Vengeful Spirit

by Graham McNeill

  Forty-three years ago, he had sat opposite Raeven and let fear get the better of him. Not this time. Blinded in one eye by a raging mallahgra in his youth, the simian beasts had always held a special terror in Albard’s nightmares. When one had broken free on his day of Becoming, a day that should have been his proudest moment, that terror had consumed him.

  His Knight had felt his fear and rejected him as unworthy. Condemned in the eyes of his father, he’d been doomed to a life of torture and mockery at the hands of his stepbrother and sister.

  Raeven had killed his father? Good, he’d hated the miserable old bastard. Albard had taken his vengeance with a hunting knife and an intimate knowledge of human anatomy learned on the other side of the blade. His faithless step-siblings were now entwined in an irrigation ditch, bloating with nutrient-rich water and corpse gases. Food for worms.

  He winced as a fragment of Raeven’s lingering imprint on the Knight’s core stabbed at him. He felt Raeven’s disgust, but worse, he felt a shred of his pity.

  ‘Even in death you mock me, brother,’ hissed Albard, guiding the twenty-two Devine Knights through the rear ranks of the Imperial regiments. Hundreds of thousands of men and their armoured vehicles awaited the order to move out. Tyana Kourion wasn’t going to make the same mistakes Edoraki Hakon had made at Avadon.

  This would be no passive defence line, but a reactive battle of manoeuvre. Opportunities for advance were to be exploited, gaps plugged. This latter task was the role she had assigned to the Knights of Molech, a glorified reserve force. The indignity of it was galling, the insult a gross stain on the honour of Molech’s knightly Houses.

  Knights from House Tazkhar marched past, weapons dipped in respect. Many mocked the sand-dwelling savages, but they knew their place – not like the uppity bastards of House Mamaragon, whose strutting Paladins jostled for position in the vanguard. As if they could ever rise to be First House of Molech. House Indra’s southern Knights bore banners of gold and green, and Albard suspected that they flew fractionally higher than his.

  A blatant attempt to eclipse House Molech in glory.

  Such temerity would not go unanswered, and Albard felt Banelash’s weapon systems react to his belligerent thoughts. Anger, insecurity and paranoia blended within his psyche, goaded into a towering narcissism by a lingering presence, an infection newly acquired within the sensorium.

  Something serpentine and voluptuous, hideous yet seductive, lurked in Banelash’s heart. Albard longed to know it and brushed his mind-touch over it.

  The combined fury of the Knight’s former pilots surged in response. A reaction of fear. Albard gasped as the sensorium swam with static, phantom images and violent echoes of past wars. A system purge, but it was too little too late. The infection within the sensorium bled into Banelash’s memories, twisting them with unremembered indignities and delusions of grandeur.

  Albard heard sibilant laughter as his damaged mind tried to parse the now from the remembered, but those regions of the brain required for a full interface had been irreparably damaged forty-three years ago. His own memories poured into the sensorium, mingling with long-ended wars and imagined kills. He drew the venomous infection into himself, drinking it down like fine wine.

  The sensory rendition of the battlefield around him blurred and twisted like a slowly retuning pict-feed, one image fading and another swimming into focus.

  What had once been an ordered Imperial camp of machine fabricated shelters, supply depots, ammunition stockpiles, fuel silos and rally points became something else entirely. Men in boiled leather jerkins and iron sallets marched to and fro. Some wore gleaming hauberks of iron scale. They carried long iron-bladed swords and axes across their shoulders. They marched in dreary lockstep. Hundreds of hunting hounds snapped at their heels, goaded forward by whip-bearing packmasters.

  A crash of thunder belched from the vast, dragon-mouthed carronades fringing the hillsides in their thousands. Entrenched in wicker gabions and earthen ramparts, the gunnery academies of Roxcia and Kyrtro had brought their finest culverin and mortars to punish the enemy with shot and shell. Colourful flags snapped in the conflicting thermals above the powder-hungry weapons.

  Gunners sweated and heaved, running their iron behemoths back into firing positions. The barrels were swabbed out and fresh powder charges rammed down. Heavy stone spheres were lifted by barrel-chested Tazkhar slaves.

  As impressive as the guns were, they were nothing compared to the splendour of the knightly host.

  Incredible warriors in all-enclosing plate rode powerful destriers with fantastical caparisons depicting rearing beasts such as had not been seen on Molech for generations.

  Albard turned to see the knights riding alongside him.

  Cousins, nephews and distant relations, all of the Devine Blood. They rode into battle on wide-chested warsteeds, but not one of their mounts could match the golden stallion upon which he rode, a beast with a mane of fire and wide, powerful shoulders. A king among horsekind.

  ‘My brothers!’ cried Albard, letting the blissful serpentine venom spread to each of them. ‘See what I see, feel what I feel!’

  Some struggled, some almost resisted, but every one of them surrendered in the end. Their secret desires and ambitions were fuel to the infection and it took their every scrap of lust, guilt and bitterness and twisted into something worse.

  He turned in the saddle, looking over at the twin lightning bolt emblem streaming from his vexillary’s banner pole. The ancient heraldry of the Stormlord himself blazed in the noonday sun, an icon of such brilliance that it illuminated the battlefield for hundreds of metres in all directions.

  This was his banner.

  He was the Stormlord, and these knights were the same vajras who had ridden the Fulgurine Path with him all those centuries ago. A towering sense of self-importance filled him, and he raked back his spurs. Banelash ploughed through regiments of infantry as the Stormlord saw a vast and monstrous creature through the billowing clouds of cannon fire.

  A titanic beast, a giant of inhuman scale.

  Scaled in black and white, it bellowed with the sound of thunder. A world devourer.

  This was the foe he had been summoned to slay.

  TWENTY

  The Battle of Lupercalia

  The Thunderhawk was wrecked, a gutted carcass that had survived just long enough to get them on the ground. It would never fly again, but who cared about that? Abaddon staggered from the flames and ruin of the crash site, throwing out hails to the Justaerin.

  Two definitely dead, one not responding.

  So, call it three dead. About what he’d expected in getting this close to the guns of Iron Fist Mountain. They’d lose more by the time they seized the trenches and blockhouses spread around its base and lower slopes like a steeldust fungus. Gunships flashed towards the mountain, barrages of typhoon missiles rippling from their launchers and shells sawing from their assault cannons and hurricane bolters.

  Streaks of artillery and anti-aircraft fire slashed overhead. Explosions, flak and the continuous bray of gunnery dropped a constant rain of dust and ember flare. Storm Eagles made a more difficult target than Thunderhawks, but the sheer volume of fire coming off the mountain was swatting more of them from the sky with every passing second.

  The wrecks of dozens of gunships were spread over the low foothills. Crashing hadn’t been the intent of the plan, but it had been a more than probable outcome and an accepted risk. Five hundred Terminators formed up amid the flames and smoke of the crash sites.

  The Imperial gunners thought they’d repulsed the airborne assault on their right. They were wrong. Just because an aircraft went down didn’t mean the warriors within were dead.

  Especially if those warriors were Sons of Horus.

  A Storm Eagle slammed down on the rocks to Abaddon’s left. Exploding ordnance mushroomed from the wreckage. Falkus Kibre appeared through the swirl of black smoke surrounding it.

  ‘Did you even crash?’ asked Abaddon,
seeing the Widowmaker’s armour was undamaged by fire or impact.

  ‘No. Pilot brought us down in the lee of a scarp,’ said Kibre, gesturing with his combi-bolter. ‘Five hundred metres east.’

  ‘I swear you are the luckiest bastard I ever met,’ said Abaddon, his voice grating and without the powerful tones he had once possessed. The Emperor’s angel of fire had stolen that aspect of him, burned it clean out of him and left him with this gargoyle’s rasp. Barring a few bruises, the Widowmaker had come through that encounter unscathed.

  ‘The more I fight, the luckier I get.’

  Abaddon nodded. He checked the counter in the corner of his visor.

  Four minutes.

  The smoke and dust of the crashing gunships was still obscuring their presence, but that wouldn’t last for long. The thunder of artillery on the plain swelled. Still the heavier guns in the rear, the main assault waves yet to crash home.

  ‘Everything still on target?’ asked Kibre.

  ‘Seems to be.’

  ‘Best find some cover then.’

  ‘That cliff ahead?’

  ‘It’s not much.’

  ‘Best I can see.’

  Abaddon nodded and opened the vox to the Justaerin.

  ‘New assault position,’ he said. ‘Advance to my marker and keep your damn heads down.’

  ‘Inspiring,’ said Kibre. ‘I can see why Lupercal made you First Captain.’

  ‘Now’s not the time for inspiring,’ said Abaddon. ‘Now’s the time to hope the damn Mechanicum don’t miss.’

  Var Zerba was one of the oldest defence platforms orbiting Molech, and had accrued a sizeable arsenal over the decades. Torpedo racks, missile tubes, mass drivers, collimated boser weapons and innumerable batteries of macro-cannons had been designed with the goal of smashing attacking fleets to ruin.

  But such weapons were equally capable of wreaking havoc on planetary targets.

  Ezekyle Abaddon had seized Var Zerba virtually intact, and the frigates, Selenar’s Spear and Infinity’s Regret had almost burned out their reactors dragging it from its geostationary position over Molech’s oceans to a point fixed just above the agri-belt north of Lupercalia.

  Farther west of the battlefield to account for the planet’s rotation, but otherwise in the perfect position to wreak havoc from above.

  Orbital barrages were not subtle weapons, nor were they discriminate. Their use during battlefield operations was almost entirely unheard of. Their vast quantities of fire were too dangerous, too unpredictable and too destructive should something go wrong. A misfiring munition, a flare of atmospheric discharge or a simple miscalculation could be enough to send city-levelling ordnance wildly off-target.

  But when the target was the largest mountain on Molech, perhaps the risk might be deemed acceptable.

  The Bloodsworn knelt with their swords drawn and buried in the earth before them. Each warrior had anointed the crimson plates of their armour with the Black, and waited as Warden Serkan moved among them, smearing ash across the winged blood drop on their shoulder guards. As the shells crashed down on the advancing horde he offered each warrior a measure of his wisdom and listened to their last words.

  No one was under any illusion that this would be anything other than a last stand. Drazen Acorah knew he would not live to see another sunrise, but the thought did not trouble him overmuch. That they had killed Imperial soldiers in the jungle was not in any doubt, even if he still could not explain how it had happened.

  Not only had they murdered innocents and hunted like beasts, but they failed in their duties as exemplars of all that was good and noble in the Legions. The Warmaster had already tarnished the honour of the Legions such that none would ever trust them again, and the Blood Angels had allowed themselves to be party to that.

  The Bloodsworn had come to Molech to fight, but they had come to this battlefield to die.

  Vitus Salicar stood, and ninety-six Blood Angels rose to their feet behind him, each man holding his blade up to the sky in salute. Not to the enemy; they were unworthy of any recognition. This was a final salute to the Emperor and Terra, to Sanguinius and Baal.

  Salicar used an oiling cloth to clean his power sword of dirt, and Acorah saw the ident-tags swing from the blood drop pommel. Acorah needed no psyker powers to feel the weight of guilt attached to them. The rust and unmistakable tang of mortal blood told its own tale.

  Salicar saw him looking and sheathed the blade. The ident-tags rattled against the iron and leather scabbard.

  ‘You are still set on this course?’ asked Acorah.

  ‘I am,’ confirmed Salicar. He made a fist and lifted his arm, bent at the elbow. Ten Rhino armoured carriers fired their engines, jetting oilsmoke and setting the ground atremble.

  ‘You should not seek to dissuade me, Acorah. I would not sully this moment with having to discipline you.’

  ‘I seek to do no such thing,’ he said, though the rebellious thought had already crossed his mind. He’d dismissed it immediately. His powers were strong, but not so strong that he could alter a will so set in stone.

  ‘Do you believe this is penance?’ he asked.

  ‘I do,’ said Salicar.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ said Acorah, placing his hand on the partly obscured Legion symbol at his commander’s shoulder guard. A familiar gesture, almost too familiar. He and Salicar were battle-brothers, but they were far from friends.

  Salicar looked down at Acorah’s hand. ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘It’s justice.’

  ‘Go!’ shouted Aximand.

  Third Squad broke from cover, moving and firing as Ungerran Dreadnought Talon opened fire with their cannons and missile launchers. Streaming salvoes of high-calibre shells and spiralling missiles hammered the line of mesh fortifications. Filled with rubble and stacked like children’s blocks, they were ideal temporary fortifications.

  Temporary or not, they were going to be bloody to overrun.

  Behind him, the Stormbirds smoked in the flames of impact and hard burn landings. Nearly five hundred Sons of Horus poured onto the rugged landscape of the Untar Mesas, less than a hundred metres from the stepped defences.

  No matter whether an assault came by land, sea or air, that last hundred metres would always need to be crossed by warriors willing to face the enemy head on.

  This flank of the Imperial line rested on the mountain foothills, stretching away in a gentle crescent until it reached the towering peak of Iron Fist Mountain.

  The twenty kilometres between here and there was an unbroken line of Imperial tanks and infantry. Well dug in, well positioned and, by the looks of things, well led. Jaundiced clouds of smoke drifted across the lines, the ejecta of Imperial guns mixed with the explosions of Lupercal’s heavy artillery.

  Titans duelled with city-levelling ordnance, the thunder of their steps felt even from here. The Imperator at the centre of the line wasn’t marching. Its upper section turned only enough for it to bring its apocalyptic weaponry to bear. Its guns were tearing bloody wounds in the Warmaster’s army with every shot. Hundreds were dying with every blast of its hellstorm cannon and hundreds more to the plasmic fury of the annihilator. Missiles, laser blasts and hurricanes of bolter fire wreathed its upper towers and bastions in smoke.

  Single-handedly, the Imperator was gutting Lupercal’s army.

  Or at least the mortal portion of it.

  Aximand’s attention was drawn from the destroyer Titan to a flash of brightness at the Titan’s base. Crimson-painted Rhinos surged forward in a wedge to split the attack in two. A glorious charge into the enemy ranks, the kind that only Legion warriors would dare.

  ‘Bold, but foolish,’ hissed Aximand. The enemy host was too vast for so few warriors to break apart, even warriors of the quality of the Blood Angels.

  The hiss of a passing las-bolt brought him back to his own fight.

  ‘There,’ shouted Aximand, pointing at the base of a stepped salient where a flurry of Stormbird rockets had split the re
inforced mesh. Rubble threatened to pour out. All it needed was a little encouragement. ‘Squad Orius, bring that wall down! Baelar, take it when it’s open.’

  A burst of missile contrails arced from a patch of rocks to Aximand’s left. A towering explosion of rubble detonated from the defences. Blasted rocks fell in a rain of shattered stone and debris. Even before the dust of the explosion blew out, Squad Baelar were moving. Jump packs flared from the cliff above, where Aximand’s pure assault elements had landed.

  Gunfire reached out to them. Six were blasted from the air before they reached the apex of their powered leap.

  ‘Did you see that?’ asked Yade Durso.

  ‘I did,’ said Aximand.

  ‘No mortal shooters did that.’

  ‘Agreed, that’s Legion.’

  Thudd guns punished the defences where the shots had come from, but Aximand knew they’d hit nothing. If he was right in who was there, they would have already displaced. Squad Baelar landed just before the emplaced blocks and braced their legs for another leap.

  The ground erupted in a sheet of fire as a line of remote-activated melta mines detonated.

  Aximand ducked back as his auto-senses shut down to protect him from the brightness. Squad Baelar were all but incinerated. A single warrior got airborne, but only his upper half. Stuttering jets carried his corpse over the wall.

  ‘Just far enough away to need two jumps,’ hissed Aximand. ‘They knew assaulters would need to land there.’

  ‘Definitely Legion,’ said Durso.

  ‘Not Blood Angels,’ replied Aximand, which left only one possibility. ‘The Ultramarines are here.’

  ‘Third Squad is in position,’ Durso voxed. ‘Ungerran are ready.’

  ‘Hit them with everything,’ said Aximand. ‘Maximum suppression. We’re taking this wall ourselves.’

  A pressure within Abaddon’s helmet was the first sign of the incoming barrage. His teeth ached and his visor dimmed in anticipation of impact.

  ‘You’re looking up?’ asked Kibre. ‘Do you want to be blinded?’