Vengeful Spirit

by Graham McNeill

  I should be dead.

  He breathed in sulphur-hot fumes. Fyceline, scorched metal, burning flesh. Horus rolled onto his side. Hearing damaged. A deadening numbness filled his head with dull echoes. The rasping of a saw. Thudding detonations.

  He didn’t need his visor display to know how badly he’d been hurt. His armour was battered, but unbreached, though his skin was burned to the bone, his scalp scorched bare. Temperature warnings, oxygen deficiencies, organ damage. He shut them out with a thought.

  Clarity. He needed clarity.

  Shadrak Meduson!

  Autonomic reactions took over. Time and motion became gel-like as Horus pushed himself to his feet. He swayed, concussive shock waves making him dizzy. How bad did it have to get for a primarch to feel dizzy?

  Flames surrounded him. The Dome of Revivification was gone, its structure torn away in scything arcs of explosive mass-reactive bolts. Cryo-cylinders lay in shattered ruin. Wet-leather bodies smoked like trail rations.

  Horus saw Noctua and Aximand pinned beneath a fallen structural member. The plates of their armour were buckled and split, their helms splintered into pieces. No sign of the Widowmaker or Ezekyle.

  ‘Mortarion!’ he shouted ‘Fulgrim!’

  His brothers? Where were his brothers?

  A figure rose from the centre of the dome, painfully bright. Too bright, giving off a radiance that sent a twist of nausea through his gut. Sinuous, winged, many armed.

  Beautiful, so very beautiful. Even bleeding sick light from fractures in his essence. He rose like a snow-maned phoenix, rising from the ashes of its immortal rebirth. Horus saw sinews like hawsers in Fulgrim’s neck, his black, murderer’s eyes now filled with light that was not light.

  A howling Fire Raptor swung around, the gimbals of its waist cannons swivelling to track the Phoenician.

  Before it could fire, the rear wings peeled back from its body, like the wings of a dragonfly plucked by a spiteful child. Its tail section crumpled, buckling inwards under invisible force.

  Fulgrim roared and brought his hands together.

  The gunship imploded, crushed to a mangled ball of twisted flesh and metal. Compressed ammunition detonated and the flaming wreckage dropped like a stone.

  Despite the flames, Horus felt the icy wind of warp-craft fill the dome. He’d known his brother’s transformation had empowered him enormously, but this was staggering. He saw movement in the wreckage beneath the Phoenician.

  Mortarion’s Barbaran plate was black as char, his pallid face seared the same colour. He leaked blood like a pierced bladder.

  Ezekyle and Aximand appeared at their primarch’s side. The First Captain’s face was a mask of crimson, his topknot burned down to the skull. Strands of it hung over his face, making him look like the victim of a wasting disease. Aximand was shouting, dragging him, but all Horus heard were explosions.

  The cloying torpor of near death fell from him.

  Noise and fury returned as his senses caught up with the world. The two remaining Fire Raptors were circling, methodically and systematically destroying the dome. Horus saw interlocking trails of high-calibre shells streaking from the prows of the Legion’s Fire Raptors. Streams of fire raced downward as the gunships strafed in concert around the dome’s circumference.

  Nothing could live through so thorough and savage an attack.

  I should be dead.

  He shook off Aximand’s grip and barged through the blazing wreckage of the dome towards Mortarion, immense in his custom Martian plate. Bodies of Dwell’s greatest minds snapped beneath his weight.

  The Iron Tenth’s gunships filled the air with shells again.

  He tried to shout, but his throat was a scorched ruin of smoke-damaged tissue. He coughed up ash and seared lung matter.

  Explosions detonated prematurely, orange flame and black smoke. Shrapnel and casings fell like hot nails.

  I should be dead.

  And but for the craft of Malevolus and the Phoenician’s power, he would be.

  Fulgrim’s arms were outstretched, and Horus guessed he had summoned a force barrier or kine-shield. Beads of phosphor-bright ichor ran like sweat down his body. Writhing smoke coated his serpent form as dark radiance spilled from his eyes and mouth.

  Whatever he was doing, it was robbing the solid rounds of their potency. Not all of it, but most of it.

  Six shells tore into Fulgrim’s body, exploding from his spine.

  Horus cried aloud as if he had been struck himself. Blood like bright milk spattered Mortarion’s armour. It smoked like an acid burn. Fulgrim screamed and the roar of gunfire and explosions swelled in power. The platform of the dome sagged, solid metal warping in the heat of the fire.

  ‘Horus! Bring them down!’ gasped Fulgrim. ‘Quickly!’

  Aximand and Abaddon fired their bolters at the gunships, hoping for a lucky hit. A cracked canopy, a buckled engine louvre. Impacts pummelled the gunships’ flanks, but Fire Raptors were built to withstand deadlier weapons than theirs.

  Mortarion waded through the wreckage, as unbroken as ever, the black blade of Silence unlimbered and trailing a burning length of chain. He roared something in the heathen tongue of his home world as he ran towards the edge of the dome.

  The Death Lord hurled Silence like an axeman.

  The great reaper blade spun and hammered into the heraldic fist upon the nearest Fire Raptor’s glacis. Heels braced in the shattered dome, Mortarion hauled on the chain attached to Silence’s heel.

  The gunship lurched in the air, but the Death Lord wasn’t done with it. Its Avenger cannon flensed Mortarion, driving him back. Plates sheared from him, blood arced in pressurised sprays. Flesh melted in the fury of high power mass-reactives.

  And still Mortarion pulled on the chain, pulling the screaming gunship closer.

  ‘I’ve hooked him!’ yelled Mortarion. ‘Now finish it!’

  The pilots fought to escape his grip. The Fire Raptor’s engines shrieked in power, but hand over hand, the downed primarch reeled the gunship in like a belligerent angler.

  Horus appeared at Mortarion’s side, running.

  Even in his towering armour he was running. Jumping.

  He vaulted onto the shattered remains of a cryo-capsule and launched himself through the air. Hooked by the Death Lord, the gunship was powerless to evade. Horus landed on its prow and knelt to grip the haft of Silence as the gunship lurched with the impact of his landing.

  He saw the pilots’ faces and drank in their terror. Horus never normally gave any thought to the men he killed. They were soldiers doing a job. Misguided and fighting for a lie, but simply soldiers doing what they were ordered to do.

  But these men had hurt him. They’d tried to murder him and his brothers. They’d lain in wait for an opportunity to behead their enemy. That he’d been foolish enough to believe Shadrak Meduson would only have one plan in place inflamed Horus’s humours as much as the attempt itself.

  He lifted his right arm, and Worldbreaker’s killing head caught the firelight.

  The mace swung and demolished the pilot’s compartment.

  The last Fire Raptor swung around the dome. Seeing him atop the second gunship and knowing it was doomed, the Fire Raptor’s cannons roared.

  High explosive, armour penetrating shells ripped along the fuselage of the wallowing gunship, shearing it in two. It exploded in a geysering plume of fire, but Horus was already in the air.

  Silence in one hand, Worldbreaker in the other, he landed on the back of the last gunship, slewing it around. The Fire Raptor gunned its engines as it tried to shake him from its back. Horus swung Silence in a wide arc and split the Fire Raptor’s spine.

  Still roaring, the gunship’s engines wrenched free with a screech of tortured metal. Horus swept Worldbreaker around like a woodsman’s axe and its flanged head ploughed through the gunship’s fuselage, obliterating the pilots and turning the prow to scrap.

  The shattered remains fell away as Horus dropped into the dome with bot
h Silence and Worldbreaker held out at his sides.

  An explosion mushroomed behind him.

  Horus dropped both weapons and ran to Mortarion. He knelt and reached out to clasp his blood-soaked brother to his burned breast. Mortarion’s arms hung limp, tendons ripped from bones and muscles acid-burned raw.

  Neither moved, a living tableau of the ashen sculptures of the dead left in an atomic detonation’s wake.

  One touch and they would crumble to cinders.

  ‘My brother,’ wept Horus. ‘What have they done to you?’

  THREE

  The Bringer of Rain

  House Devine

  First kill

  At first, Loken thought he’d misheard. Surely Russ hadn’t said what he thought he’d just said. He searched the Wolf King’s eyes for any sign that this was another test, but saw nothing to convince him that Russ hadn’t just revealed his purpose.

  ‘Kill Horus?’ he said.

  Russ nodded and began packing up the hnefatafl board, as though the matter were already concluded. Loken felt as though he had somehow missed the substance of a vital discussion.

  ‘You’re going to kill Horus?’

  ‘I am, but I need your help to do it.’

  Loken laughed, now certain this was a joke.

  ‘You’re going to kill Horus?’ he repeated, carefully enunciating every word to avoid misunderstanding. ‘And you need my help?’

  Russ looked over at Malcador with a frown. ‘Why does he keep asking me the same question? I know he’s not simple, so why is he being so dense?’

  ‘I think your directness after so oblique an approach has him confused.’

  ‘I was perfectly clear, but I will lay it out one last time.’

  Loken forced himself to listen intently to the Wolf King’s every word, knowing there would be no hidden meanings, no subtext and no ulterior motives. What Russ required of him would be exactly as it was spoken.

  ‘I am going to lead the Rout in battle against Horus, and I am going to kill him.’

  Loken sat back on the rock, still trying to process the idea of a combat between Leman Russ and Horus. Loken had seen both primarchs make war over the last century, but when it came down to blood and death he saw only one outcome.

  ‘Horus Lupercal will kill you,’ said Loken.

  Had he named any other individual, Loken had no doubt the Wolf King would have torn his throat out before he’d even known what was happening. Instead, Russ nodded.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, his eyes taking on a distant look as he relived old battles. ‘I’ve fought every one of my brothers over the centuries, either in training or with blooded blade. I know for a fact I can kill any one of them if had to… but Horus.’

  Russ shook his head and his next words were spoken like a shameful confession, each one a bitter curse.

  ‘He’s the only one I don’t know if I can beat.’

  Loken never thought to hear such a bald admission from any primarch, let alone the Wolf King. Its frank honesty lodged in his heart, and he would take Leman Russ’s words to the grave.

  ‘Then what can I do?’ he said. ‘Horus must be stopped, and if you’re going to be the one doing it, then I want to help.’

  Russ nodded and said, ‘You were part of my brother’s inner council, his… what did you call it? The Mournival. You were there the day he turned traitor, and you know the Sons of Horus in a way I cannot.’

  Loken felt the import of the primarch’s next words before he said them, like the tension in the air before a storm.

  ‘You will go back to your Legion like the aptrgangr that walks unseen in the wilds of Fenris,’ said Russ. ‘Lay a hunter’s trail within the rogue wolf’s lair. Reveal the flaw to which he is blind, and I can slay him.’

  ‘Go back to the Sons of Horus?’ said Loken.

  ‘Aye,’ said Russ. ‘My brothers all have a weakness, but I believe that only one of his own can see that of Horus. I know Horus as a brother, you know him as a father, and there are none who can bring down fathers like their sons.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Loken, shaking his head. ‘I barely knew him at all. I thought I did, but everything he told me was a lie.’

  ‘Not everything,’ said Russ. ‘Before this madness, Horus was the best of us, but even the best are not perfect.’

  ‘Horus can be beaten,’ added Malcador. ‘He is a fanatic, and that’s how I know he can be beaten. Because beneath whatever horrors drive them, fanatics always hide a secret doubt.’

  ‘And you think I know what that is?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Russ. ‘But I’m confident you will.’

  Loken stood as the Wolf King’s certainty filled him. He sensed the breath of someone standing near him, the nearness of the ghost that finally convinced him to accept Malcador’s summons to Terra.

  ‘Very well, Lord Russ, I will be your pathfinder,’ said Loken, extending his hand. ‘You may have your sights set on the Warmaster, but there are those within the ranks of the Sons of Horus to whom I owe death.’

  Russ shook his hand and said, ‘Have a care, Garviel Loken. This isn’t a path of vengeance I’m setting you on, nor is it one of execution. Leave such things to the Rout. It’s what we do best.’

  ‘I can’t do this alone,’ said Loken, turning to Malcador.

  ‘No, you cannot,’ agreed Malcador, reaching to take Loken’s hand. ‘The Knights Errant are yours to command in this. Choose who you will, with my blessing.’

  The Sigillite glanced down at Loken’s palm, seeing the fading echo of a bruise in the shape of a gibbous moon.

  ‘A wound?’ asked Malcador.

  ‘A reminder.’

  ‘A reminder of what?’

  ‘Something I still have to do,’ said Loken, looking up to the ruined citadel high on the cliff side as the hooded figure of a man he knew to be dead withdrew into its shadow.

  Loken turned from Russ and Malcador, following the snaking path that led back down the valley. As he left, the clouds gathered beneath the dome split apart.

  And a warm rain began to fall in the Hegemon.

  The blood-red Knight climbed through the rocky canyons and evergreen highlands of the Untar Mesas with long, loping strides. At nearly nine metres tall, its mechanised bulk simply splintered the lower branches of the towering bitterleaf trees it didn’t bother to avoid. Some broke apart on impact, some were sheared cleanly by the hard edges of the Knight’s ion shield. A wonder of ancient technology, the Knight was lighter kin to the Titan Legions, a lithe predator to their lumbering war engines.

  Its name was Banelash, and a crackling whip writhed at one shoulder mount. Upon the other, banked racks of heavy stubber barrels whined with the energy stored in their propellant stacks.

  The Knight’s hull plates were vermillion and ebony, segmented and overlapping like burnished naga scales. It had reaved the borders between warring states of Molech a thousand years before the coming of the Imperium. The Knight was a predator stalking the mountain forests, seeking dangerous quarry to bring down.

  Encased within the pilot’s compartment, Raeven Devine, second-born son of Molech’s Imperial commander, let the sensorium surround him with graded representations of the landscape. Plugged into Banelash via the invasive technology of the Throne Mechanicum, its every motion and stride was his to command.

  His limbs were its limbs; what it felt, he felt.

  Sometimes, when he rode into the secret canyons to join Lyx and her intoxicated followers, the Knight’s heart would surge with memories of its previous pilots; a ghostly parade of wars he’d never fought, foes he hadn’t killed and blood he’d never shed.

  Its powered whip had belonged to Raeven’s great-great-grandfather, who was said to have slain the last of the great nagahydra of distant Ophir.

  A golden eagle icon within the sensorium depicted his father’s Knight a thousand metres below him. Cyprian Devine, Lord Commander Imperial of Molech, was rapidly approaching his hundred and twenty-fifth year, but stil
l piloted Hellblade like he thought he was the equal of Raeven’s juvenated sixty-four.

  Hellblade was old, far older than Banelash, and was said to be one of the original vajras that rode the Fulgurine Path with the Stormlord, thousands of years ago. Raeven thought that unlikely. The Sacristans could barely maintain the war machines of Molech’s noble Houses without their dour Mechanicum overseers to hand.

  What hope would they have had before then?

  Darting icons representing House Devine’s retainers, beaters and huscarls on skimmer-bikes ranged around his father’s Knight, but Raeven had long since outrun them into the mountains’ misty peaks.

  If anyone was going to slay the beasts, it would be him.

  The tracks of the rogue mallahgra pair led into the highest regions of the Untar Mesas, a knifeback range of mountains that effectively divided the world in two. It was rare for the great beasts – once so plentiful on Molech, now hunted almost to extinction – to come within sight of human beings, but as their numbers dwindled, so too did the extent of their hunting grounds.

  The last three winters had been harsh, and the springs scarcely less so, with snow blocking the paths through the mountains. Prey animals had been driven down to the warmer lowlands, so it was little wonder the mallahgra were forced to descend from their fissure-lairs upon waking from hibernation.

  The settlements crouched in the foothills of the Untar Mesas, scattered strip-mining hives and refining conurbation-stacks mainly, were now within the hunting grounds of a ravenous mallahgra and its mate. Three hundred people were already dead, with perhaps another thirty missing.

  Raeven doubted any of those taken were alive, and if they were they’d soon wish they’d died in the first attack. Raeven had heard stories of mallahgra that had devoured their victims over days, a limb at a time.

  Bleating petitions sent to the city of Lupercalia – a name of exquisite poor taste in these days of rebellion – begged the Knight Seneschal to sally forth and slay the beasts. Despite the high level of alert imposed on Molech with the Warmaster’s treachery, Raeven’s father had chosen to lead a hunting party into the Untar Mesas. As much as he despised his father, Raeven couldn’t deny that the old man knew the value of his word.