‘Dying,’ completed Vipus. ‘Like those trees we saw earlier.’
‘More like dead,’ said Marr, peeling the husk of one of the growths from the wall.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ warned Loken. ‘Something in this ship had the power to harm the commander and until we know what that was, we touch nothing.’
Marr dropped the remains and wiped his hand on his leg as they journeyed deeper inside the ship. Loken’s memory of their previous route was faultless and they soon reached the central spine and the route to the bridge.
Shafts of light speared in through holes in the hull and dust motes floated in the air like a glittering wall. Loken led on, ducking beneath protruding bulkheads and sparking cables as they reached their ultimate destination.
Loken could smell Eugan Temba long before they saw him, the reek of his putrefaction and death thick even beyond the bridge. They made their way cautiously onto the bridge, and Loken sent his warriors around the perimeter with directional chops of his hand.
‘What are we going to do about those men up there?’ asked Vipus, pointing to the dead soldiers stitched to the banners hanging from the roof. ‘We can’t just leave them like that.’
‘I know, but we can’t do anything for them just now,’ said Loken. ‘When we destroy this hulk, they’ll be at rest.’
‘Is that him?’ asked Marr, pointing at the bloated corpse.
Loken nodded, raising his bolter and advancing on the body. A rippling motion undulated beneath the corpse’s skin, and Temba’s voluminous belly wobbled with internal motion. His flesh was stretched so tightly over his frame that the outlines of fat maggots and larvae could be seen beneath his parchment skin.
‘Throne, he’s disgusting,’ said Marr. ‘And this… thing killed Verulam?’
‘I assume so,’ replied Loken. ‘The Warmaster didn’t say exactly, but there’s nothing else here is there?’
Loken left Marr to his grief and turned to his warriors, saying, ‘Spread out and look for something, anything that might give us some clue as to what happened here.’
‘You don’t have any idea what we’re looking for?’ asked Vipus.
‘No, not really,’ admitted Loken. ‘A weapon maybe.’
‘You know we’re going to have to search that fat bastard don’t you?’ Torgaddon pointed out. ‘Who’s the lucky sod who gets to do that?’
‘I thought that’d be something you’d enjoy, Tarik.’
‘Oh no, I’m not putting so much as a finger near that thing.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Marr, dropping to his knees and peeling away the sodden remnants of Eugan Temba’s clothing and flesh.
‘See?’ said Torgaddon, backing away. ‘Tybalt wants to do it. I say let him,’
‘Very well. Be careful, Tybalt,’ said Loken before turning away from the disgusting sight of Marr pulling apart Temba’s corpse.
His men began searching the bridge and Loken climbed the steps to the captain’s throne, staring out over the crew pits, now filled with all manner of vile excrescences and filth. It baffled Loken how such a glorious ship and a man of supposedly fine character could come to such a despicable end.
He circled the throne, pausing as his foot connected with something solid.
He bent down and saw a polished wooden casket. Its surfaces were smooth and clean, and it was clearly out of place in this reeking tomb. Perhaps the length and thickness of a man’s arm, the wood was rich brown with strange symbols carved along its length. The lid opened on golden hinges and Loken released the delicate catch that held it shut.
The casket was empty, padded with a red velvet insert, and as he stared at its emptiness, Loken realised how thoughtless he’d been in opening it. He ran his fingers along the length of the casket, tracing the outline of the symbols, seeing something familiar in their elegantly cursive forms.
‘Over here!’ shouted one of Locasta, and Loken quickly gathered up the casket and made his way towards the source of the call. While Tybalt Marr disassembled the traitor’s rotten body, Astartes warriors surrounded something that gleamed on the deck.
Loken saw that it was Eugan Temba’s severed arm, the fingers still wrapped around the hilt of a strange, glittering sword with a blade that looked like grey flint.
‘It’s Temba’s arm right enough,’ said Vipus, reaching down to lift the sword.
‘Don’t touch it,’ said Loken. ‘If it laid the Warmaster low, I don’t want to know what it could do to us.’
Vipus recoiled from the sword as though it were a snake.
‘What’s that?’ asked Torgaddon, pointing at the casket.
Loken dropped to his haunches, laying the casket next to the sword, unsurprised when he saw that the sword would fit snugly inside.
‘I think it once contained this sword.’
‘Looks pretty new,’ said Vipus. ‘And what’s that on the side? Writing?’
Loken didn’t answer, reaching out to prise Temba’s dead fingers from the sword hilt. Though he knew it was absurd, he grimaced with each finger he pried loose, expecting the hand to leap to life and attack him.
Eventually, the sword was free, and Loken gingerly lifted the weapon.
‘Careful,’ said Torgaddon.
‘Thanks, Tarik, and here was me about to throw it about.’
‘Sorry.’
Loken slowly lowered the sword into the casket. The handle tingled and he had felt a curious sensation as he had said Tarik’s name, a sense of the monstrous harm the weapon could inflict. He snapped the lid shut, letting out a pent-up breath.
‘How in the name of Terra did someone like Temba get hold of a weapon like that?’ asked Torgaddon. ‘It didn’t even look human-made.’
‘It’s not,’ said Loken as the familiarity of the symbols on the side of the casket fell horribly into place. ‘It’s kinebrach.’
‘Kinebrach?’ asked Torgaddon. ‘But weren’t they—’
‘Yes,’ said Loken, carefully lifting the casket from the deck. ‘This is the anathame that was stolen from the Hall of Devices on Xenobia.’
THE WORD WENT out across the Vengeful Spirit at the speed of thought, and weeping men and women lined their route. Hundreds filled each passageway as the Astartes bore the Warmaster on a bier of kite-shaped shields. Clad in his ceremonial armour of winter white with burnished gold trims and the glaring red eye, the Warmaster’s hands were clasped across his golden sword, and a laurel wreath of silver sat upon his noble brow.
Abaddon, Aximand, Luc Sedirae, Serghar Targost, Falkus Kibre and Kalus Ekaddon carried him, and behind the Warmaster came Hektor Varvarus and Maloghurst. Each one wore shining armour and their company cloaks billowed behind them as they walked. Heralds and criers announced the route of the cortege, and there was no repeat of the bloody scene on the embarkation deck as the Astartes took this slow march with the beloved leader who had fought beside them since the earliest days of the Crusade. They wept as they marched, each one painfully aware that this might be the Warmaster’s last journey.
In lieu of flowers, the people threw torn scraps of tear-stained paper, each with words of hope and love written on them. Shown that the Warmaster still lived, his people burned herbs said to have healing properties, hanging them from smoking censers all along the route and from somewhere a band played the Legion March.
Candles burned with a sweet smell and men and women, soldiers and civilians, tore at themselves in their grief. Army banners lined the route, each dipped out of respect for the Warmaster, and pleading chants followed the procession until at last they came to the embarkation deck. Its vast gateway was wreathed in parchment, every square centimetre of bulkhead covered with messages for the Warmaster and his sons.
Aximand was awed by the outpouring of sorrow and love for the Warmaster, the scale of people’s grief at his wounding beyond anything in his experience. To him the Warmaster was a figure of magnificence, but first and foremost, he was a warrior – a leader of men and one of the Emperor’s chosen.
To these mortals, he was so much more. To them, the Warmaster was a symbol of something noble and heroic beyond anything they could ever aspire to, a symbol of the new galaxy they were forging from the ashes of the Age of Strife.
Horus’s very existence promised an end to the suffering and death that had plagued humanity for centuries.
Old Night was drawing to a close and, thanks to heroes like the Warmaster, the first rays of a new dawn were breaking on the horizon.
All that was under threat now, and Aximand knew he had made the right choice in allowing the others to take Horus to Davin. The Lodge of the Serpent would heal the Warmaster, and if that involved powers he might once have condemned, then so be it.
The die was cast and all he had left to cling to was his faith that the Warmaster would be restored to them. He smiled as he remembered something the Warmaster had said to him on the subject of faith. The Warmaster had typically delivered his words of wisdom at a wholly inappropriate time – right before they had leapt from the belly of a screaming Stormbird into the greenskin city on Ullanor.
‘When you have come to the edge of all that you know and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen,’ the Warmaster had told him.
‘And what are they?’ he had asked.
‘That there will be something solid to stand on or you’ll be taught to fly,’ laughed Horus as he jumped.
The memory made the tears come all the harder as the huge iron gate of the embarkation deck rumbled closed behind them and the Astartes marched towards the Warmaster’s waiting Stormbird.
TWELVE
Agitprop
Brothers in suspicion
Serpent and moon
SLIPPING ACROSS THE page like a snake, the nib of Ignace Karkasy’s pen moved as though it had a mind of its own. For all the conscious thought he was putting into the words, it might as well have. The muse was well and truly upon him, his stream of consciousness flowing into a river of blood as he retold the diabolical events on the embarkation deck. The meter played in his head like a symphony, every stanza of every canto slipping into place as if there could be no other possible arrangement of verse.
Even in his heyday of Ocean Poems or Reflections and Odes he had not felt this inspired. In fact, now that he looked back on them, he hated them for their frippery, their unconscionable navel gazing and irrelevance to the galaxy at large. These words, these thoughts that now poured from him, this was what mattered, and he cursed that it had taken him this long to discover it.
The truth was what mattered. Captain Loken had told him as much, but he hadn’t heard him, not really. The verses he’d written since Loken had begun his sponsorship of him were paltry things, unworthy of the man who had won the Ethiopic Laureate, but that was changing now.
After the bloodbath on the embarkation deck, he’d returned to his quarters, grabbed a bottle of Terran wine and made his way to the observation deck. Finding it thronged with wailing lunatics, he’d repaired to the Retreat, knowing that it would be empty.
The words had poured out of him in a flood of righteous indignation, his metaphors bold and his lyric unflinching from the awful brutality he’d witnessed. He’d already used up three pages of the Bondsman, his fingers blotted with ink and his poet’s soul on fire.
‘Everything I’ve done before this was prologue,’ he whispered as he wrote.
Karkasy paused in his work as he pondered the dilemma: the truth was useless if no one could hear it. The facilities set aside for the remembrancers included a presswork where they could submit their work for large-scale circulation. It was common knowledge that much of what that passed through it was vetted and censored, and so few made use of it. Karkasy certainly couldn’t, considering the content of his new poetry.
A slow smile spread across his jowly features and he reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper – one of Euphrati Keeler’s Lectitio Divinitatus pamphlets – and spread it out flat on the table before him with the heel of his palm.
The ink was smeared and the paper reeked of ammonia, clearly the work of a cheap mechanical bulk-printer of some kind. If Euphrati could get the use of one, then so could he.
LOKEN PERMITTED TYBALT Marr to torch the body of Eugan Temba before they left the bridge. His fellow captain, streaked with gore and filth, played the burning breath of a flame unit over the monstrous corpse until nothing but ashen bone remained. It was small satisfaction for the death of a brother, not nearly enough, but it would have to do. Leaving behind the smouldering remains, they retraced their footsteps back through the Glory of Terra.
The light was fading on Davin’s moon by the time they reached the outside, the planet above a pale yellow orb hanging low in the dusky sky. Loken carried the anathame in its gleaming wooden casket, and his warriors followed him from the wreck without any words spoken.
A great rumbling vibration gripped the moon as a trio of towering columns of light and smoke climbed towards the heavens from the Imperial deployment zone where this whole misadventure had started. Loken watched the incredible spectacle of the war machines of the Legio Mortis returning to their armoured berths in orbit, and silently thanked their crews for their aid in the fight against the dead things.
Soon all that was visible of the Titans’ carriers was a diffuse glow on the horizon, and only the lap of water and the low growling of the waiting Thunderhawk’s engines disturbed the silence. The desolate mudflats were empty for kilometres around, and as Loken made his way down the slope of rubble, he felt like the loneliest man in the galaxy.
Some kilometres away, he could see specks of blue light following the Titan carriers as Army transports ferried the last remaining soldiers back to their bulk transporters.
‘We’ll soon be done here, eh?’ said Torgaddon.
‘I suppose,’ agreed Loken. ‘The sooner the better.’
‘How do you suppose that thing got here?’
Loken didn’t have to ask what his brother meant, and shook his head, unwilling to share his suspicions with Torgaddon yet. As much as he loved him, Tarik had a big mouth, and Loken didn’t want to put his quarry to flight.
‘I don’t know, Tarik,’ said Loken as they reached the ground and made their way towards the Thunderhawk’s lowered assault ramp. ‘I don’t think we’ll ever know.’
‘Come on, Garvi, it’s me!’ laughed Torgaddon. ‘You’re so straight up and down, and that makes you a really terrible liar. I know you’ve got some idea of what happened. So come on, spill it.’
‘I can’t, Tarik, I’m sorry,’ said Loken. ‘Not yet anyway. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.’
‘Do you really?’
‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Loken. ‘I think so. Throne, I wish the Warmaster were here to ask.’
‘Well he’s not,’ stated Torgaddon, ‘so you’re stuck with me.’
Loken stepped onto the ramp, grateful to be off the marshy surface of the moon, and turned to face Torgaddon. ‘You’re right, I should tell you, and I will, soon. I just need to figure some things out first.’
‘Look, I’m not stupid, Garvi,’ said Torgaddon, leaning in close so that none of the others could hear. ‘I know the only way this thing could have got here is if someone in the expedition brought it. It had to have been here before we arrived. That means there was only one person who was with us on Xenobia and could have got here before we did. You know who I’m talking about.’
‘I know who you’re talking about,’ agreed Loken, pulling Torgaddon aside as the rest of the warriors embarked upon the Thunderhawk. ‘What I can’t figure out is why? Why go to all the trouble of stealing this thing and then bringing it here?’
‘I’m going to break that son of a bitch in two if he had something to do with what’s happened to the Warmaster,’ snarled Torgaddon. ‘The Legion will have his hide,’
‘No,’ hissed Loken, ‘not yet. Not until we find out what this is all about and if anyone else
is involved. I just can’t believe that someone would dare try and move against the Warmaster.’
‘Is that what you think is happening, a coup? You think that one of the other primarchs is making a play for the role of Warmaster?’
‘I don’t know, it all sounds too far fetched. It sounds like something from one of Sindermann’s books.’
Neither man said anything. The idea that one of the eternal brotherhood of primarchs might be attempting to usurp Horus was incredible, outrageous and unthinkable, wasn’t it?
‘Hey,’ called Vipus from inside the Thunderhawk. ‘What are you two conspirators plotting?’
‘Nothing,’ said Loken guiltily. ‘We were just talking.’
‘Well finish up. We need to go, now!’
‘Why, what is it?’ asked Loken as he climbed aboard.
‘The Warmaster,’ said Vipus. ‘They’re taking him to Davin.’
The Thunderhawk was in the air moments later, lifting off in a spray of muddy water and a flare of blue-hot jet fire. The gunship circled the massive wreck, gaining altitude and speed as it turned towards the sky.
The pilot firewalled the engines and the gunship roared up into the darkness.
THE GREAT RED orb of the sun was dipping below the horizon and hot, dry winds rising from the plains below made it a bumpy ride as they re-entered Davin’s atmosphere. The continental mass swelled through the armoured glass of the cockpit, dusty and brown and dry. Loken sat up front in the cockpit with the pilots and watched the avionics panel as the red blip that represented the location of the Warmaster’s Stormbird drew ever closer.
Far below them, he could see the glittering lights of the Imperial deployment zone where they had first made planetfall on Davin, a wide circle of arc lights, makeshift landing platforms and defensive positions. The pilot brought them in at a steep angle, speed more important to Loken than any notion of safe flight, and they streaked past scores of other landing craft on their way to the surface.
‘Why so many?’ wondered Loken as their flight leveled out and they shot past the wide circle of light, seeing soldiers and servitors toiling to expedite the approach of so many landing craft.
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