《黑暗使徒Dark Apostle》
作者：[英]Anthony Reynolds
Synopsis (英文书籍文案)
Dark Apostle follows several Chaos Space Marines as they assault a distant Imperial world, searching for a lost artifact seen in the visions of Jarulek, the Word Bearer Dark Apostle, who has to fend off the Imperials long enough to complete his scheme while keeping his own men at bay from pouncing on him in a moment of weakness.
This book conveys the point of view from the forces of Chaos, almost always antagonists in other books, giving insight into how the Ruinous Powers manage to corrupt and seduce with such apparent ease. It gives good insight into how such a group functions without ripping itself to pieces, which is still an ever-present possibility.
PROLOGUE
Marduk, First Acolyte of the Word Bearers Legion, looked up. His noble, deathly pale patrician
features, common amongst those imbued with the gene-seed of blessed Lorgar, were twisted in
frustration and anger. Braziers burning within the darkness of the icy mausoleum lit his face, the
flames mirrored in his eyes.
“I have read the portents. I felt the truth within the blood of the sacrifices on my tongue.”
He rounded on his silent listener, the ancient Warmonger.
“But this vision fills my head, and its meaning is unclear. I have recited the Curses of
Amentenoc; I have supplicated the Great Changer with offerings and sacrifice. I have spent endless
hours in meditation, opening myself up to the wisdom and majesty of the living Ether. But the
meaning remains unclear.
“I am assailed by the dead, long dead, and they claw at my armour with skeletal claws. They
scratch deep furrows into my blessed ceramite, but they cannot pierce my consecrated flesh. I begin
to recite from the Book of Lorgar, the third book of the Litanies of Vengeance and Hate. ‘Smite
down the non-believers and the deceived, and they shall know the truth of the words of oblivion.’”
Marduk clenched his fist tightly, servo-muscles in his armour whining as his entire body tensed.
“I shatter their bones with my fists. They cannot stand against me. But they are many.”
“Calm your mind, First Acolyte,” boomed the ancient one. It was the sound of the sepulchre
given voice, an impossibly deep baritone that reverberated through the still tomb, deep within the
strike cruiser. Each word was spoken slowly and deliberately, amplified through powerful vox-units.
Once he had been a mighty hero who fought at the side of the greatest warriors ever to have
lived. As a captain he had led great companies of the Legion against the foes of Lorgar and the
Warmaster, and Marduk had studied all of his recorded sermons and exhortations. They were
masterpieces of rhetoric and faith, filled with righteous hatred, and his skill at deciphering and
predicting the twisting patterns of the future through his ritualised dream visions were astounding.
He had fallen fighting against the archenemies, the deniers of the truth, those who followed the
False Emperor in their ignorance and blindness.
“You fight your visions too hard. They are gifts from the gods, and as with all gifts bestowed
from the great powers, you should receive them with thanks.”
The meagre physical remnants of the inspirational leader had been interred within the
sarcophagus that lay before Marduk. Though his body was utterly ruined, he was destined to live on
within the tomb of his new shell, and become the Warmonger. While the other Dreadnoughts of the
Legion had slowly succumbed to madness and raving insanity, the Warmonger retained much of his
lucidity. It was his faith, Erebus himself had stated, that kept him from slipping into darkness.
All the anger and frustration flowed out of Marduk, and he smiled. The face that had looked
brooding and twisted with anger a moment before was darkly handsome once again, black eyes
glinting.
“Pray for enlightenment, but do not be impatient and expect instant gratification,” continued the
Warmonger. “Knowledge and power will come to you, for you are on the path of the devout, and the
favour of the gods is upon you. But you must let yourself succumb to the embrace of the great
powers; they will buoy you, and only then will the veil be lifted from your eyes. Only then will you
see what your vision means. You need not fear the darkness, for you are the darkness.”
The Warmonger flexed its huge, mechanical arms, hissing steam venting from the joints.
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“My weapons ache for the bloodshed to begin anew,” the dreadnought said, massive weapon
feeds aligning themselves in anticipation. “Do we fight alongside our Lord Lorgar this day?”
“Not today,” said Marduk quietly, recognising that the Warmonger’s lucidity was slipping. It
was often this way.
“And the Warmaster? Do his battles against the False Emperor fare well? Has he yet dethroned
the hated betrayer, the craven abandoner of the Crusade?”
The mention of the Warmaster Horus pained Marduk. He longed for the simpler days of the past,
when the victory of the Warmaster over the Emperor seemed like a certainty. The memories were
fresh in his mind, and his anger, hatred and outrage burned within him stronger than ever. He
wished he had been at the battle of the Emperor’s palace on Terra alongside the Warmonger and
most of the warriors that made up the Grand Host of the Dark Apostle Jarulek, but he had not. No,
in those days he had been but a novice adept sent to serve under Lord Kor Phaeron. It was a great
honour, but while he fought the hated Ultramarines of Guilliman on Calth with passion and belief,
he longed to be fighting the battle at the palace that would determine the outcome of the long war.
Or so he had thought. The war ground on, and would never end until the so-called Emperor of
mankind was thrown down, and every cursed edifice that falsely proclaimed his divinity was
smashed asunder.
“The Corpse Emperor sits on his throne on Terra still, Warmonger,” said Marduk bitterly, “but
his end draws ever nearer.”
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BOOK ONE:
SUBJUGATION
“From the fires of betrayal unto the blood of revenge we bring the name of Lorgar, the Bearer of
the Word, the favoured son of Chaos, all praise be given unto him. From those that would not heed
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!”
—Excerpt from the three hundred and forty-first Book of the Epistles of Lorgar
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CHAPTER ONE
Kol Badar glared across the expanse of the cavaedium. The arena of worship, located deep within
the heart of the strike cruiser Infidus Diabolus, was large enough to allow the recently swollen ranks
of the entire Host to stand in attendance. Its curved ceiling stretched impossibly high, and immense
skeletal ribbed supports met hundreds of metres above. The kathartes perched along the bone-like
struts, daemonic, skinless harpies that flickered in and out of the warp. But Kol Badar’s gaze did not
rise to look upon the carrion feeders.
No, his scowling features were focused on the last of the warriors filing into the enormous room.
From his vantage point, just one step from the top of the sacred raised dais that none but the most
holy of warriors would occupy, he could see the last of the Host’s champions leading their warriors
into the cavaedium, to take their places for the coming ceremony. The expanse was almost full. The
entire Host had been gathered. Kol Badar let his gaze wander over the serried ranks, glorying in the
strength and power that his warriors exuded. None could hope to stand against such a force of the
devout, and his warriors would soon prove their worth once again.
His warriors. He grunted at his own hubris. They were not his warriors. If anything, they were
the warriors of the Dark Apostle, though in his words they belonged only to Chaos in all its glory.
The Dark Apostle claimed that he was merely the instrument through which the great powers
directed these noble warriors of faith, and that Kol Badar was his primary tool to enact the great
gods’ will.
Kol Badar was the Coryphaus. It was a symbolic title, granted to the most trusted and capable
warrior leader and strategos of the Host. His word was second only to that of the Dark Apostle. The
Coryphaus was the Dark Apostle’s senior war captain, but more than this, he was the voice of the
congregation. The mood and opinion of the Host was delivered to the Dark Apostle through him,
and it was his duty to lead the chanted responses and antiphons from the gathered Host in
ceremonies and rituals. It was also his role to lead the responses within the true house of worship of
the dark gods: the battlefield.
The processional corridor that ran down the middle of the nave remained clear as the cavaedium
filled. Almost half a kilometre long and laid with black, immaculate carpet consecrated in the blood
of thousands, none dared to step upon this hallowed ground, but those deemed worthy, on pain of
immortal torment. There were no seats within the nave: the warriors of the Legion received the word
from the Dark Apostle standing, armed and armoured. Dozens of smaller sanctuaries and templeshrines
branched off from the ancient stone walls of the cavaedium, containing statues of daemonic
deities, ancient texts and the interred remains of holy warriors who had fallen during the constant,
long war.
An almost imperceptible, ghostly chanting whispered around the room. Lazily swooping
cherubiox circled in the air, skeletal, winged creatures with sharp fangs set within childlike mouths,
each carrying a flaming iron brazier. Odorous incense descended from the tusked maws of daemonheaded
gargoyles towards the gathered Host. The clouds of smoke eddied and roiled in the wake of
the gently weaving cherubiox.
Kol Badar stepped heavily down the altar steps, the joints of his massive, ornate Terminator
armour hissing and steaming. He passed through the gates of the ikonoclast, the spiked metal barrier
that separated the altar from the openness of the nave. Its wrought iron frame was decorated with
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dozens of ancient banners, twisted icons and trophies dedicated to the gods of Chaos, and upon its
spiked and barbed tips were impaled the heads of particularly hated foes.
He prowled along the base of the altar, glaring at the warrior-brothers filing into the room, as if
daring any of them to dishonour him in any way. The warriors of the Legion stood unmoving once
they had taken up their positions. Almost two thousand warriors of the Word Bearers stood in
absolute silence, and Kol Badar stalked back and forth along their ranks.
Two thousand was a particularly large number of warrior-brothers for a single Host. The ranks
of the Host had swollen a century past, when the warriors of another Dark Apostle had been
amalgamated into its ranks after their holy leader had been slain in battle. Ceremonies of mourning
had lasted weeks as the Legion honoured the passing of one of its religious fathers. Jarulek had, of
course, ordered the execution of all the captains of the leaderless Host for having allowed such a
sacrilege to take place. It was deemed by the Dark Council on the revered daemon-world of Sicarus,
the spiritual home of the Word Bearers Legion and the throne world of the blessed Daemon
Primarch Lorgar, that Jarulek take in the leaderless Host, for he had an apprentice, a First Acolyte
who would soon be ready to bear the mantle of Dark Apostle. When, and if, the First Acolyte
became worthy of the title of Dark Apostle, then Jarulek would split the Host once more into two.
The thick features of Kol Badar’s face darkened at the idea. The very thought of the bastard
whoreson Marduk bearing the exalted title of Dark Apostle made Kol Badar’s rage and bitterness
burn fiercely within him.
The Anointed, the warrior-cult of the most favoured warriors within the Host, stood in neat
ranks surrounding the raised pulpit of the Coryphaus, and Kol Badar approached them. The
Anointed looked like statues, utterly still and wearing their fully enclosed, ancient suits of
Terminator armour. Each suit was a relic of holy significance, and to don the armour was a great
religious honour. Once a warrior-brother entered the ranks of the Anointed, he was a member for
life, and with lifespans extended indefinitely through a combination of their Astartes conditioning,
bio-enhancement and the warping power of the gods of the Ether, the Anointed were only replaced
on the rare occasion that one of their cult fell in battle. Many of them had fought alongside Kol
Badar and their holy Daemon Primarch Lorgar at the great siege of the Emperor’s palace, and he
knew of no finer fighting force. Unsurpassed warriors with the hearts of true fanatics, the cult of the
Anointed had won countless battles for the Legion. Their glories were sung in the flesh-halls within
the temples of Sicarus, and their deeds recounted in the grimoire historicals housed in the finest
scriptorums of Ghalmek. Kol Badar stalked through the ranks of the elite warriors and climbed the
steps to his pulpit, there to await the arrival of the Dark Apostle.
The Dark Apostle—Jarulek the Glorified, Jarulek the Blessed, a divine warrior who heard the
whispered words of the gods, and communed with them as their vessel. One of the favoured servants
of the immortal daemon primarch Lorgar, Jarulek truly was a bearer of the word. His furious passion
and belief had brought countless millions into the fold. Countless millions more, ignorant and
resistant to the words of truth, had been slain in holy war upon his order.
As much as it furthered the cause of the Word Bearers for more systems to be brought under the
sway of Lorgar’s word, Kol Badar much preferred the worlds that resisted. He enjoyed the killing.
Thin, spider-like limbs extended from the pulpit towards his exposed face. Fine, bladed hooks at
their tips emerged and pushed into his flesh, latching beneath the skin. He closed his eyes. A large
proboscis uncurled, and he opened his mouth to accept it. It entered his throat, and small barbed
clamps latched onto his larynx. The proboscis expanded to fill his throat. His voice, enhanced by the
apparatus, would not only carry through the vast expanse of the cavaedium, but also through the
entire Infidus Diabolus, so that all within the cruiser might intone the correct responses.
He recalled the conversation he had had with the Dark Apostle mere hours earlier, and his face
