THE HORUS HERESY

Graham McNeill

DEATH OF A SILVERSMITH

original release by DarkChaplain

edited by fractalnoise

v1.1 (2012.01)

The Horus Heresy

It is a time of legend.

Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.

As the flames of war spread through the Imperium, mankind’s champions will all be put to the ultimate test.

I AM DYING, that much I know. What I do not know is why. My throat has been crushed, and what little breath I can manage will not keep my brain functioning for long. He did not kill me outright, though he could have easily. I remember him looking down on me as my feet scrabbled at the floor of my workshop, gasping for air like a fish tossed onto a riverbank. He watched me as though fascinated by the transition of my body from life into death. But I am stronger than I look, and I was not going to die quickly.

But now that I think about it, perhaps that is what he wanted.

He did not even stay to watch me die, as though he had no interest in how long it took, only that it would be a drawn-out event. In fact, I think he used the precise amount of pressure needed to crush my larynx just enough to make my death slow. If I were not dying, I would almost admire the exacting attention to detail and controlled strength that such an act requires.

He wanted me dead, slowly, but did not care to watch the outcome.

What sort of a mind thinks like that?

I have no gods to pray to, no one does. The Emperor has shown us the folly of worshipping invisible deities whose existence is falsehood. The fanes and temples have all been torn down, even the last one across the silver bridge. The heavens are empty of supernatural agencies that might hear my dying thoughts, but right now I wish they were not.

Any witness to my death would be better than none. Otherwise it will be just a statistic, a report filed by the armsmen of this mighty vessel. Only if someone were to hear my last words or understand my last thoughts will they matter. I suspect that you would not forget a man dying in front of you.

Even though he killed me, I wish he had stayed to the end. At least then I would have had something to look at instead of the blackened ceiling of my workshop. The lumen globes maintain a steady glow, though I think they are fading.

Or is that me?

I wish he had stayed to watch me die.

He was so much bigger and stronger than me. Engineered, of course, but still, even before his genetic enhancements, I am sure he would have been more than a match for me. I have never been a violent man, the physical and martial pursuits never having interested me. From an early age, I was a tinkerer, a dismantler of working parts, and I possessed a fastidious mind that moved like the most intricate clockwork. My father wanted to apprentice me to the Mechanicum of Mars, but my grandfather would not hear of it. The priests of the red planet had been the enemies of Terra two generations ago, and my grandfather, a lapidary with exquisitely long fingers who fashioned incredible bracelets and neck ornamentation in the style of Ascalon’s Repousse and chasing, still held grudges from that chaotic time.

Making weapons and war machines for the Imperium of Man was a waste of time for someone with the skills I possessed. My grandfather was an artisan in the true sense of the word, a craftsman worthy of the name, and the raw talent evident in his work had skipped my father and passed straight to me. Not that my father was ever jealous; far from it. He lauded my triumphs and proudly displayed my work, even from an early age when the brooches, earrings and glittering chokers I produced were, at first, amateurish and derivative. I worked for many years, learning my trade and developing my talent until it became clear that my ability now outstripped that of my grandfather. Crystallisation of his joints had turned his hands to claws, and it was a day of tears when at last he hung up his pliers and draw plate.

Work was never hard to come by, even though the last death spasms of the war still jerked and spat in the far reaches of Terra. The ethnarchs and despots had fallen one by one yet, even during times of strife, always there was a general’s mistress who desired a fashionable necklace, a tetrarch in need of a more impressive sword hilt or a bureaucrat seeking to impress his peers with a filigreed quill.

As the wars drew to a close, and stability of a sort was restored to Terra, money began to flow around the globe in glittering golden rivers. And with it came the desire to spend copious sums commemorating Unity, lamenting the fallen or immortalising the future. I had never been so busy, and the frenetic demand drove my creativity to new heights of wonder.

I remember a particular piece I fashioned for the Lord General of the Anatolian Theatre. His soldiers had been lucky enough to fight alongside the Astartes of the X Legion prior to their despatch into the glory of the Crusade. A rebellious branch of the Terawatt clans had thought to retain control of their Urals forges instead of turning them over to the Iron Hands, and had fought their mortal representatives.

Vengeance was swift in coming, and the forge complex fell after a month of heavy fighting, in which the Anatolian brigades bore the brunt of the strange and deadly weapons wielded by the blind clan-warriors. But, so the Lord General told me, the primarch of the X Legion had been so impressed by the courage of his soldiers that he snapped the iron gauntlet from one of his Chapter’s banners and presented it to the Noyan in command of the first brigade to breach the gates to the inner furnaces.

Needless to say, that particular commander never got to keep the finial, but dutifully passed it to his superior, and so on, until it reached the hands of the Lord General. Who in turn brought it to me, instructing me to create a worthy reliquary – though he laughed at the antiquated term – for the gift.

To work on so incredible a piece was an honour, and I lavished all my skill upon this particular commission. The gauntlet itself was clearly a trifling piece for the Iron Hands, but as I studied the intricacy and precision of the workmanship, I appreciated the incredible skill that had gone into its creation. I had heard of the miraculous hands of the great Ferrus Manus, but to think that I worked on a piece touched by a primarch himself, one of the Emperor’s sons, gave me purpose and inspiration beyond my wildest dreams.