Summary: Roboute of the Russ is a sorcerer. He’s the strongest man on Fenris–he’s a primarch, how could he not be?–but Fenris would tell him a sorcerer is no proper man at all. Yet a sorcerer he became anyway. (homeworld-swap, Roboute, Lorgar, Magnus, Leman/Luther, Horus, Hierax, Sorot Tchure, Mortarion, Roboute/OMC, PG-13)

***

[From the personal journal of Roboute Russ, encrypted and never published. Written in a custom font for an alphabet developed by the young primarch in an attempt to see if a new writing system without the historical and religious baggage of traditional Fenrisian runes would be more easily adopted. It wasn’t, and the attempt abandoned until he had the political position to push through a full set of reforms whole-sale.]

They call me conservative and I want to laugh. I don’t, because I’m not much inclined to it and I prefer not to insult a man’s honour over trivialities, but really. I, the firebrand?

Old Fenris was a conservative place. Life was just so marginal there. The ways of our ancestors allowed us to live, as a civilisation, year in and year out, through ice and fire. Change was dangerous, experimenting was heretical. If you tried something new and failed, or even partially succeeded but not as much as you’d estimated on the first try, then the whole tribe starved. Full stop. I heard this over and over, implicitly and explicitly.

At least one of my brothers is from a similar background, grew up hearing the same thing, from the stories I hear of him. Chemos was industrialised rather than feral, but humanity scraped by with the most marginal room for error in resource management as well.

And he failed. Too impractical, too decadent, too misguided, whatever it was. Maybe my golden brother would have learned if he’d had another round to try, but he wouldn’t have. His people would have all starved if the Imperium hadn’t come when it did. The stories don’t frame it quite that way, but it’s obvious from the subtext.

See, I want to say to the world. I did not end up like him. He is the spectre that was held over me, but I did not. I was luckier. I was better.

I have no intention of saying such a thing publicly. I have no interest in an honour-duel with a brother I’ve barely met over an insult. But I’ve thought such things to myself, for my own sake.

Here he is, the very imagine of everything I was warned about, every cautionary tale, every insult I heard over and over. He is what I was told I would inevitably be. I said no, I wouldn’t, I would do better, be better, and I didn’t become that. How can I not look down on him, who did?

Another brother I feel I should love better than I do: I am only a petty sorcerer in comparison to him, but I am also a sorcerer. He too toppled the old ways and old gods in favour of new ways and progress. He once believed himself something other than human, a god, but I once believed myself a wolf, so who am I to talk? Yet, I find him lacking in caution. Ironic, isn’t it? I fear him and what he will wrought like I was once feared.

I am no great seer of the wyrd and the yet-to-come; that is not my speciality. Not by the standards of my people and I hear they do things differently in the traditions and conceptualisations of other places, like Colchis. Strictly speaking many would claim what I’m doing is not magic at all: I am taking patterns that exist or have happened before and I am extrapolating based on them. In every time, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. Yet it’s magic because I can see the future, and it’s esoterica because I know what others do not. I’m sure my father has seen it too and will handle it. Regardless, it helps me understand that fear.

It’s irrational of me to still want the approval of short-sighted chieftains a century dead. If I wanted validation, I could get it. The neophytes these days, the children, they know no Fenris but the modern one, the civilised world I made from a feral one. Surely the schools taught them flattering things about me. I won. My followers prospered and my enemies waned in their few distant islands. They never lived with the reasons behind Fenrisian conservatism. They probably don’t even know the old superstitions, why I hesitate to put my brothers’ names on a dataslate page, even knowing intellectually it won’t steal his soul or such a thing.

Yet I want it still. I do not love this Great Crusade, though I understand its necessity and I fight in it, like I fought those who raised banner against me on Fenris. I do not love war. I’m good at it, I am told I was made for it, but something went wrong and I do not love it.

Fenris had such rigid ideas of what it meant to be a warrior–how such a man should be, what was right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable–and I didn’t fit that mould quite right and eventually chose to stop trying and cast it aside and do as I thought best. I raised armies, but I don’t like warriors. Those I loved best and who gave me the best support and advice were not men of war, those men who fit the pattern I disliked.

What I want is to be remembered as a great statesman. I don’t want to fight compliances against humans–they are unpleasant chores. I want the scattered scions of humanity to be thrilled to see us in the sky, to eagerly join the Imperium and agree we will make their lives better. How can people hear ‘We will lower your infant mortality rate’ and argue with that? That’s why I’d rather treat with mothers than warriors.

Likely this does not make me what my father wanted in a son. I’ve heard it before. Personally, I would say my fathers have been all well and good, but I would rather be my mother’s son.

*

Leman el’Jonson was good enough company, likeable and well-liked, as jovial as he was deadly when crossed. It was a familiar mould of jarls on Fenris too, so Roboute knew how to be cordial back without being intimidated, but he had never been so popular himself.

‘Those are fine dogs you have.’ It wasn’t an insult to the Imperial Hounds and their primarch when Leman said it, wild and bearded enough to be Fenrisian himself. ‘We bred dogs back on Caliban too, hunting dogs and scent hounds and the like. Good dogs, but I’m not so stiff-necked as to refuse to admit yours are better.’

‘Larger certainly,’ Roboute said modestly. He snipped the dark Calibani ale, thick enough ‘soup’ might have been a more fitting word than ‘drink’. ‘It’s the wolf blood.’

‘There are no wolves on Caliban.’

‘You call yourselves the Space Wolves anyway?’ he joked.

‘Not in the wild. In legend. My brother says he once encountered a beast that put him in mind of one, before I was found, but I’ve never seen such a thing.’ Leman didn’t need to specify which brother he meant, when it was not one of the Emperor’s sons.

Roboute absently scratched his sister’s–his dog’s–ears. ‘There are many on Fenris. Once they were all wild, before I was found, but we keep dogs now. There’s less wild than there was.’

‘That is the way of things. Progress. The Imperium. It’s a dream worth following.’

‘Yes.’ Roboute wet his lips again. ‘We have many legends on wolves on Fenris too. Children raised by wolves. Sorceresses who can see through their eyes or change their skins to be as wolves.’

‘We have such stories on Caliban too,’ Leman said, neutrally. As if the conversation were idle rather than personal. ‘We fight like men. We might use dogs in war, but we burn witches, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Roboute replied, with a neutrality that was much icier. Acknowledgement of what had been said, not agreement. It was a matter of public record that Roboute had outlawed the practice among the Russ, whether his brother knew that much about him or not. Roboute thought he did.

They should have been able to be friends. Both raised feral in the wilds, if the stories were to be believed. They both had civilised the wild and brought prosperity and human control to their planets. Leman even had a man as his lover who he submitted to, though Roboute reminded himself that didn’t have the meaning elsewhere that it did on Fenris.

With his sorcerous othersight, Roboute could see Leman’s shadow was wolf-shaped, as clear as his own pack’s. It was obvious and he wanted to ask, wanted to discuss how it manifested for him and how he understood and used that part of himself. Had Leman lost it and had to relearn the magic like Roboute had, or had he retained it from childhood? Was he a full shapeshifter? He had heard rumours to that effect about his sons, but gossip was unreliable. Did he weave–or whatever metaphor his planet had for things of fate?

But Leman had made clear he was a proper man, a warrior, not one who used magic like a woman, like a crutch. No more elaboration was needed, not when Roboute had heard it so many times before, whatever specifics might differ between their cultures, if he had pushed for details.

‘They’re just dogs now. Tamed, they are no longer wolves. Good companions, a piece of home, but of course we make war like civilised people now.’

‘Of course,’ Leman agreed, and refilled his mug, words still unsaid between them.

*

‘There are… ways, for someone without the talent. So I’ve heard.’

‘The sorcerous cheats: spilling blood and summoning daemons, trading promises for power? We have the stories but it’s rarely done on Prospero. Some have the talent stronger than others, but to be a blind man with no sight and take a poor substitute of listening to echoes? That would just be sad. I don’t mind fumbling around in the dark.’ Horus laughed.

It was a fake laugh, an inadequate bandage over a wound like a furrow crossing a field. Roboute didn’t need magic to see that. These were words he repeated to himself everyday, as if saying them enough would make him believe them. He had to believe them.

Roboute shrugged, not wanting to intrude on his brother’s pain and knowing he had nothing to commiserate that wouldn’t make one of them resent the other. ‘We call it cheating on Fenris too, the unclean magics. Personally, I have nothing against psykers, but I lack the natural talent as well.’

‘Our father made us with what we each needed, I suppose, out of the traits He possesses. We can’t have it all, for who but He could be Him?’

It was easy to fall back on meaningless platitudes praising the Emperor for His wisdom. Roboute pitied Horus more than he envied him his upbringing amidst light and learning, he decided. Horus must be bitter towards Roboute for his sorcery, but he would not be the first target out of their brothers for it. Roboute had learned what he knew, not been so lucky as to be born with it. Horus would have to admit he could too and had chosen not to in order to hate him properly for it.

He would be polite and drop the subject. He wouldn’t say he personally preferred magic that was learned and acquired to that that came naturally, because the former was understood and owned while the latter was lost as easily as it came. He wouldn’t describe how wonderful it was to put on a cloak of feathers and soar or to dream skies he’d never seen or to sort a tangle of threads into a pattern. He was proud of what he was, what he had become, but a lifetime of being told he should be ashamed had taught him how to be silent. For once that silence was for the sake of mercy.

*

‘The primarch doesn’t like you?’ Captain Hierax of the Imperial Hounds asked the Thousand Son seconded to his company, Sorot Tchure. Hierax was not a man inclined to playfulness, but it was still clearly not meant as an insult or value judgement from his presentation.

‘Does your primarch like anyone?’ Tchure wasn’t offended, really. He had heard from various of his brothers that they had it much worse. The Imperial Hounds were not openly hostile to him, especially the Terrans.

Hierax paused for a moment, and Tchure saw he had accidentally hit a nerve. ‘Perhaps it would easier if he didn’t. I used to think that was simply how it was between primarch and Legion, but as more and more of them were found, we came to realise it was just us. I’ve never heard the Dark Angels or Iron Warriors complain their primarchs are unaffectionate to them in particular.’

‘Not to gossip of our betters, but everything I’ve ever heard agrees the Lion has the warmth and social graces of a rock. I had thought Lord Russ worked well enough with his First Captain, before he dismissed me entirely.’

‘He tolerates Marius Gage personally, comes as close to liking him as any of us. A few other officers. He is a primarch, mind. He is a tactical genius beyond compare. Gage, in turn, is a good man. I respect him and am glad the primarch found his continued service as First Captain pleasing. They have a good working relationship. They are not friends. Perhaps friends is the wrong word, but they are not your primarch and First Captain Ahriman, or Rogal and Sigismund or the like.’ Hierax clasped him on the shoulder. ‘We do not speak of it openly, for there is no merit from doing so, but it’s no secret and you should know if you’re going to be learning from the XIIIth: Our primarch hates his Legion.’

‘Really.’ Tchure didn’t quite phrase it as a question. The revelation was too personal, too obviously painful, though the wound was old and well picked at.

‘He considers us a necessary evil, so he commands us and instructs us, but something unworthy of love all the same, something without virtue except compared to a worse alternative. The Fenrisians call him resigned. They have a saying about the lot of a raided woman being her sons becoming raiders themselves. I suppose he saw you as a warrior rather than a witch, or you might have earned his favour.’

‘I don’t know if that was a compliment or not.’

‘Nor do I. There’s nothing more to speak of, though.’

‘Perhaps speaking of it has some merit. I am an outsider here, but our Chaplains tells us wounds fester when kept silent. We have a practice in the Thousand Sons, from the brotherhoods on Colchis and from planets we’ve reclaimed like Davin: We call them warrior lodges, where all can come and speak, brother-to-brother, without rank or fear of reprimand. That we might know each other as brothers and reaffirm our traditions as warriors.’

‘Perhaps we will learn from you as you learn from us then, as your primarch surely intended.’

‘Yes,’ Tchure agreed, ‘that was ever his intention.’

*

‘What happened to our brother, the IXth?’

Roboute shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was just after I was found, yes, but I wasn’t there. Janos was, but you’d never drag an answer out of him when he was told not speak of it by our father.’

‘Ah,’ said Mortarion. Roboute hoped he believed him, because he was being honest.

‘Personally, I don’t believe the more… slanderous rumours. He was already dead or died in some accident the Emperor sought to prevent. That was more the mood of it.’ He did not speak of the XIIth and Mortarion hadn’t asked; no one spoke of the XIIth.

‘Ah,’ said Mortarion again, not giving much away. No one knew much about him at all, just that Fulgrim had shown up with him and he didn’t like drawing attention to himself. ‘Thank you for telling me about early Crusade history even so,’ he said politely. ‘I’ve talked to Konrad and Fulgrim, but they haven’t been around nearly as long, of course.’

Somehow it always seemed to happen that anyone who seemed personable among their brothers, anyone he might have become friends with, already had a closer friend. Everyone knew Mortarion had fastened immediately on Konrad, even if he and Roboute finished their tiptoeing around each other with positive impressions. Roboute liked both Jaghatai and Corvus, for example, but they made anyone feel like a third-wheel between them.

‘If you have more questions, please. I was second-found so I’ve been around, and I’m from a planet that was much unlike the Imperium’s ideals before that so I understand the culture shock.’

‘Primitive and superstitious?’ Mortarion asked, still too neutral to know if he was saying his home had been too or merely commenting on stories about Fenris.

‘It was.’

‘But you don’t believe such nonsense now.’

Roboute shrugged. ‘It’s not so easy to shrug off everything you once thought you knew, especially once adulthood sets in. I support the Imperial way, but I am a primitive barbarian in many of my habits still. It never seemed worth the effort to change, and personally I find we have more strength from diversity than cookie-cutter adherence to some Terran mould.’

‘You believe the Imperial Truth to be untrue?’ Mortarion asked, more daring this time. Still deniable, but not fooling anyone.

‘I believe the Imperial Truth to be useful. My homeworld was a very… magical place. Reality did not work there the way the physicists and iterators say it’s supposed to. That is undeniable fact. I practice the wyrding ways because that’s how we protected ourselves there. Yet I believe the world of spirits and magic is not safe and is not benevolent, so the Emperor is quite correct in keeping people from it and doling it out carefully. Sometimes a lie is more politically useful.’

He could have said, but didn’t, that lies were more than rhetoric, they were magic. They were what magic was built on. Convince someone of something that wasn’t true and you made it real and that was magic–that a man could become a wolf, that they could not see the thing in front of their eyes, that the future could be known. Magic worked because of a sufficient number of people thinking to themselves it seemed like it should work that way gave it a certain weight of reality, made it exist in the reflection of the Otherside and bleed through. You didn’t go around talking about that sort of thing, though, a practitioner had to learn it themself.

Mortarion considered, giving none of his thoughts away until he was ready to. ‘I don’t disagree. Religion as a series of ethical beliefs and comforting behaviours, fine. The spirits, as you call them–daemons, Chaos, unbegotten, I’ve heard many names for them–yes they exist, but they should be kept from humans and human worship. I’m not fond of sorcery either, but I feel you to be responsible and cautious, so I have no quarrel with you personally, brother.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘I disapprove of the treatment of psykers as a group and feel we as a species could handle that better, but people have been arguing that since before the Old Night fell. Anyway, I can’t help but worry creating an empire on a lie is like a house on a foundation of sand.’

Roboute had no good answer to that. ‘I too find it doesn’t sit well, but I do not claim to know the mind of our father. He’s too old, too vast, too powerful, knows too much we don’t. He orders and we can only trust and obey.’

‘The law is not in heaven,’ Mortarion muttered, but didn’t say more. He left him on friendly terms, co-conspirators in some things, but never quite close enough to be called friends or to call on each other when conspiracy gave way to true rebellion.

*

Vinsentti Katrinson didn’t look back on the ‘good old days’ with any fondness, not that he was old enough to remember them personally. Who would want to have lived before running water and electric heaters? People thought they’d lost power they’d once had, that was who imagined they could have been jarl if only things had been different and everyone else were beneath them. Vinsentti knew he wasn’t in that category–life would not have been good for him when barbarians still ruled Fenris, not when he was fuðflogi and hated fighting. Thank the Emperor for Roboute Russ, he said without reservation.

Even with the comfortable life from being the son of Katrin Lexasdottir, forseti of the Althing in trust for the absent primarch, he’d still gone to the diplomatic core, to the iterators, got off Fenris. It was a good life too, bringing Imperial enlightenment to the other barbarians out there, hopefully getting them to be a bit less terrible to each other, being in the primarch’s own fleet.

As for the primarch himself… ‘Lord Russ, what’s he like?’ Off-worlders called him by his clan name, as if a quarter of the planet didn’t share the same tribal ties, but they didn’t know better. Thengirsson, his older byname, was too political when the Emperor on Earth was supposed to be his one and only father, and they hadn’t been that close besides, saga said (and if Thengirsson was a controversial statement, Eirsson would be tossing a frag grenade). ‘Who’s he sleeping with?’ he asked Lady Amaranth of Phaedrus, one of the lord’s chief advisors, old enough to know and to not be a rival for the unspoken And how do I get it to be me?

On Fenris, they said he was stroðinn, he let men have him. These days they might add ‘not that there’s anything wrong with that’ if they were liberal about the changes to gender roles in modern times, but prejudices didn’t disappear overnight. The Imperials insulted him for surrounding himself mostly with women and said he was sleeping with them. Vinsentti didn’t know, which was why you watched carefully, why you asked.

‘Make the first move,’ she told him. ‘And the second. He doesn’t like to himself, worries a show of interest from him might come out sounding like an order because of what he is, but he might be interested back. You seem like his type. He’d like to settle down with someone who could equal him, I think, but he’s a primarch and we’re not, so he makes due with various close “friends” to handle some fraction of what he can give for as long as we’ll have him.’

The obvious question was why he didn’t seek companionship among his brother primarchs, but that answer was obvious. Vinsentti had never met any of them, at that time, but he’d heard of them. Roboute fought when he needed to and had some Astartes under his command he got along well enough with, the very duty-bound and stalwart sort, but it was clear as day that he disliked war and disliked warriors. He’d been made for war by the Emperor, but Fenris had soured him to it. Vinsentti found that easy to understand. Warrior cultures were not kind to those who didn’t fit in.

Be bold, he figured, so he flirted. He wasn’t clever as a primarch with words, but he could try and not let himself be cowed by the interaction. He could indulge in long, lingering gazes, wondering how his blond braids would feel in his hands. He cast little cantrips–not because he expected so small a love spell would enchant a primarch, but to put his interest out there. He wasn’t much of a sorcerer, he only knew a few small household magics his mother had taught him, but this was the sort of spell that could get a girl in a lot of trouble back in the day, flirting and enticing a man into an affair. For a man to cast it, back then it would certainly had been more trouble than his life was worth.

Roboute smiled back, a quirk of amusement at the corner of his lips and his beard. He indulged. He let himself be courted.

Vinsentti made a point of courting not just him, but making friendly with his entire inner circle. He knew any relationship was never going to be exclusive, and honestly was grateful–the idea of a primarch’s attention on him and him alone was far too intimidating. He might not be interested in them in the same way, especially the women, but he wanted to show off he was the sort of man who played nice, who fit into that world. Better to play to the mould of the sassy gay friend in a Terran romantic drama than the tragic dead gay, the argr oathbreaker, the seiðskratti demon-summoner.

Roboute showed his interest back with reserve. Nothing that could be taken only one way, nothing that couldn’t be innocent if Vinsentti wanted to take it that way. But interest back he showed. He ended up, for instance, with the nicest sweater he had owned in his life. Roboute gave such things to half the ship crew that crossed his path in a given fortnight, especially the foreigners who complained about iceworlders and their use of air conditioning; it didn’t have to mean anything.

He was always fidgeting, Roboute was. Like he needed to be doing something with his hands all the time, didn’t matter what, just to get some of the pent up energy of having a brain like that out. One of the things he did was knit, muttering something about fine motor control, as if working with thread were anything but fraught with meaning on Fenris.

The sweater was also perfectly his size, which was surely trivial for a primarch to do with a glance, but it was not lost on Vinsentti that he had been looking and had been thinking about him. It could have been innocent, but Vinsentti had made clear it didn’t need to be.

‘Very generous, jarl, but if you want to give gifts to me, I have things I want to tithe to you.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘Lean down so I can kiss you and you’ll find out.’

It was sweet and slow as caramel, the passion there but never fully unleashed. Later, when their dance around each other eventually lead them to Roboute’s bed, he said, ‘I’m sorry for my weakness.’

‘Don’t be,’ Roboute said, carding his red braids, holding him close under the furs after they’d finished, his dogs adding themselves to the pile. It was the Fenrisian way, the whole family sleeping in the same bed for warmth. He smelled good, like dried flowers and fragrant herbs. ‘Why would we seek others if not to make ourselves better, to shore up frailties and fix broken places within us? Personally, I’d rather have silk than steel against my chest. I would rather avoid yet another competition, whether I’d win or lose, in favour not needing to fight. I have many strong arms I can call upon; I would rather be loved with a whole heart.’

‘You deserve it,’ Vinsentti said, face buried in his neck. ‘You deserve so much more, but that I can give.’