowing free of the doors, and the streets were red mirrors to the pyre. Its people fought. Oh, how they fought. Bullets and flashes roared at us from windows, from the trenches topped with bags of sand, from the pits that shells had dug in the earth. Many of us fell. Many became the meat that is all that life is when it has no voice. I can see them now, the heaped bodies made red and wet. Their voices are one now, and they no longer hear the lie of their hearts, the lie that life is more than passing instants sliced into seconds by a pulse. We came on, though, and the unshriven tried to hold on, to deny us, not to cry out even though smoke hid the sky, and the horizon was flame. Ignorance is not without resilience. They fought until it was just one circle around a statue to their god.

The pyre had stolen all sound, and we stood in the magnificence of what we had done, in the rain that fell black with ash. We looked in at the few that still resisted, water running from our blades and from the mouths of our guns. They looked back, and shouted as though fury can banish futility: such defiance, such deafness. Their faces were skin masks painted in dust and soot, their eyes wide windows into fear.

Except one.

One figure stood tall, a sword still in his hand, head unbowed. They call such creatures heroes. He called on us to come to an end by his hand, cursed us in words that have no meaning, spoke of the armour of contempt, and the shield of the soul. His words bought him nothing, though. He ended there, beneath the eyes of his indifferent god. He died by my hand. He deserves nothing, but for now I will remember him. He is why I am here. His death brought me here. The fires of the world he failed to save touch my eyes, and do me honour. He Whose Voice Drowns Out All Others will ask me of this dead man, because I was the one to end him. I heard the last words from between his teeth.

I alone know him.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Sabbat Crusade in Great Britain in 2014.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Raymond Swanland.

Son of Sek © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Son of Sek, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78030-819-7

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