Horus could see the decision in the figure’s wondrous eyes and shouted, ‘No!’
The figure turned from him and time snapped back into its prescribed stream.
The deafening howl of the warp-spawned wind returned with the force of a hurricane and Horus heard the screams of his brothers amid the metallic clanging of their incubation tanks.
‘Father, no!’ he yelled. ‘You can’t let this happen!’
The golden giant was walking away, leaving the carnage in his wake, uncaring of the lives he had wrought. Horus felt his hate swell bright and strong within his breast.
The power of the wind seized him in its grip and he let it take him, spinning him up into the air and Horus opened his arms as he was reunited once again with his brothers.
The abyss of the warp vortex yawned above him like a great eye of terror and madness.
He surrendered to its power and let it take him into its embrace.
SIXTEEN
The truth is all we have
Arch prophet
Home
FOR ONCE LOKEN was inclined to agree with Iacton Qruze when he said, ‘Not like it used to be, boy. Not like it used to be.’
They stood on the strategium deck, looking out over the ghostly glow of Davin as it hung in space like a faded jewel. ‘I remember the first time we came here, seems like yesterday.’
‘More like a lifetime,’ said Loken.
‘Nonsense, young man,’ said Qruze. ‘When you’ve been around as long as I have you learn a thing or two. Live to my age and we’ll see how you perceive the passage of years.’
Loken sighed, not in the mood for another of Qruze’s rambling, faintly patronising stories of ‘the good old days’.
‘Yes, Iacton, we’ll see.’
‘Don’t dismiss me, boy,’ said Qruze. ‘I may be old, but I’m not stupid.’
‘I never meant to say you were,’ said Loken.
‘Then take heed of me now, Garviel,’ said Qruze, leaning in close. ‘You think I don’t know, but I do.’
‘Don’t know about what?’
‘About the “half-heard” thing,’ hissed Qruze, quietly so that none of the deck crew could hear. ‘I know fine well why you call me that, and it’s not because I speak softly, it’s because no one pays a blind bit of notice to what I say.’
Loken looked into Qruze’s long, tanned face, his skin deeply lined with creases and folds. His eyes, normally hooded and half-closed were now intense and penetrating.
‘Iacton—’ began Loken, but Qruze cut him off.
‘Don’t apologise, it doesn’t become you.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Loken.
‘Ach… don’t say anything. What do I have to say that anyone would want to listen to anyway?’ sighed Qruze. ‘I know what I am, boy, a relic of a time long passed for our beloved Legion. You know that I remember when we fought without the Warmaster, can you imagine such a thing?’
‘We may not have to soon, Iacton. It’s nearly time for the Delphos to open and there’s been no word. Apothecary Vaddon is no nearer to finding out what happened to the Warmaster, even with the anathame.’
‘The what?’
‘The weapon that wounded the Warmaster,’ said Loken, wishing he hadn’t mentioned the kinebrach weapon in front of Qruze.
‘Oh, must be a powerful weapon that,’ said Qruze sagely.
‘I wanted to go back down to Davin with Torgaddon,’ said Loken, changing the subject, ‘but I was afraid of what I might do if I saw Little Horus or Ezekyle.’
‘They are your brothers, boy,’ said Qruze. ‘Whatever happens, never forget that. We break such bonds at our peril. When we turn from one brother, we turn from them all.’
‘Even when they have made a terrible mistake?’
‘Even then,’ agreed Qruze. ‘We all make mistakes, lad. We need to appreciate them for what they are – lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake, of course, but at least someone else can learn from that.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Loken, leaning on the strategium rail. ‘I don’t know what’s happening with the Warmaster and there’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘Aye, it’s a thorny one, my boy,’ agreed Qruze. ‘Still, as we used to say back in my day, “When there’s nothing you can do about it, don’t worry about it”.’
‘Things must have been simpler back in your day, Iacton,’ said Loken.
‘They were, boy, that’s for sure,’ replied Qruze, missing Loken’s sarcasm. ‘There was none of this quiet order nonsense, and do you think we’d have that upstart Varvarus baying for blood back in the day? Or that we’d have had remembrancers on our own bloody ship, writing treasonous poetry about us and claiming that it’s the unvarnished truth? I ask you, where’s the damn respect the Astartes used to be held in? Changed days, young man, changed days.’
Loken’s eyes narrowed as Qruze spoke. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I said it’s changed days since—’
‘No,’ said Loken, ‘about Varvarus and the remembrancers.’
‘Haven’t you heard? No, I suppose you haven’t,’ said Qruze. ‘Well, it seems Varvarus wasn’t too pleased about you and the Mournival’s return to the Vengeful Spirit with the Warmaster. The fool thinks heads should roll for the deaths you caused. He’s been on the vox daily to Maloghurst demanding we tell the fleet what happened, make reparations to the families of the dead, and then punish you all.’
‘Punish us?’
‘That’s what he’s saying,’ nodded Qruze. ‘Claims he’s already had Ing Mae Sing despatch communiqués back to the Council of Terra about the mess you caused. Bloody nuisance if you ask me. We didn’t have to put up with this when we first set out, you fought and bled, and if people got in the way then that was their tough luck.’
Loken was aghast at Qruze’s words, once again feeling the shame of his actions on the embarkation deck. The innocent deaths he’d been part of would remain with him until his dying day, but what was done was done and he wouldn’t waste time on regret. For mere mortals to decree the death of an Astartes was unthinkable, however unfortunate the events had been.
As troublesome a problem as Varvarus was, he was a problem for Maloghurst to deal with, but something in Qruze’s words struck a familiar chord.
‘You said something about remembrancers?’
‘Yes, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about.’
‘Iacton, don’t draw this out. Tell me what’s going on.’
‘Very well, though I don’t know what your hurry is,’ replied Qruze. ‘It seems there’s some anonymous remembrancer going about the ship, dishing out anti-Astartes propaganda, poetry or some such drivel. Crewmen have been finding pamphlets all over the ship. Called the “truth is all we have” or something pretentious like that.’
‘The truth is all we have,’ repeated Loken.
‘Yes, I think so.’
Loken spun on his heel and made his way from the strategium without another word.
‘Not like it was, back in my day,’ sighed Qruze after Loken’s departing back.
IT WAS LATE and he was tired, but Ignace Karkasy was pleased with the last week’s work. Each time he’d made a clandestine journey through the ship distributing his radical poetry, he’d returned hours later to find every copy gone. Though the ship’s crew was no doubt confiscating some, he knew that others must have found their way into the hands of those who needed to hear what he had to say.
The companionway was quiet, but then it always was these days. Most of those who held vigils for the fallen Warmaster did so either on Davin or in the larger spaces of the ship. An air of neglect hung over the Vengeful Spirit, as though even the servitors who cleaned and maintained it had paused in their duties to await the outcome of events on the planet below.
As he walked back to his billet, Karkasy saw the symbol of the Lectitio Divinitatus scratched into bulkheads and passageways time and time again,
and he had the distinct impression that if he were to follow them, they would lead him to a group of the faithful.
The faithful: it still sounded strange to think of such a term in these enlightened times. He remembered standing in the fane on Sixty-Three Nineteen and wondering if belief in the divine was some immutable flaw in the character of mankind. Did man need to believe in something to fill some terrible emptiness within him?
A wise man of Old Earth had once claimed that science would destroy mankind, not through its weapons of mass destruction, but through finally proving that there was no god. Such knowledge, he claimed, would sear the mind of man and leave him gibbering and insane with the realisation that he was utterly alone in an uncaring universe.
Karkasy smiled and wondered what that old man would have said if he could see the truth of the Imperium taking its secular light to the far corners of the galaxy. On the other hand, perhaps this Lectitio Divinitatus cult was vindication of his words: proof that, in the face of that emptiness, man had chosen to invent new gods to replace the ones that had passed out of memory.
Karkasy wasn’t aware of the Emperor having transubstantiated from man to god, but the cult’s literature, which was appearing with the same regularity as his own publications, claimed that he had already risen beyond mortal concerns.
He shook his head at such foolishness, already working out how to incorporate this weighty pontificating into his new poems. His billet was just ahead, and as he reached towards the recessed handle, he immediately knew that something was wrong.
The door was slightly ajar and the reek of ammonia filled the corridor, but even over that powerful smell, Karkasy detected a familiar, pervasive aroma that could mean only one thing. The impertinent ditty he had composed for Euphrati Keeler concerning the stink of the Astartes leapt to mind, and he knew who would be behind the door, even before he opened it.
He briefly considered simply walking away, but realised that there would be no point.
He took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
Inside, his cabin was a mess, though it was a mess of his own making rather than that of any intruder. Standing with his back to him and seeming to fill the small space with his bulk was, as he’d expected, Captain Loken.
‘Hello, Ignace,’ said Loken, putting down one of the Bondsman number 7’s. Karkasy had filled two of them with random jottings and thoughts, and he knew that Loken wouldn’t be best pleased with what he must have read. You didn’t need to be a student of literature to understand the vitriol written there.
‘Captain Loken,’ replied Karkasy. ‘I’d ask to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, but we both know why you’re here, don’t we?’
Loken nodded, and Karkasy, feeling his heart pounding in his chest, saw that the Astartes was holding his anger in check by the finest of threads. This was not the raging fury of Abaddon, but a cold steel rage that could destroy him without a moment’s pause or regret. Suddenly Karkasy realised how dangerous his newly rediscovered muse was and how foolish he’d been in thinking he would remain undiscovered for long. Strangely, now that he was unmasked, he felt his defiance smother the fire of his fear, and knew that he had done the right thing.
‘Why?’ hissed Loken. ‘I vouched for you, remembrancer. I put my good name on the line for you and this is how I am repaid?’
‘Yes, captain,’ said Karkasy. ‘You did vouch for me. You made me swear to tell the truth and that is what I have been doing.’
‘The truth?’ roared Loken, and Karkasy quailed before his anger, remembering how easily the captain’s fists had bludgeoned people to death. ‘This is not the truth, this is libellous trash! Your lies are already spreading to the rest of the fleet. I should kill you for this, Ignace.’
‘Kill me? Just like you killed all those innocent people on the embarkation deck?’ shouted Karkasy. ‘Is that what Astartes justice means now? Someone gets in your way or says something you don’t agree with and you kill them? If that’s what our glorious Imperium has come to then I want nothing to do with it.’
He saw the anger drain from Loken and felt a momentary pang of sorrow for him, but quashed it as he remembered the blood and screams of the dying. He lifted a collection of poems and held them out to Loken. ‘Anyway, this is want you wanted.’
‘You think I wanted this?’ said Loken, hurting the pamphlets across the billet and looming over him. ‘Are you insane?’
‘Not at all, my dear captain,’ said Karkasy, affecting a calm he didn’t feel. ‘I have you to thank for this.’
‘Me? What are you talking about?’ asked Loken, obviously confused. Karkasy could see the chink of doubt in Loken’s bluster. He offered the bottle of wine to Loken, but the giant warrior shook his head.
‘You told me to keep telling the truth, ugly and unpalatable as it might be,’ said Karkasy, pouring some wine into a cracked and dirty tin mug. ‘The truth is all we have, remember?’
‘I remember,’ sighed Loken, sitting down on Karkasy’s creaking cot bed.
Karkasy let out a breath as he realised the immediate danger had passed, and took a long, gulping drink of the wine. It was poor a vintage and had been open for too long, but it helped to calm his jangling nerves. He pulled a high backed chair from his writing desk and sat before Loken, who held his hand out for the bottle.
‘You’re right, Ignace, I did tell you to do this, but I never imagined it would lead us to this place,’ said Loken, taking a swig from the bottle.
‘Nor I, but it has,’ replied Karkasy. ‘The question now becomes what are you going to do about it?’
‘I don’t really know, Ignace,’ admitted Loken. ‘I think you are being unfair to the Mournival, given the circumstances we found ourselves in. All we—’
‘No,’ interrupted Karkasy, ‘I’m not. You Astartes stand above us mortals in all regards and you demand our respect, but that respect has to be earned. It requires your ethics to be without question. You not only have to stay above the line between right and wrong, you also have to stay well clear of the grey areas in-between.’
Loken laughed humourlessly. ‘I thought it was Sindermann’s job to be a teacher of ethics.’
‘Well, our dear Kyril has not been around much lately, has he?’ said Karkasy. ‘I admit I’m somewhat of a latecomer to the ranks of the righteous, but I know that what I am doing is right. More than that, I know it’s necessary!’
‘You feel that strongly about this?’
‘I do, captain. More strongly than I have felt about anything in my life.’
‘And you’ll keep publishing this?’ asked Loken, lifting a pile of scribbled notes.
‘Is there a right answer to that question, captain?’ asked Karkasy.
‘Yes, so answer honestly.’
‘If I can,’ said Karkasy, ‘then I will.’
‘You will bring trouble down on us both, Ignace Karkasy,’ said Loken, ‘but if we have no truth, then we are nothing, and if I stop you speaking out then I am no better than a tyrant.’
‘So you’re not going to stop me writing, or send me back to Terra?’
‘I should, but I won’t. You should be aware that your poems have made you powerful enemies, Ignace, enemies who will demand your dismissal, or worse. As of this moment however, you are under my protection,’ said Loken.
‘You think I’ll need protection?’ asked Karkasy. ‘Definitely,’ said Loken.
‘I’M TOLD YOU wanted to see me,’ said Euphrati Keeler. ‘Care to tell me why?’
‘Ah, my dear, Euphrati,’ said Kyril Sindermann, looking up from his food. ‘Do come in.’
She’d found him in the sub-deck dining area after scouring the dusty passages of Archive Chamber Three for him for over an hour. According to the iterators left on the ship, the old man had been spending almost all of his time there, missing his lectures – not that there were any students to lecture just now – and ignoring the requests of his peers to join them for meals or drinks.
Torgaddon had left her to fi
nd Sindermann on her own, his duty discharged simply by bringing her back to the Vengeful Spirit. Then he had gone in search of Captain Loken, to travel back down to Davin with him. Keeler didn’t doubt that he’d pass on what he’d seen on the planet to Loken, but she no longer cared who knew of her beliefs. Sindermann looked terrible, his eyes haggard and grey, his features sallow and gaunt. ‘You don’t look good, Sindermann,’ she said. ‘I could say the same for you, Euphrati,’ said Sindermann. ‘You’ve lost weight. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘Most women would be grateful for that, but you didn’t have one of the Astartes fetch me back here to comment on my eating habits, did you?’
Sindermann laughed, pushing aside the book he’d been poring over, and said, ‘No, you’re right, I didn’t.’
‘Then why did you?’ she asked, sitting opposite him. ‘If it’s because of something Ignace has told you, then save your breath.’
‘Ignace? No, I haven’t spoken to him for some time,’ replied Sindermann. ‘It was Mersadie Oliton who came to see me. She tells me that you’ve become quite the agitator for this Lectitio Divinitatus cult.’
‘It’s not a cult.’
‘No? Then what would you call it?’ She thought about it for a moment and then answered, ‘A new faith.’
‘A shrewd answer,’ said Sindermann. ‘If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to know more about it.’
‘You would? I thought you’d brought me back to try and teach me the error of my ways, to use your iterator’s wiles to try and talk me out of my beliefs.’
‘Not at all, my dear,’ said Sindermann. ‘You may think your tribute is paid in secret in the recesses of your heart, but it will out. We are a curious species when it comes to worship. The things that dominate our imagination determine our lives and our character. Therefore it behoves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.’
‘And what do you think we worship?’
Sindermann looked furtively around the sub-deck and produced a sheet of paper that she recognised immediately as one of the Lectitio Divinitatus pamphlets. ‘That’s what I want you to help me with. I have read this several times and I must admit that I am intrigued by the things it posits. You see, ever since the… events beneath the Whisperheads, I… I haven’t been sleeping too well and I thought to bury myself in my books. I thought that if I could understand what happened to us, then I could rationalise it.’
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