Instead of a place of solace for those who came here, it was often the last place on Terra they ever saw. Nagasena himself was in absentia on yet another hunt, and Loken’s pathfinders had taken up residence.
The walls of the room at the heart of the villa were covered in wax paper schematics retrieved from the deepest and most secure vaults of the palace. Hundreds of plans, sections and isometrics depicted one of the mightiest vessels ever adapted to the Scylla-pattern construction schemata.
The Vengeful Spirit had formed the core of the Luna Wolves campaigns for two centuries, a Gloriana-class war vessel of such power that entire systems had been cowed by the scale of the devastation it alone could unleash. The precisely inked lines of the plans were covered in hasty scrawls and pinned script paper. Choke points within the superstructure were identified, potential boarding points circled and its regions of greatest vulnerability and strength highlighted with painted brushstrokes. The latter far outnumbered the former.
Shipwrights’ plotter tables formed a circle around two warriors of transhuman scale, both engaged in heated debate as to the nature of the vessel they were to infiltrate.
Loken tapped a stylus against the upper transit decks.
‘The Avenue of Glory and Lament,’ said Loken. ‘It’s the approach to the strategium. Plenty of companionways and gallery decks connect to it, and it’s a natural highway through the ship.’
Loken’s companion was clearly of a different mindset, and shook his cybernetic-threaded skull. His bulk was considerable; broader and taller than Loken, but with a noticeable stoop that brought his pallid features to the same level.
His name was Tubal Cayne and he had once been an Iron Warrior.
‘Shows how long it’s been since you stormed a war vessel,’ he said, jabbing a finger at the funnel points along the transverse transits. ‘A breach there will require a fight, something I was under the impression you wanted to avoid. Besides, any commander worth his salt will have rapid reaction forces stationed here, here and all along here. Or are you telling me the Warmaster’s gone soft in the head as well as mad?’
Despite his primarch’s treachery, Loken felt an absurd need to defend him against Cayne’s insult. The Iron Warrior had a knack for irritating people with his cold logic and utter lack of empathy. Loken had already stepped in to keep Ares Voitek from strangling Cayne with his servo-arm when he suggested that the death of Ferrus Manus might actually have a positive effect on the Iron Tenth.
He took a deep breath to quell his rising choler. ‘The Vengeful Spirit has never been boarded,’ said Loken. ‘It’s a battle scenario we never bothered to run. Who’d be insane enough to board the Warmaster’s flagship?’
‘There’s always someone mad enough to try the one thing you’ve never considered,’ said Cayne. ‘Just look around you.’
‘Then where would you suggest?’ snapped Loken, tiring of Cayne’s incessant naysaying. He knew his irritation was more directed at himself, for each of Cayne’s objections was founded in logic and proper diligence of thought.
Cayne bent to study the schemata again, his eyes darting back and forth and his fingers tracing arcane patterns across the hair-thin lines of the Scyllan architect’s quill. Eventually he tapped a portside embarkation bay of a munitions sub-deck on the Vengeful Spirit’s ventral aspect.
‘The lower deck was always the weakest point in other ships’ defences,’ said Cayne, sweeping his finger out to encompass the adjacent dormitory spaces and magazine chambers. ‘It’s not presented to the planet below, so there’s only going to be menials down there, gun-crews and whatever dregs have sunk below the waterline.’
‘Other ships?’
‘Ships other than the Fourth Legion,’ said Cayne, and Loken felt a tremor of unease at the pride Cayne took when speaking of his former brothers. ‘The Lord of Iron knew a warship without guns is a powderless culverin and took steps to protect them.’
Tubal Cayne had come to the Knights Errant from the gaol of Kangba Marwu, one of the Crusader Host who had been garrisoned on Terra as a potent reminder of the Legion hosts fighting in humanity’s name. Cayne’s evolution of breaching doctrines during the storming of the glacier fortresses of Saturn’s rings was still an exemplary model by which orbital strongpoints ought to be taken. His release from the Legio Custodes cells had been Malcador’s doing, but had only been approved by Constantin Valdor after rigorous psy-screens had revealed no trace of traitorous rancour.
Cayne was not the only parolee from Kangba Marwu set to join this pathfinding mission, but he was the only one Loken had met so far. The Iron Warrior had responded to the treachery of Horus with stoic practicality, lamenting his Legion’s choice of alignment, while understanding that his place was no longer in their ranks.
‘Yes,’ nodded Cayne. ‘That’s your way in.’
Loken traced the route a craft would need to follow to reach the ventral decks and said, ‘That means flying through the guns’ fire zones. Minefields, sentinel arrays.’
‘More than likely, but a small enough craft most likely won’t show up on the threat auspex of cannons that size. And if a shell hits us we’ll be dead before we even know it. So why worry?’
Loken let out a breath at the thought of flying through a gauntlet of ship-killing ordnance and detection arrays. As plans went, it was a risky one, but Cayne was right. This was the portion of the Vengeful Spirit that offered the best way in.
The sound of breath at the doorway forestalled any further discussion. A young girl in a simple cream shift, with gleaming black skin and hard eyes of pale ivory stood at the open door, her hands clasped demurely in front of her. Loken had assumed she was a servant of Yasu Nagasena, but she carried a holstered pistol at her side at all times. He didn’t know what position she occupied within the household, but that she was utterly devoted to the villa’s master was beyond question.
‘Mistress Amita sent me to tell you that Rassuah is on approach,’ she said.
Tubal Cayne looked up. ‘The last of us?’
Loken nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s see who else is walking into hell,’ said Cayne.
Rubio and Varren came up from the sparring chambers carved into the rock beneath Nagasena’s villa, slathered in oily sweat and making imaginary sword cuts as they debated the merits of gladius over chainaxe. Though both warriors had left their Legion identity behind, their Legion expertise was still invaluable.
The interior courtyard of the villa was a place of peace and quiet reflection. A pool with a fountain in the shape of a coiled serpentine dragon burbled in the centre of gene-spliced plants and artificial blooms. Half a dozen robed servants tended the garden, and honeyed scents filled the air.
‘So they’re here,’ said Varren upon noticing Loken.
The former captain of the World Eaters was bare to the waist, his flesh a tapestry of knotted scar tissue, as if he had been stitched together as part of some hideous experiment in reanimation. Tattoos coiled around the scars and over his shoulders; each one a badge of honour and a memory of killing.
Macer Varren had come to the Sol system at the head of a patchwork fleet of refugees, together with detachments from the Emperor’s Children and White Scars. In the treachery that followed, Varren’s loyalty had been proven beyond question and Garro had offered him a place within Malcador’s Knights Errant.
His companion, Tylos Rubio, had been the first warrior that Garro had recruited, snatched from the war-torn surface of Calth in the moments after the XVII Legion doomed the Veridian star. A warrior of the Librarius whose powers had been shackled by the Decree of Nikaea, Rubio had once again taken up psychic arms against the Warmaster. The loss of the cobalt-blue still troubled him, and Loken knew exactly how he felt – though for very different reasons.
His features were the polar opposite of Varren’s; sculpted where the World Eater had been battered into shape, unblemished where Varren was forged by scars. His eyes were heavy with regret and loss, but the nascent brothe
rhood of the Knights Errant was awakening in him a sense of belonging that had hitherto been absent.
‘Where are the others?’ asked Rubio, raising a hand in greeting.
‘Don’t you know?’ asked Cayne. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be psychic?’
‘My powers are not parlour tricks, Tubal,’ said Rubio, as he and Varren fell into step with Loken and Cayne. ‘I do not lightly employ them.’
‘Voitek is already on the platform,’ said Loken. ‘He said the aegis-field needed calibrating.’
‘What about the Half-heard?’ asked Varren.
‘Iacton is–’
‘Not on Terra,’ finished Rubio.
Varren halted as they reached the fortified entrance of the tunnel cut through the mountain that led to the newly-built platforms at the rear of the villa.
‘You just said you didn’t use your powers unless you needed to,’ said Cayne, unlocking the armoured portal and allowing the heavy door to grind into its housing.
‘One does not need psychic powers to know when Iacton Qruze is near,’ said Rubio. ‘He has a presence that far outweighs his belittling epithet.’
With Qruze’s permission, Loken had reluctantly explained the old nickname of ‘Half-heard’ to his fellow Knights. A warrior whose words went unheeded by the vast majority of the Luna Wolves had turned out to have been one of the keepers of the Legion’s soul. Qruze’s days of being disregarded were over, but the name had stuck and always would.
‘So where is he then?’ pressed Varren.
‘He has a heavy burden elsewhere,’ said Rubio. ‘One that grieves and shames him, but one from which he will not turn.’
‘Just like the rest of us,’ grunted Varren.
No one said any more, and they entered the mountain, following a long and winding tunnel bored by industrial-scale meltas. Caged lumen globes were strung from the glass-smooth ceiling, swaying gently in sighs of ventilation.
After a journey of two kilometres, they emerged into a steep sided shaft cut into the haunches of the mountain – a hundred metres wide and three times that in height. In the centre of the cavernous space was a single landing platform, large enough to take a Stormbird, but not much else.
Kneeling beside an opened bank of machine racks at the foot of the platform was a warrior in identical burnished metal armour to the rest of them. Two articulated limbs at his side worked to sort tools and arrange couplings on a long length of oiled cloth. Another two mechanical arms curled over his shoulders arranging nests of cables and preparing connectors to be reattached.
‘Have you not finished yet?’ asked Cayne. ‘You have had ample time to make the necessary adjustments, and Mistress Rassuah is expected at any minute.’
Ares Voitek did not look up or deign to answer, having now learned to resist Cayne’s baiting. He continued working, with all four limbs now embroiled in the guts of the machine. The arms moved with whirring mechanical precision, each one guided by the mind impulse unit attached to the nape of Voitek’s neck.
‘There,’ said Voitek. ‘Not even Severian could find this place now.’
Loken looked up as the shimmering aegis-field rippled with energy across the wedge of light above them. He saw no difference in its appearance, but assumed the Iron Hand had improved its performance in ways he wasn’t equipped to register. The field’s mechanics concealed the platform’s location via a blend of refractive fields and geomagnetic scramblers. To all intents and purposes, the entrance of the landing field was invisible.
Voitek stood and the servo-arms arranged themselves across his back and midriff with a clatter of folding metal. Voitek’s left arm was a brutal augmetic from the elbow down, gleaming silver and kept lustrous by a regime of polishing that went beyond obsessive.
‘If it’s that good, will Rassuah be able to find it?’ asked Varren.
‘She already has,’ grumbled Voitek, his voice artificially rendered and grating through a constant burble of machine noise.
‘Then let’s be waiting for her,’ said Loken.
The five warriors climbed a switchback of iron stairs to the raised platform as the aegis-field rippled with the passage of an aircraft. A bare metal Valkyrie assault carrier descended on rippling cones of jetfire, deafening in the close confines of the shaft. The air became hot and metallic as it turned ninety degrees on its axis to land with its rear quarters aligned with the embarkation ramps.
‘You got them all?’ asked Varren.
‘All four,’ confirmed Loken.
‘Does word come of where we are bound?’ asked Rubio.
‘Saturn’s sixth moon,’ said Loken. ‘To pick up Iacton Qruze.’
‘And after Titan?’ said Ares Voitek. ‘The Warmaster?’
‘We’ll learn that when we are assembled,’ said Loken as the roar of the Valkyrie’s engines diminished and its assault ramp dropped.
Four figures marched from its troop compartment, all in the burnished silver of the Knights Errant and armed with a variety of weaponry. Loken knew them from their data files, but even without that information it would have been child’s play to identify the four warriors.
Bror Tyrfingr; tall, slender and hollow-cheeked, with a long mane of snow-white hair and a loping stride. A Space Wolf.
Rama Karayan; keeping to the shadows, shaven headed, sallow of complexion and dark eyed. Without doubt a son of Corax.
The shaven headed warrior with a forked beard waxed to points could only be Altan Nohai, an Apothecary of the White Scars.
And finally, Callion Zaven. Patrician and haughty, his bearing was a hair’s breadth from arrogant. Zaven’s gaze swept over the waiting warriors, as though judging their worth. A true warrior of the Emperor’s Children.
Loken heard Ares Voitek’s vox-grille blurt a hash of static, and didn’t need Mechanicum augmetics to translate his bone-deep anger at seeing a warrior from the Legion that had murdered his primarch.
The four new arrivals halted at the base of the ramp, and both groups took a moment to gauge the measure of the other. Loken took a step forward, but it was Tyrfingr who spoke first.
‘You’re Loken?’ he said.
‘I am.’
Tyrfingr extended his hand and Loken took it in the old way, palm to wrist. Tyrfingr’s other hand shot up and gripped the back of Loken’s neck, as if to tear out his throat with his teeth.
‘Bror Tyrfingr,’ he said. ‘You brought the silver wolf to bring down the rogue wolf. That’s the best decision you’ll ever make, but if I think your roots are weak, I’ll kill you myself.’
SIX
Nine-tenths of the lore
Tarnhelm
Adoratrice
Though its original purpose had been subverted, the so-called ‘Quiet Order’ of the Sons of Horus still met in secret. The dormitory halls had once housed thousands of deckhands, but only echoes dwelled here in the normal run of things.
Before Isstvan, a time that no longer held meaning for the Legion, the lodge had met only as often as campaign necessity allowed. It had been an indulgence permitted by the primarch, encouraged even, but always subservient to the demands of war. Now it met regularly as the Sons of Horus learned more of the secret arts.
Close to a thousand warriors gathered in the long, vaulted chamber, an army of sea-green plate, transverse helm-crests and crimson mantles. War-blackened banners hung from the dormitory arches, and bloodied trophies were speared on long pike shafts along the chamber’s length. Wide bowls of promethium billowed chemical fumes and orange flame. A slow drum beat of fists on thighs echoed from the walls of stone and steel.
The sense of anticipation was palpable.
Serghar Targost felt it too, but he forced himself to keep his steps measured and his bearing regal. The captain of the Seventh Company was broad and powerful, as were all legionaries, but there was a density to him that gave sparring partners pause when they drew his name in the training cages. His blunt features were not those of a true son, and the old scar bisecting his forehead had been overw
ritten by a more heinous wound.
An Iron Hands Terminator had struck him in the dying moments of Isstvan V and the impact trauma had almost ended him there and then. The enclosing pressure of his helm had kept the broth of his brain from oozing through the pulverised ruin of his skull. The Apothecaries had sutured the bone fragments together beneath the skin, fixing the largest shards in place with dozens of tensile anchors on the surface of his face.
With Lev Goshen’s help, Targost had attached the ebon claws torn from the scaled pelt of a dead Salamander to the protruding ends of the anchors, giving him the spiked features of a madman. He could no longer wear a battle helm, but Targost considered it an acceptable trade off.
Targost moved through the Sons of Horus, pausing now and then to observe their labours. Sometimes he would offer instruction on the precise angle of a blade, the correct syntax of Colchisian grammar forms or the required pronunciation of a ritual mantra.
The air sang with potential, as though a secret symphony existed just beyond the threshold of perception and would soon burst through into life. Targost smiled. Only a few short years ago he would have mocked the absurd poetry of such a sentiment.
Yet there was truth to it.
Tonight would see the lodge change from a fraternity of dabblers into an order favoured by the touch of Primordial Truth.
Everyone here knew it, and none more so than Maloghurst.
The Warmaster’s equerry entered the chamber via one of the vertical transit spines, clad in a long chasuble of ermine over his battleplate. Maloghurst gave a respectful nod. No rank structure existed within the Quiet Order, save that of lodge master, and even the Warmaster’s equerry had to respect that office.
‘Equerry,’ said Targost as Maloghurst limped to accompany him.
‘Lodge master,’ replied Maloghurst, turning to match Targost’s pace despite the fused mass of bone and cartilage within his pelvis and lower spine that stubbornly refused to heal. He walked with the aid of an ebony cane topped with an amber pommel-stone, but Targost suspected the equerry’s wounding was no longer as debilitating as he made out.
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