The First Heretic

‘It’s Colchisian,’ Argel Tal said, distracted, as he ran his gauntleted fingers along a charcoal depiction of what looked like the primarch. The image was crude, but showed a figure clad in a robe, next to another figure in mail armour, with one gaping eye. They stood atop a tower, in a field of shaded flowers.

This wasn’t the first such image Argel Tal had seen, yet they never failed to capture his interest. Serfs from the fleet had landed in huge numbers, set with the tasks of exploring the Cadian caves and taking pict references of every marking they found.

‘Is this is how your Legion repents for failing the Emperor?’ Vendatha asked. ‘After so many compliances, I’d dared to perceive you all in a new light. Monarchia was a past sin. Even Aquillon believed the same. And now we come here, and everything unravels as you stutter to these wretches in alien speech.’

‘It’s Colchisian,’ Argel Tal said, refusing to be riled.

‘I may not be fluent in your monotonous tongue,’ said Vendatha, ‘but I know enough. What leaves the Cadians’ lips is not Colchisian. Nor are these writings. This resembles nothing else. Its roots aren’t even in proto-Gothic.’

‘It’s Colchisian,’ Argel Tal said again. ‘It’s archaic, but it is Colchisian.’

Vendatha let the old argument go. Aquillon had already been informed, and had travelled down to the surface to see everything for himself. The Custodes leader was fluent in Colchisian, yet struggled with the words just as Vendatha did. The cognitive servitors brought down from orbit met with the same difficulties – no linguistic decoders could make sense of the runic language.

‘Perhaps,’ ventured Xaphen, ‘we are a chosen Legion. Only those of Lorgar Aurelian’s blood may speak and read this holiest of tongues.’

‘You would delight in that being the truth, wouldn’t you?’ Vendatha snorted.

Xaphen just smiled in reply.

The Custodian’s mood was black in the wake of his most recent failures to decipher the scrawls on these cave walls.

‘What does this say?’ he indicated a random verse written upon the uneven rock wall.

Argel Tal glanced at the prose, seeing more of the poetry he’d come to expect here: simple, more like a form of clumsy lyric than reverent chanting. Knowing the Cadians’ god-talkers, this was likely the work of a shaman, maddened with hallucinogenic narcotics, spilling his stream of consciousness onto the sacred walls.

‘...we offer praise to those who do,

That they might turn their gaze our way,

And gift us with the boon of pain,

To turn the galaxy red with blood,

And feed the hunger of the gods.’

‘It’s just more bad poetry,’ he said to Vendatha.

‘I cannot read a single word.’

‘It’s very artless,’ Xaphen smiled. ‘You’re not missing any insight into an advanced culture.’

‘It doesn’t concern you that I cannot read this?’ the Custodian pressed.

‘I have no answer for you,’ snapped Argel Tal. ‘It’s the feverish etchings of a long-dead shaman. It ties in to the Cadian belief in other gods, but its meaning is as lost on me as it is on you. I know nothing more.’

‘Were the weeks spent with the primitives in their tent-city somehow not enough, Argel Tal? Now you must attend the false worship of ignorant barbarians?’

‘You are giving me a headache, Ven,’ said Argel Tal, barely listening. His retinal display tracked a digital counter of the last time he’d slept. Over four days now. The conclaves with the Cadians ate up a great deal of time, as the Word Bearers pored over the humans’ scriptures and discussed their faith’s ties to the Old Ways of Colchis. Lorgar and the Chaplains were bearing the brunt of the ambassadorial and research efforts, but Argel Tal found his time occupied with plenty of tribal leaders pleading for his attention.

‘I confess,’ said Vendatha, ‘that I’d hoped the Legion would avoid tonight’s... foolishness.’

‘The primarch ordered our presence,’ Xaphen replied. ‘So we will be present.’ As the three warriors descended down more rough stone steps, the sound of distant drums grew more resonant.

‘You have agreed to witness these degenerates perform a ritual without knowing what they intend.’

‘I know what they intend,’ Xaphen gestured at the walls. ‘It is written everywhere, plain for all to see.’ Before Vendatha could answer, the Chaplain added something that Argel Tal hadn’t heard before. ‘The Cadians have promised us an answer tonight.’

‘To what?’ both the Custodian and the captain asked as one.

‘To what was screaming the primarch’s name in the storm.’

Argel Tal clenched his fist, but there was little anger in the gesture. He seemed content to watch the play of his muscles and the bones of his fingers working in natural, biological unity.