Following on from his novel The Master of Mankind, Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Horus Heresy short story Bringer of Sorrow continues the story of two unlikely friends – the Technoarchaeologist Arkhan Land and the crippled Blood Angel Zephon. In the wake of the Webway War, as the Blood Angels and Sanguinius return to Terra, Land turns his genius to the problem of how to permanently repair Zephon’s failing bionics, which his own battlefield fix has further degraded. Ever the risk-taker, he’s supremely confident in his ability to succeed where all others have failed, but his solution is not without dangers of its own.
This might be a little spoilerific for anyone yet to read The Master of Mankind, but for anyone familiar with these characters it’s a joy to revisit them. The focus is on Land in all his grouchy, socially awkward glory, and through his interactions with Zephon we get a further glimpse of what their relationship means to him. It’s very much a quiet, focused character study, with an intriguing reversal of the usual legionary/human dynamic as Land struggles to grasp what he sees as baffling displays of emotion from Zephon. It’s short but wonderfully satisfying, and shows just how much scope there is for more stories about these brilliant characters.
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