28a Luna Mendax

by Graham McNeill

  'I suppose,' agreed Loken. 'In fact I seem to remember hauling your sorry arse out of a swamp as a bunch of dead men were dragging you down.'

  'You see? These days, death isn't the handicap it used to be.'

  Don't be glib,' said Loken. 'I don't know what caused the dead of the plague moon to fight. A pathogen, or some cerebral parasite maybe.'

  'Come on, you don't really believe that,' said Torgaddon. 'You've been reading too many of Sindermann's old books again, haven't you?'

  'Maybe I don't believe that, but I know people who had their heads cut off don't get up and start walking around and talking to old friends.'

  'I'll admit it's a puzzler,' agreed Torgaddon.

  Loken reached out to touch Torgaddon's arm, and the limb he grasped felt as real and as solid as his own. He felt the rough fabric of his brother's sackcloth robes and the steel-trap strength in the musculature beneath. His hands came away black with ash, and he rubbed it clean on the grass.

  'Am I still on Isstvan III?' asked Loken. 'Did I die there too? Did Garro kill me, or am I still alone, still Cerberus?'

  'Cerberus?'

  Loken shook his head, embarrassed. 'A war name I think I took for myself.'

  'Guardian of the underworld,' said Torgaddon. 'Appropriate enough, I suppose.'

  'I thought you'd know that.'

  'I know just what you know,' said Torgaddon. 'And what you know is... patchy, shall we say?'

  Understanding dawned on Loken. 'Ah, so you're a figment of my imagination? Some memory my damaged mind has conjured up.'

  'Maybe,' agreed Torgaddon. 'You straight up and down types do like to punish yourselves.'

  'Punish?'

  Torgaddon nodded and leaned forward. Loken caught the pungent reek of his brother's blood and the choking dust of smashed building parts mixed with the chemical stink of explosives and the burnt metal smell of war. He gasped as he relived the moment of his awakening, trapped beneath thousands of tonnes of debris and wondering how he was still alive.

  'Why else would you think of me except to punish yourself?' asked Torgaddon, staring right into the heart of him. 'You let me die. You watched Aximand take my head, and you didn't stop him. He killed your closest battle-brother and you didn't hunt him down and kill him for what he did. How can you call yourself my friend while that treacherous bastard still breathes?'

  Loken pushed himself to his feet and walked away from Torgaddon, standing at the edge of the waterfall and staring down into the water forty metres below. The fall might not kill him, but the rocks at the bottom were like the sharpened teeth of a half-submerged leviathan and would certainly break a good many of his bones. How long would it be before anyone came to find him here? Long enough for the water to turn red with his blood? Long enough for him to die?

  'I wanted to hunt them all down. I wanted to kill every last one of them,' he said at last. 'But... there was no way off Isstvan. Everyone was dead. I was trapped on a world of death.'

  'The dead who rose up, I might point out,' said Torgaddon.

  'I... I lost my way for a time,' continued Loken as if he hadn't heard Torgaddon. 'I was so consumed by the need to kill that I lost sight of what it was I needed to kill.'

  'Then Garro came and brought you back.'

  Loken nodded. 'He convinced me I still had a duty, a debt to pay, but this isn't the fight I was made for. I can't fight in the shadows, Tarik. If we're going to beat the Warmaster, then it has to be out in the open. He has to be seen to be defeated, so that everyone knows it.'

  Torgaddon got up and smoothed down his robes, the fraying thread still hanging from his sleeve.

  'You said "if" you beat the Warmaster,' said Torgaddon. 'You don't think it can be done?'

  'You were a Luna Wolf, Tarik,' said Loken, rubbing a hand across his face as a tremendous wave of weariness swept through him. 'You know as well as I do that he's the most dangerous man in the galaxy. There's a reason Horus was made Warmaster and not any of the others. He's the best at what he does, and what he does is make corpses of his enemies.'

  'So that means you shouldn't fight him?'

  Loken shook his head. 'No, of course he has to be fought.'

  'Just not by you?'

  'What do you mean?'

  Torgaddon ignored Loken's question and spread his arms, turning on the spot to encompass the entirety of the garden.

  'What is?'

  Torgaddon cocked his head to one side and stared quizzically at him. 'You really don't see it?'

  'See what?' said Loken, growing tired of Torgaddon's constant evasion.

  ‘'This place? You don't recognise what you've built here?'

  'No.'

  'Sixty-Three Nineteen?' said Torgaddon as though teasing the memory out, like a timorous animal coaxed from its burrow by soft words and the promise of food. Loken looked down at the garden, now seeing it for what it was: the square shallow basins surrounded by flagstone pathways, the weeping trees and the bright flowers gathered at the water's edge. Memory surged, and he gasped as the full force of it tore into the fractured synapses of his mind.

  When he'd first come here, none of this had existed. The enclosed biodome had been a tangled, overgrown mess that looked like it needed a flamer team or a destroyer cadre to tame it. But Loken had rebuilt it, hacking away the fibrous masses of dying flora and dumping it outside the dome. Working in his battle armour for days at a time, he'd fought the unwinnable fight against the rampant overgrowth of weeds and uncontrolled expansion of climbing plants. And he had brought the garden back to life, using a wellborer drill to cut giant flagstones from the Mare Tranquillitatis and hauling them inside to lay the paths around the pools he'd dug.

  Everything that now existed within this dome had been wrought by his hand, and now he saw that, he understood why every little thing was freighted with familiarity.

  'The water garden,' said Loken, tears misting his eyes. 'This is where I took the Mournival Oath.'

  'And do you remember what you swore?' said Torgaddon, putting a hand on Loken's shoulder. 'You pledged to serve the Emperor above all primarchs. To uphold the truth of the Imperium of Mankind, no matter what evil might assail it. To stand firm against all enemies, alien and domestic.'

  'I remember,' said Loken.

  'You swore to be true to the Mournival to the end of your life,' said Torgaddon.

  'The Mournival is broken,' said Loken. 'Ezekyle and Aximand saw to that.'

  'Very well, to the ideals of the Mournival then.'

  Loken nodded. 'This was the last moment I felt we were on the verge of something incredible.'

  Torgaddon. 'Aye, it was. And now you know that, you know you can't stay here.'

  Loken's mind was afire with all that came after that moment: the war on Murder; the blood spilled from misunderstanding upon the homeworld of the Interex; the horror of Davin; the slaughter of the Auretian Technocracy; and the final, monstrous betrayal on Isstvan III. He'd known all this, he'd always known it, but had found a way to keep it locked away in the depths of his mind.

  Loken dropped to one knee, overwhelmed by the surge of suppressed memory.

  I remember it all,' he whispered. 'I didn't want to. I tried to forget, but it looks like I can't.'

  'It's like the dead things at the bottom of the sea,' said Torgaddon. 'Maybe they were tied to anchors or boulders, but somehow things got rotted up and those dead things are floating up to the surface. We never knew they were there all along, but we're seeing them now.'

  Loken looked up at Torgaddon, who held out a hand to him.

  'You've hidden here and lied to yourself for too long, Garvi. It's time you got back in this war, whether you fight in the shadows or the light of day. Right now, the Imperium has foes in both. You're going to have to go down the hole and see how dark it gets, and I warn you it's going to get very dark indeed before this is over.'

  Loken took Torgaddon's hand and let the big man pull him to his feet.

  'I told you, I'm not built for this kind
of fight,' he said.

  'You're built for every kind of fight,' said Torgaddon. 'You know this and you need to stop thinking as if the Imperium is on the back foot. You're a Luna Wolf, and nothing is more dangerous than a cornered wolf.'

  'So you think we're cornered?'

  'Alright, maybe that wasn't the best expression,' admitted Torgaddon. 'But you know what I mean. Strong enemies know when you're weak. That makes them hungry, and that's when they come for you. So what do you do?'

  'Don't let them know you're weak.'

  'Or better yet, don't be weak,' said Torgaddon. 'Be strong: I remember something the Warmaster said back in the day, you know, back before everything went to shit. He said that man has control of action alone, never the fruits of the action. Take control of your actions, Garvi. Remember that when things look their worst, you can only do what you think is right at the time.'

  'Loken heard the clatter of the airlocks on the far side of the dome.

  'I have to go now,' said Torgaddon, holding out his hand again.

  Loken looked at the proffered hand, but didn't yet take it.

  'Are you really here or is this just my mind's way of convincing me to do something I know I have to do?'

  'I don't know,' confessed Torgaddon. 'Either explanation sounds unbelievable, but what do I know? I had my head cut off.'

  'Don't joke, Tarik,' said Loken. 'Not now.'

  'I don't know what to tell you, Garvi,' said Torgaddon, suddenly serious, and the transformation was as unsettling as anything else Loken had experienced recently. 'I don't have a neat explanation all tied up with a bow. I feel real, but I think something terrible happened to me after I died.'

  'After you died?' said Loken. 'What could be worse than dying?'

  'I don't know yet,' said Torgaddon. 'But I think you're the only one who can undo it.'

  Loken heard footsteps drawing near, the harsh ring of armoured boots telling him that another legionary was approaching. He looked back along the path, seeing a long, broad-shouldered shadow thrown out over the flagstones, and closed his eyes. He wanted this all to be a dream, but knew it was all too real and all too hideous to be so easily dismissed.

  When he opened his eyes, Torgaddon was gone, if he had ever really existed.

  Loken let out a breath that felt as if it had been caught in his chest for an eternity, as a warrior armoured in steeldust war-plate without Legion markings rounded the corner. Iacton Qruze, once known as the half-heard of the Luna Wolves, now one of Malcador's Knights Errant, nodded in respect to Loken and held up a hand in greeting.

  Loken returned the gesture and said, 'Qruze, what brings you to the garden?'

  'You are summoned,' said Qruze. 'And this time you need to answer.'

  'Who summons me?'

  'Malcador,' said Qruze, as though there could be no other summoner.

  'Then I will come,' said Loken.

  'You will?' said Qruze, as though surprised by Loken's answer.

  'Yes,' said Loken, bending to lift a flattened stone from the waterfall's edge. 'Give me a moment.'

  He hurled the stone out over the lake, smiling in satisfaction as it skipped and bounced over the water, before ricocheting back into the centre of the pool to land in the reflected image of the Solar System's precious third planet.

  Qruze watched the stone's trajectory with a curious expression.

  'What was that all about?' he asked at last.

  'Something Torgaddon and I did on the shores of a water garden's lake one time,' said Loken. 'He could never master it, but I always managed to get stones further than anyone else.'

  Qruze nodded, though Loken's answer was plainly meaningless to him.

  'What's that on your hand?' asked the half-heard.

  Loken looked down and smiled as he saw a bruise turning to yellow in the shape of a gibbous moon on the palm of his hand.

  'A reminder,' said Loken.

  'A reminder of what?'

  'Something I still have to do,' said Loken.