[Horus Heresy 12] - A Thousand Sons

by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)

  Flaming liquid spread through the library, clawing at groaning shelves and seeking out fresh paper to sate its rapacious appetite. Dead and dying scribes surrounded Ankhu Anen, their bodies shredded by flying debris or burned beyond recognition. He looked up to see a shimmering rain of glass falling from the enormous, smoking hole the crashed gunship had torn. It was like a waterfall of crystal, and as he stared at the mesmerising sight, he saw a golden eye reflected in the shards as they fell in slow motion. The eyes watched him sadly, and Ankhu Anen had the powerful sense that they could easily save his life, yet chose not to.

  “Why?” he begged, but the eyes had no answer for him.

  A faint scratching of metal sounded at his ear, and he twisted to call for help, but his words trailed off as he saw a black raven watching him with its head cocked to one side. Its wings were glossy and black, though he could see psyber-implants worked with great subtlety into its skull. The bird regarded him quizzically, and he smiled at the sight of his cult’s symbol.

  “What are you?” he asked. “A vision of the future? A symbol of salvation?”

  “Neither, I think,” said a coarse voice at his shoulder, and Ankhu Anen twisted to see a warrior in armour the colour of a winter’s morn. It shimmered as though sheened with a layer of frost, and Ankhu Anen saw nothing but hatred in the Space Wolfs body language. The raven took flight with a sharp caw and landed upon the warrior’s shoulder-guard.

  The warrior carried a long staff topped with a golden eagle, and a host of warriors flooded into the Corvidae library behind him. They were golden and grey, and they carried long-necked weapons with blue flames at their hissing nozzles.

  “Who are you?” cried Ankhu Anen, trying to summon the aether to strike down this impertinent invader. No power was coming, and he felt the ache of powerlessness as a jagged pain in his heart.

  “I am called Ohthere Wyrdmake, Rune Priest to Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson of the 5th Company of Space Wolves,” said the warrior, removing his helmet to reveal a bearded warrior of great age with pale eyes and a braided beard. A leather skullcap covered the top of his head, and Ankhu Anen saw a willowy female in skin-tight armour of bronze and gold behind him. Her eyes were dead and unforgiving, and he recoiled from the emptiness he saw within them.

  “Wyrdmake? The dragon of fate,” hissed Ankhu Anen, his eyes widening in understanding. “It’s you… It’s always been you.”

  The Rune Priest smiled, though there was no amusement, only triumphant vindication.

  “Dragon of fate? I suppose I am,” he said.

  Ankhu Anen tried to reach his heqa staff, but it was lost in the devastation of the crash. He tried to pull his leg free.

  “Do not struggle,” said Wyrdmake. “It will make your death easier.”

  “Why are you doing this?” begged Ankhu Anen. “This is a dreadful mistake, you must see that! Think of all that will be lost if you do this terrible thing.”

  “We are obeying the Emperor’s will,” said Wyrdmake, “as you should have done.”

  “The Thousand Sons are loyal,” gasped Ankhu Anen, and a froth of bubbling blood spilled from his mouth. “We always were.”

  Wyrdmake knelt beside Ankhu Anen and pressed an icy gauntlet to his face.

  “Do you have a valediction? Any last words before you die?”

  Ankhu Anen nodded, as the future opened up before him. Through gurgling, bloody coughs he hissed his final prophecy.

  “I can see the aether inside you, Rune Priest,” he hissed with the last of his strength. “You are just like me, and one day those you serve will turn on you too.”

  “I almost pity your delusion,” said Wyrdmake, shaking his head, “almost.”

  Wyrdmake stood to his full height and waved more of the warriors with flame-weapons forward. Ankhu Anen heard the whoosh of streaming jets of fire destroying a hundred lifetimes worth of knowledge, and tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.

  “You will tell me one thing before you die,” said Wyrdmake. “You will tell me where I can find the star-cunning one called Ahzek Ahriman.”

  Phosis T’kar had the advantage of weight and strength, but the null-maiden was lightning quick and her blade whipped like a silver snake. They duelled in the ruins of the plaza amid of a sprawling melee of armoured bodies. Blackened hulks of wrecked tanks littered the plaza, and glass fell in a glittering crystal rain from smoking holes punched in the Raptora pyramid.

  Statues fell from its golden ledges to shatter on the stone below, and the constant thud of artillery impacts further east set a rhythmic tone for the battle. Fire bathed the combatants in a ruddy orange light, and Phosis T’kar felt a liberating sense of his own strength even as his aetheric powers were denied him.

  He spun his staff in lazy circles as the Sister of Silence stared at him with her dead eyes.

  “There is nothing to you, is there?” he said. “I pity most mortals who cannot see what I see, but you? You live in dead space with silence as your only companion. It will be a mercy to end your life.”

  The woman did not reply and launched a rapier-quick thrust to his throat. Phosis T’kar swayed aside and swept his arm out as she came in for a reverse stroke. Her blade whipped around his forearm, cutting a grove around his gauntlet, and he lunged towards her with his staff outstretched.

  She bent back beneath his strike, sweeping her legs out and hammering her heel into his knee. His armour cracked and pain shot up his thigh. Phosis T’kar stepped back, favouring his good leg, and grinned.

  “You’re quick, I’ll give you that,” he said.

  She didn’t answer and dodged his next attack with similar grace. A flurry of shots sent up geysers of rock-dust beside them and he flinched back from the heavy impacts.

  “Time to end this,” he said.

  The woman came at him again, and this time he made no move to stop her. Her sword plunged into his chestplate, slicing through the compound ceramite and armaplas, but before it could penetrate the ossified bone-shield over his ribs, he stamped forward and rammed his combat knife up into the woman’s arm.

  The blade sliced between her radius and ulna, and she screamed in agony.

  “Not so silent now, eh?” he snarled, dragging her towards him. She fought against his strength, but her struggles only intensified her pain. Phosis T’kar slammed his helm into her face, and the Sister of Silence’s head caved in.

  He wrenched his combat knife clear as he felt his power surge back into his limbs with a frisson of painful pleasure. Utipa flared into existence above him, and he welcomed his Tutelary’s presence, feeling its return boost his power. Phosis T’kar sheathed his bloody blade and unslung his bolter, ramming a fresh magazine home and racking the slide. He snapped the silver blade protruding from his chest, and turned from the body before him, jogging back to the fighting and firing his bolter at targets of opportunity as he went.

  The raging combat swirled like a seething tide, with neither force quite able to gain the upper hand. The Space Wolves fought with furious abandon, utterly directed and focussed, but without the clarity of vision to appreciate the whole picture. The Thousand Sons fought with clinical detachment, every warrior having achieved the lower Enumerations to better focus their skills. As Astartes, they were trained to excel in the brutality of close combat, but Magnus had taught them there was always another, cleverer way to win.

  “Understand the foe,” Magnus had said, “and you will know how to beat him.”

  It was a lesson the Space Wolves and Custodes had taken to heart, for how else would they have thought to bring the null-maidens of the silent sisterhood with them? Knowing that gave Phosis T’kar all he needed to turn this battle around.

  He ran through the thick of the fighting, casting his mind out into the swirling mass of heaving emotions. The red mist of anger and hatred hung over the straggling fighters, but three patches of deadness were like islands of silence amid the oceans of carnage. “Got you,” he hissed.

  He saw Hathor Maat fighting b
ack to back with Auramagma, and shot his way through the crash of bodies to reach his fellow captains. A warrior in grey armour slashed at him with a saw-bladed axe, but Phosis T’kar wrenched it from his grip with a thought, and drove the screaming teeth into the warrior’s face without breaking stride.

  His pace slowed as he came within range of another null-maiden. He stopped and climbed onto an empty plinth that had once supported the statue of Magister Ahkenatos, pulling his bolter tight into his shoulder, and scanning for the dead zones within the battle through Utipa’s eyes.

  His Tutelary swooped over the battlefield, and Phosis T’kar felt a sudden burst of pain in his chest. He looked down. The wound was still bleeding, which was odd. Then he saw the iridescent shimmer to his blood and sensed its ambition. He knew what it meant, but angrily clamped down on the sudden fear that accompanied such recognition.

  Taking a deep breath, he focussed on what he was seeing through Utipa’s eyes.

  He saw the first of the null-maidens, and shifted his aim towards her. She fought in the midst of a knot of Space Wolves and Custodes against Hathor Maat’s warriors. The bolter slammed back against his shoulder, and the woman collapsed, the back of her neck and shoulder torn off by the blast of the shell.

  Following Utipa’s guidance, he found the second null-maiden and put a bolt round through her chest. The third he killed with a snap-shot as she fled to the cover of one of the wrecked Land Raiders.

  Immediately, the Thousand Sons went on the offensive. Lightning flashed from Hathor Maat’s hands, and Auramagma threw out blazing streams of liquid fire. Kine shields flared to life and the Space Wolves were hurled back from the edges of the pyramid.

  Phosis T’kar roared and leapt from the plinth.

  Bolts of pure force slammed into his enemies, scattering them before him like a charging cavalryman. As much as he had felt a strange sense of freedom when stripped of his power, it was a moment of fleeting enjoyment compared to this.

  Hathor Maat and Auramagma appeared at his side, and he read their joy at this sudden turn in their fortunes. Auramagma was as feral as the Space Wolves, while Hathor Maat was pathetically relieved to have his powers back.

  The Thousand Sons formed on their captains, a fighting wedge of lightning-wreathed killers, plunging into the body of the Space Wolf army like a lance. The Space Wolves and Custodes fell back before them, helpless without any means of combating the lethal powers of the Thousand Sons.

  A terrible howl of fury echoed around the plaza, and every pane of glass within the Raptora pyramid exploded into diamond fragments. They fell in a crystal rain that reflected the fire and smoke of battle in every shard.

  Phosis T’kar dropped to one knee, his autosenses screaming with the overload of sound.

  “What in the name of the Great Ocean…?” he managed before he remembered where he had heard that howl before.

  “Shrike,” said Hathor Maat, recalling the same thing.

  The Space Wolves parted, and Phosis T’kar saw the enormous majesty of the Wolf King and a coterie of gold-armoured giants striding through the battle lines towards them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I Must Not / Power Without Control / Syrbotae Down

  Old Tizca was no more. The peaceful warren of antiquated streets he had so enjoyed exploring as a youth on Prospero was now ashes and burning rubble. Warriors picked careful paths through the smouldering ruins, firing from the hip or fighting with axes and swords. The coastline was invisible, obscured by fog-banks of artillery fire. Spurts of yellow fire followed by dull metallic coughs snatched at the clouds, and another portion of his beloved city would vanish in a rippling series of fiery detonations.

  Magnus watched the death of Tizca from the highest balcony of his pyramid, the one structure that had so far escaped the destruction. Nothing reflective remained in his chambers, nowhere for the insidious voice of his temptation to wheedle and cajole him into making yet another error of judgement.

  He gripped the edge of the balcony and wept bitter tears for his lost world and his dying sons. What had once been a wondrous beacon of illumination for all who cared to look upon it was now a maelstrom of battle.

  The northern spur of the city was a raging inferno, its palaces ablaze and its parklands ashen wastelands. Further south, the port was a giant black stain on the horizon, its structures demolished in the wake of his brother’s attack.

  He sensed Leman Russ in the western reaches of the city, fighting at the Raptora pyramid. Constantin Valdor was at his side and the warrior named Amon. With his inner eye, Magnus felt the courage and elation of the Thousand Sons who fought alongside Phosis T’kar, Hathor Maat and Auramagma. It grieved him to know that most of these men would soon be dead, for the Wolf King left only desolation in his wake.

  In the east, Ahriman and his warriors were holding the invaders at bay. Not even the savagery of the Wolves or the power of the Custodes could break through Ahriman’s defences, his warriors using their predictive powers to counter every assault.

  Few Sisters of Silence fought in the east, for the majority were at the side of Leman Russ and Valdor. The attackers had not brought enough of the null-maidens to take Tizca, assuming the assault would be little more than a mopping up operation. They thought the bombardment from orbit would be enough, and that alone angered him.

  Though the majority of the Spireguard had been swept away in the opening moments of the battle, the Thousand Sons had rallied magnificently and prevented the battle becoming a rout. A thin line of warriors in crimson armour linked the six pyramids of Tizca, forming a circular perimeter with Occullum Square at its centre. The Pyramid of Photep was the southernmost of the pyramids, the glittering water surrounding it awash with sodden pages of ancient wisdom lost forever in the name of fear.

  Crackling currents of aether surged through his body, begging to be released and let loose among the foe. Magnus fought to hold it in check. The fire of the Great Ocean battered him, like the most desirable addiction calling to him across the veil between worlds.

  Magnus wanted nothing more than to descend to the streets of Tizca and turn back the invaders, to show them the true extent of his powers. His fingers sparked at the thought. He clenched his fists and turned his thoughts inwards.

  He heard the voices of his sons crying out to him, begging him to take the field of battle, but he ignored them, forcing their voices from his head.

  It was the hardest thing he had ever done.

  One plea threatened to cut through his resolve, the voice of his dearest son.

  Help us, it said.

  “I cannot, Ahzek,” he said between clenched teeth. “I must not.”

  Smoke filled the streets around the outer precincts of the port, choking the light and oxygen from the day. Booming explosions marched through the city like the tread of drunken gods, and the bark of gunfire mingled with screams in a pitch perfect rendition of a hellish choir. Phael Toron ducked back behind a fallen statue to reload his bolter as a stuttering blast of fire tore through the walls of the Fountain House. A hundred warriors of his Fellowship held this portion of the perimeter, with a further two hundred on either side of him. Three times the enemy forces had tried to break through from the port, and three times the guns and blades of the 7th had hurled them back.

  Phael Toron’s warriors knew this part of Tizca like no other, and the divinatory commands from the Corvidae allowed them to coordinate their defences with perfect cohesion. Coupled with the information gathered by the Athanaeans, the defences were always perfectly aligned to meet every attack.

  Corpses littered the streets; both enemy and friend, for the defences had not been held without cost. Blood splashed the pristine marble of the walls and rivers of vital fluid flowed in the cracks in the streets. Phael Toron had exhausted twelve magazines, and only a regular supply of ammunition from Spireguard squads had kept their guns firing.

  A cramping pain clenched in his gut and he granted as an unidentifiable sickness sent spasms thr
ough his limbs. He shook off the sensation, forcing down the bilious phlegm building in his throat and shaking out the sudden blurring of his vision. He blinked away bright spots before his eyes as a series of fiery blasts ripped through their lines.

  “Watch the right!” he shouted, seeing three of his warriors torn apart in a blitzing stream of cannon-fire. The distinctive thumping noise told Phael Toron it was too heavy for an infantry gun. Crimson-armoured warriors dashed through the rubble towards the gap, bearing heavy weapons. He risked a glance over the fallen statue of a golden lion.

  The district between the port and the Timoran Library was unrecognisable, its colonnaded processionals and arched follies now a tumbledown wasteland of blazing ruins and jumbled stone. The salty tang of sea air was laden with chemical pollutants from the blazing port, the enormous volume of gunfire and the pyres of burning books.

  Space Wolves and golden warriors moved cautiously through the smouldering remains of what had once been a gallery of pre-Old Night sculpture, their forms unknown and of obviously alien manufacture. They were now crashed fragments beneath the invaders’ boots, and Phael Toron felt the aether simmering beneath his skin as Dtoaa amplified his choler. He took a deep breath, reining in his emotions. The Enumerations weren’t helping, and he could feel his Tutelary’s raging desire to hurt the attackers threatening to overwhelm his tactical sense.

  “That would make me little better than them,” he hissed, forcing its red rage down.

  Another spray of bullets tore a line through the golden lion, chewing up the soft metal as though it were as porous as sandstone. Phael Toron rolled away from the disintegrating lion and scrambled over to the cover of a fallen arc of stonework. He recognised it as part of the gallery’s domed roof, and looked over his shoulder to see a plume of grey smoke coiling from the building’s interior. Streaking contrails of speeders flashed overhead amid a series of stuttering, strobing detonations.