Despite Lyx offering innumerable pledges to the Serpent Gods to end Cyprian’s life, they had so far not obliged. Raeven had never really shared his sister-wife’s faith in the old religion, only indulging her beliefs for the carnal and intoxicating diversions they provided from the daily tedium of existence.
The path he was following traced the edge of a plunging cliff. Through breaks in the fog and cloud, Raeven could see the plains thousands of metres below. The trees reached almost to the sheer drop, snapped off where the brutish mallahgra had passed.
Their trail was easy enough to follow. Blood stained the ground in slashing arcs and every now and then he saw splintered nubs of discarded bone jutting from the snow. He’d inloaded the bio-sign taken from the latest attack to Banelash’s auspex, and it was only a matter of time until he came upon the beasts.
‘Sooner than I thought,’ he said, emerging onto a widened area of clear ground, and halting his Knight’s advance as he saw a huge body lying butchered on the snow before him.
At full height, a mallahgra stood nearly seven metres tall, with bulky simian shoulders and long, muscular arms that could tear an unskilled Knight apart. Their heads were blunt, conical horrors of mandibles, tentacles and row upon row of serrated triangular teeth.
They had six eyes, two forward looking in the manner of predators, two sited for peripheral vision and two embedded in a ridged fold of flesh at the back of its neck. Evolutionary adaptations that made them devils to hunt, but Raeven had always enjoyed a challenge.
Not that this beast offered much in the way of threat.
An ivory-furred adolescent male around five metres tall, it lay on its side with its belly carved open. Thick red blood steamed in the cold, and glistening ropes of pinkish blue intestines pooled around its stomach like butcher’s offal. The corpses of a dozen miners lay scattered around the creature’s body.
Raeven walked his Knight around the dead beast, keeping one eye on the sensorium for any sign of the female. Bloodied tracks led into the forest farther back from the edge of the cliff.
Before he could resume the hunt, the ground shook as Hellblade finally caught up to him. A number of skimmer-bikes followed, as Banelash’s sensorium fizzed with static and Cyprian Devine’s lined, patrician face appeared on the pict-manifold.
Wanting to get the first word in, Raeven said, ‘Glad you could join me.’
‘Damn you, boy, I told you to wait for me!’ snapped his father. ‘You aren’t Knight Seneschal yet! First kill isn’t yours to make.’
The skimmer-bikes circled the two Knights, several retainers dismounting to check the miners for signs of life.
‘As always, your snap judgement of my actions is entirely misplaced,’ said Raeven, lowering his pilot’s canopy to the mallahgra’s body and studying the shredded mass of its flanks and chest. By themselves, none of these injuries were mortal, but each would have been excruciatingly painful. The wound in its belly had killed the beast, a disembowelling cut made by something viciously sharp and with the power to rip through tough hide to the organs beneath.
Raeven pulled the canopy back to its full height and said, ‘I didn’t kill it.’
‘Don’t lie to me, boy.’
‘You know me, father, I’m not shy of taking credit for things others have done, but this beast didn’t fall to me. Look at these wounds.’
Hellblade leaned over the corpse, and Raeven took a moment to study his father’s ravaged features in the manifold. Cyprian Devine had eschewed juvenat treatments that were purely cosmetic, only allowing those that actively prolonged his life. In Cyprian’s world, all else was vanity, a character flaw he saw most evidently in his second son.
Raeven’s older half-brother, Albard, had always been Cyprian’s favoured son, but a failed attempt to bond with his Knight forty-three years ago had broken his mind and left him a virtual catatonic. Kept locked away in one of the Devine Towers, his continued existence was a stain on the ancient name of the House.
‘These tears in the beast’s flesh are messy, like something your chain-sabre would do,’ said Raeven as the Devine retainers carried the bodies of the miners to the skimmer-bikes. From the attention one man was getting from a medicae, it appeared there was actually a survivor.
‘The female must have done this,’ declared his father. ‘They must have fought over the spoils and she gutted him.’
‘An unlikely explanation,’ said Raeven, circling the corpse.
‘You have a better one?’
‘If the female killed her mate, then why did she leave the bodies?’ said Raeven. ‘No, something drove her from here.’
‘What could possibly drive a female mallahgra from her mate?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Raeven, lifting one of his Knight’s clawed feet and tipping the hulking mallahgra onto its front. ‘Something that can do this.’
Bloodied craters punctured the creature’s back, each one unmistakably an exit wound of explosive ammunition.
‘It’s been shot?’ hissed Cyprian. ‘Damn it all. House Kaushik, it’s got to be. Those faithless scavengers must have picked up the distress petition and sent their own Knights into the mountains, hoping to steal glory from my table!’
‘Look at these wounds,’ pointed out Raeven. ‘House Kaushik are little better than Tazkhar savages. Their Sacristans can barely maintain the fusion-powered crankers they favour, let alone anything this powerful.’
His father ignored him and strode towards the tree line where the blood-smeared tracks of the second mallahgra disappeared.
‘Sort out the retainers then follow me,’ ordered Cyprian. ‘The female’s injured, so she can’t have gone far. I’ll have her bloody head above the Argent Gate before morning, boy. And if anyone gets in my way, mark my words, I’ll have their heads up beside it.’
Cyprian walked Hellblade into the darkness beneath the bitterleaf canopy, leaving Raeven to deal with mundane business beneath his notice. Raeven turned Banelash and declined the canopy towards the circle of skimmer-bikes where the dead miners were being strapped down.
He linked with the vox-servile and said, ‘Take the bodies back to whichever hell-hole they were abducted from. Issue standard renumeration for death in service to any dependants and send death notices to the aexactor adepts.’
‘My lord,’ said the senior retainer.
‘Out of curiosity, is the survivor saying anything interesting?’
‘Nothing we can understand, my lord,’ said the medicae, one hand pressed to the side of his helm. ‘It’s doubtful he’ll live much longer.’
‘So he’s saying something?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Don’t be an idiot all your life, man,’ snapped Raeven. ‘Tell me what he’s saying.’
‘He’s saying “lingchi”, my lord,’ said the medicae. ‘Keeps repeating it over and over.’
Raeven didn’t know the word. Its sound was familiar, like it belonged to a language he couldn’t speak, but was vaguely aware existed. He put it from his mind and turned Banelash, knowing his father wouldn’t approve of his dawdling with the lower orders.
He walked his Knight into the shadow of the towering bitterleaf tree line. His mood was sour as he followed Hellblade’s tracks and the bio-sign of the wounded mallahgra.
One dead beast and another his father was sure to claim.
What a colossal waste of time this hunt had proven to be.
Raeven Devine, piloting Banelash into the forest
Hellblade was a bullish machine, without the agility of Raeven’s mount, and the trail of broken branches was easy to follow. In many ways, it was the perfect match for Cyprian Devine, a man who lived as though in the midst of a charge.
Cold beams of light shafted through the forest canopy, ivory columns glittering with motes of powdered snow. Raeven followed Hellblade’s tracks through the narrow canyons of the forest, emerging onto a windswept plateau. Patches of crushed rock and smeared blood led into a bone-strewn fissure in a cliff ahead.
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‘Gone back to your lair,’ said Raeven. ‘That was stupid.’
His father’s eagle icon in the sensorium was just ahead, two hundred metres into the fissure, and Raeven remembered the last time Hellblade had fought a mallahgra.
It had been on the eve of Raeven’s Becoming, a day some forty-odd years ago, but forever etched in his mind. A rogue Sacristan had tried to kill his father by blowing out the cranial inhibitors of a docile mallahgra with an electromagnetic bomb. The pain-maddened beast almost killed Raeven and Albard, but their father had split it in two with a single strike of his Knight’s chainsabre, despite taking spars of iron through his chest and stomach in the battle.
But that wasn’t the story that caught the people’s imagination.
Raeven had stood before the rampaging monster with only his brother’s powerless energy sabre held before him, a tiny figure who faced down the beast with no hope of victory. Lyx’s carefully placed whispers lauded Raeven’s courage and diminished Cyprian’s.
Years passed, and Raeven expected to take up his hereditary position, but the old bastard just wouldn’t die. Even when Raeven fathered three boys to continue the House name, Cyprian showed no sign of letting the reins of power slip from his grasp.
Denied any power of real worth, Raeven spent the years indulging Lyx in her beliefs, even taking part in some of her cult’s rituals when the inevitable boredom took hold. Lyx was an epicurean of the sensual arts, and the nights they spent beneath the moons, naked and delirious from envenomed Caeban wine were certainly memorable, but ultimately hollow compared to ruling an entire world.
A wash of red light through the sensorium snapped him from his bitter reverie, and he immediately brought Banelash up to full stride. Threat filters filled the auspex, and Raeven heard the familiar snaps of massed stubber fire.
‘Father?’ he said into the vox.
‘The beast!’ returned a voice thick with strain. ‘It wasn’t the other’s mate!’
Raeven pushed Banelash deeper into the darkness. Dazzling arc lights unfolded from the upper surfaces of the Knight’s carapace, flooding the fissure with light. The sensorium could guide him, but Raeven preferred to trust his own eyes when death lay in wait.
Banelash strained at the edge of his control, a wild colt even after all this time. Raeven was tempted to let it take the lead, but kept his grip firm. The older pilots were replete with tales of men whose minds had been lost when they allowed a mount’s spirit to overwhelm them.
Raeven powered the whip and fed shells into the stubber cannon. He felt the heat of their readiness envelop his hands, letting the trip hammer of his heart mirror the thunder of Banelash’s reactor.
The fissure was a winding split in the mountains. Its course was thick with debris, rotted vegetation, frozen mounds of excrement and the half-digested remains of dismembered carcasses. Raeven crushed it all flat as he followed the sounds of las-fire and the shrieking roar of a heavy-gauge chainsabre.
He pulled Banelash into a widened portion of the fissure, a cavern where the walls almost met high above and all but obscured the sunlight.
The spotlight beams lit a nightmarish sight of the largest mallahgra he had ever seen; fully ten metres tall and broader than any of the largest Knights. Its fur was a piebald mixture of white and russet, and its long arms were absurd with musculature. Blood poured from a wound torn in its side, but this beast cared nothing for such hurts.
Hellblade was down on one knee at the edge of a sulphurous chasm that belched noxious yellow fog. Its right leg was buckled and his father was desperately fending off thunderous blows from the monster’s simian arms with the revving edge of his blade. Blood sprayed, but the mallahgra was too enraged to notice.
Raeven lowered his mount’s head and charged, uncoiling the whip and letting fly with a burst of stubber fire. High-calibre bolts burned a path across the mallahgra’s back and it reared at the suddenness of his attack.
Raeven blanched at the monster’s size and the grizzled, ancient texture of its hide. Now he understood his father’s last words.
This wasn’t the dead adolescent’s mate.
It was its mother.
The mallahgra leapt at him, bellowing in outrage. A clubbing arm smashed into Banelash’s canopy. Glass shattered and Raeven sucked in a breath of savage cold. The impact was monstrous, and the beast swung at him again. Raeven swayed aside, pulling the ion shield over his exposed canopy to deflect the blow. The mallahgra’s blackened claws swept past him, barely a handspan from tearing his face away.
Raeven shucked his gun arm forward and a hurricane of stubber fire strobed the canyon with muzzle flare. Tracer rounds stabbed into the mallaghra’s shoulder, setting light to its fur and driving it back. He followed up with a crack from the energy lash that ploughed a bloody trough in its chest.
The mallahgra roared in pain, and Raeven didn’t give it a chance to recover. He stepped in close and slammed the hard edge of his ion shield into its face. Fangs snapped and oily blood poured from its ruined maw. The lash cracked again and peeled the muscle from the monster’s thigh.
A clawed hand tore at his chest armour, but Raeven batted it away with the barrels of his stubber cannon. He brought the arm back and pumped half a dozen shots into its face, shattering the bone and exploding the eye sited in the side of its skull.
The mallahgra surged towards him, and not even Raeven’s genhanced reflexes could match its speed. Its corded arms encircled Banelash, and began crushing the life out of him.
Hot animal breath doused him in rank saliva and the reek of rotten meat. Raeven gagged at the stench and fought to escape the monster’s grip. They stamped back and forth through the cavern like drunken dancers at a Serpent Revel, slamming into walls and dislodging debris from high above. A chunk of rock smashed onto Raeven’s shoulder, buckling his pauldrons and shattering his carapace lights. Broken glass rained into the shattered canopy and Raeven flinched as razored fragments sliced his cheeks.
Warning lights flashed on the damaged sensorium. Armour squealed as it reached its maximum-rated tolerances. Raeven brought his knee up into the mallahgra’s side, where his whip had previously wounded it. The beast roared, almost deafening Raeven, and its pain gave him the opening he needed.
He slammed his ion shield against the bloodied, heat-fused side of the mallahgra’s skull. The monster’s grip loosened and Raeven pulled free of its crushing embrace, unleashing a blitzing stream of fire into its chest and head.
Repeated lashes from his energy whip followed each salvo and the mewling beast stumbled away, its lifeblood flashing to red mist in the cauterising heat of gunfire.
Raeven laughed as he drove it back.
He didn’t see Hellblade surge up on its one good leg behind the mallahgra. All he saw was the fountain of viscous blood as the revving blade of his father’s chainsabre exploded from the mallahgra’s ribcage.
The life fled from its eyes and Raeven felt something caged within his chest for four decades stir at the monster’s death, something barbed and hateful and full of spite. The juddering chainsabre caught on the mallahgra’s ribs. It spasmed with false life before Cyprian wrenched the blade out through its side in a flood of reeking viscera. The gutted beast toppled into the chasm, and anger filled Raeven as it fell.
He turned Banelash to face his father’s wounded Knight.
Hellblade crouched at the edge of the chasm, one leg buckled beyond its ability to bear any weight. The Knight had suffered a grievous hurt, but with the ministrations of the Mechanicum and the Sacristans, it would walk again.
‘It died a good death,’ said Cyprian, between heaving breaths and using the end of his stilled blade to remain upright. ‘Damn shame the head is gone though. No one’s going to believe the size of that thing.’
‘The kill was mine,’ said Raeven with cold fury.
‘Now you’re being ridiculous,’ returned Cyprian. ‘I’m the Knight Seneschal, the right of First Kill was always mine. Don’t piss your britches
, boy, I’ll credit you with aiding me. You’ll win a share of the glory.’
‘Aiding? You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me.’
‘But who ended its life? Me or you?’
The cage in Raeven’s chest unlocked and the barbed thing of hate and ambition that imprinting with the Throne Mechanicum had sought to imprison was freed to stab his soul once more.
‘And who will they say ended yours?’ hissed Raeven. ‘Me or the mallahgra?’
Too late, Cyprian Devine saw the depthless well of venom in his son’s heart, but there was nothing he could do to stop what happened next.
Stepping back to plant Banelash’s clawed foot in the centre of Hellblade’s chest, Raeven kicked the Knight into the chasm. His father yelled in outrage, and Raeven watched the ancient machine fall end over end. It slammed into a sharp outcropping of rock and broke apart like a confiscated automaton from the Clockwork City beneath a Sacristan’s forge hammer.
The remains of Hellblade vanished into the sulphurous mist, and Raeven turned away. With every purposeful stride he took from the chasm, the poisonous ambition within him took an ever more defined shape.
Raeven was now Imperial commander of Molech. What would Lyx make of this new development?
Raeven grinned, knowing exactly what she would say.
‘The Serpent Gods provide,’ he said.
FOUR
Reforged
Filum Secundo
The Seven Neverborn
When the Warmaster needed to dominate or awe petitioners he received them in Lupercal’s Court, with its towering, vaulted ceiling of muttering shadows, black battle standards, glimmering lancets and basalt throne. But when simply desiring company, the summons was to his private staterooms.
Aximand had come here many times over the years, but usually in the company of Mournival brothers. In his staterooms, the Warmaster could put aside that heavy title for a few precious moments and simply be Horus.
Like most places aboard the Vengeful Spirit, it had changed markedly over the last few years. Trinkets taken in the early years of the Great Crusade had vanished, and many of the paintings were now hidden by sackcloth. A vast star map with the Emperor at its heart, and which had covered one entire wall, was long gone. In its stead were innumerable pages of densely wound script, together with fanciful imagery depicting cosmological conjunctions, omega-point diagrams, alchemical symbols, trefoil knots and a central image of an armoured warrior bearing a golden sword and glittering silver chalice.
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