‘Khalid Hassan,’ said the man, peering past them at Arvida’s body. ‘Chosen of Malcador. I came out with the Wolves, for we had received auguries. Does he live?’
Naranbaatar kept the gauntlet raised. ‘He is one of ours. If even the Sigillite wishes him harm–’
‘Harm?’ asked Hassan. ‘Harm? No, my lords, you misunderstand this. He is sick – we know it. You cannot cure it. My master can help, though, and he wishes very much to. I do not think you know just what you have here. Believe me, we would not permit you to let him die.’
‘How did you get on the ship?’ asked Oskh.
‘That is my business. I would have done it openly, but you will appreciate the difficulties. If Lord Russ were to discover what you are keeping here...’
‘He will never do so.’
‘No, quite.’ Hassan lowered his arms. ‘Listen, you need do nothing now. There are more travelling with me, and they can help. It can all be done quietly, even if the Wolves circle you all the way to Terra. You will be taken to the Palace. The Sigillite will be waiting. He will speak to the Khan, all will be made clear then, but for now, just for now, do not obstruct this. Allow help to be given.’ Hassan placed his hands together. ‘There is no deception. We all wish for the same thing.’
Naranbaatar hesitated. The man before him was unshielded – his mind was open. Finally, he lowered his gauntlet.
‘His sickness is advanced. You say you can help?’
‘If you let us, but time is short.’
‘But what interest is this to you?’ interjected Oskh, his voice full of suspicion.
‘Because we have been waiting for him,’ said Hassan, looking past them at the unconscious Arvida, his expression close to reverence. ‘And now, at last, he is here.’
The Suzerain had come through with the others. Now back in real space, it hung at the rear of the V Legion formation, out of place among the scarred ivory hull-flanks, a last fragment of Eidolon’s old battle-group.
With the warp-passage achieved and the encounter with the forces of Terra negotiated, Shiban had given over command of the ship to Yiman and withdrawn to the Palatine Blade’s old chambers. Once the death-rituals of the brotherhood’s slain had been completed, Jochi’s armour was sent there too. His pauldron, bearing the mark of the minghan kasurga, had been placed under the soft light of taper candles, and Shiban contemplated it for many hours.
The losses had been heavy, stripping the heart out of his brotherhood. Few now remained who had fought with him on Chondax, fewer still with whom he could share any recollection of the past beyond that.
He let his head lower, feeling the pistons stretch in his nape. The Shackles had been badly damaged by the prefector towards the end, and there would be no opportunity to attend to the mechanisms for some time. Not while the needs of the battered fleet and surviving crew were so pressing.
That was no hardship, though. The pain was a pure one, and he found he was able to meditate through it now.
Perhaps I was always able to, he thought. Perhaps I did not try hard enough.
A chime sounded from the far side of the door.
‘Come,’ he said.
Ilya Ravallion entered, and Shiban greeted her, rising, with a bow.
‘Szu,’ he said. ‘They did not tell me you had made transit.’
Ilya looked over at Jochi’s artefacts. ‘Kal damarg is complete?’ she asked.
‘For now.’
Ilya moved closer, taking a seat on a leather-cushioned bench opposite the armour fragments. She looked almost ghostly in the low light, translucent with age and care, and her weight made no impression on the upholstery.
‘They kept their quarters more richly than us,’ said Shiban, rising and moving over to a mahogany stand, upon which crystal goblets and vials of wine had been placed.
Ilya gazed around at the dead prefector’s finery, and her lips curled with distaste. ‘They are the most hateful of all, do you not think?’
‘I will not argue. But how have you fared? How is the new flagship?’
Ilya tried to give him a smile, but it was a weak attempt. ‘Yesugei spoke to me, from the void station. Did you know that? I do not know why he did, but now I cannot forget it. He seemed to wish me to keep living. For myself, I cannot say that I much agree.’
‘These are not words I am used to hearing from you.’
‘No, no doubt, but I am weary to my bones, and my soul is sickening. Perhaps I shall recover. Maybe there is medicine on Terra for what ails us all.’
‘Maybe.’ Shiban reached out for a goblet, poured some wine, and offered it to her.
‘Is it safe?’ she asked, doubtfully.
‘It will make your head foul,’ Shiban said. ‘Nothing worse.’
Ilya took it and drank deeply. Her hands shook. ‘I shall miss him, Shiban,’ she said, suddenly, her voice catching.
‘I shall too.’
‘He was fond of you. You know this?’
Shiban smiled. ‘He was fond of everyone.’
But that was not true. Targutai Yesugei had been the one to take him from the plains, who had shepherded him through his Ascension, and who had proudly watched his rise through the ranks with those calm, golden eyes.
‘You were right,’ Shiban said. ‘Is that any comfort? You were right about Torghun. They tell me he was on the Swordstorm at the end. They tell me you had something to do with that.’
‘A habit I learned on Prospero.’
‘It grieves me that he stood alone.’
Ilya shook her head. ‘Do not grieve. I saw him before we were pulled out. He was already laughing.’
Shiban bowed his head. ‘That is good to know.’
Ilya’s trembling got worse then, and she drained the last of the wine. ‘And what, then, for us now?’ She put the goblet down and reached out for Shiban’s hand, an instinctive motion, almost childlike, clasping her fingers over his gauntlet and gripping it. ‘I envy them both,’ she said. ‘That is shameful, is it not? But it is true.’
Shiban reacted awkwardly, unsure how to respond to the sudden gesture of mortal need. Eventually, he brought his other hand across and placed it over hers, moving the armour as gently as he was able.
‘We survived,’ he said. ‘There may yet be victory.’
‘Can you see it?’ she asked, looking up at him, a kind of desperation in her frail face. ‘Tell me truly – can you see it?’
He could not lie to her. He could not lie to himself.
‘After all this, we remain ourselves,’ he said to her. ‘Yesugei would have called that victory.’
Ilya smiled at last, though tears still clung to the edge of her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said, keeping her hand locked in his. ‘He would.’
The stars were strung out in a long swathe, the glittering band of the galaxy arcing across the high viewport.
From the vantage, high up in the Lance of Heaven’s observation tower, battered ships could be seen sliding silently across the wide vista. Some were V Legion outriders, all bearing the scars of their aether passage. Others were Space Wolves ships, in better condition, maintaining a discreet distance.
‘Do you think they will suffer us to make the final stage unwatched?’ asked the Khan, standing before the high window.
Jubal, standing next to the primarch, shrugged. ‘I would say not. Did the Wolf King not tell you his intentions?’
‘I did not ask. I was pleased enough to get off the ship without having to fight.’
Jubal chuckled. ‘But he will go out to face the Warmaster, sooner or later.’
The Khan nodded. ‘So it seems.’
‘Such a waste. He could come back with us, bolster the defences.’
‘Yes, but who can persuade the Lord of Fenris? His mind is made up.’ The Khan sighed. ‘It changes nothing for us. We will ful
fil the oath.’
Jubal looked up at him. ‘There has not been the time to ask you, Khagan. You were on that place – Dark Glass. What was it?’
The Khan thought on that. Maybe only Yesugei really understood, and yet the machinery Jaghatai had witnessed in the lower shafts had told him much. It had surely all been part of the same project, the one that had taken his Father away from the Crusade, and that in time would have made the entire panoply of empire – the Navigators, the Legions, the warp engines of the Mechanicum, even the primarchs themselves – obsolete. No wonder it had been kept secret, a secrecy that had contributed so much to the years of suspicion and mistrust.
There had been betrayal before Horus, that much was clear. Perhaps the fruits of that were only now becoming evident.
‘It was a failure,’ the Khan said. ‘A dead end. We are left with what we see – our wars, our blades, our mutants. Our daemons.’
Jubal turned back to the starscape, a dry humour on his features. ‘Nonetheless, a failure that opened the Path of Heaven.’
‘Speak of it no longer,’ said the Khan, tiring of the memory. ‘It was a tomb to many who should have lived to see the Palace.’
He fixed his eyes on the void, on the glittering belt of stars ahead. Somewhere among them, perhaps even visible now, was the Throneworld, within reach again after so many years of toil.
‘There will be trials ahead,’ he said. ‘We have not witnessed the greatest of them yet, and only postponed the reckoning with my brothers. But for now, for a short while, I will not think on that. We must heal, mend our wounds, be ready to take up the blade once more.’
Jaghatai let a smile crease across his hawkish profile.
‘We kept the faith, Jubal,’ he said. ‘We fought, we overcame, and now, at last, we are going home.’
Afterword
In the introduction to my Warhammer omnibus Swords of the Emperor, I remember writing that Sword of Justice had been a nice book to write, but that they weren’t all like that. Some projects, for whatever reason, fight you every step of the way.
The Path of Heaven was definitely a fighter. It resisted every attempt to come together, throwing up problem after problem, sailing past its deadline and dragging on, painfully, for months longer than intended.
Perhaps it’s a Horus Heresy thing – I’ve heard other Black Library authors say similar about their own recent contributions to the series. There’s also the difficulty of writing a follow-up. Scars was the V Legion’s first novel-length entry into the series, and gave me an (almost) blank slate. The Path of Heaven needed to continue that storyline, as well as advance the various threads to be found in my recent short fiction such as ‘Allegiance’, ‘Daemonology’ and ‘Brotherhood of the Moon’.
At the heart of the book is the changing character of the Legiones Astartes. The Horus Heresy was not just a military conflict; it was a psychological catastrophe. The ideals of all the participants were shattered, leading eventually to the quagmire of the 41st millennium, where even humanity’s remaining defenders are compromised, ignorant and fanatical. After years of constant turmoil, the White Scars are losing their souls. Shiban, for example, is the figurehead of a new fatalism, a type of bloody-minded defiance that would sit perfectly with a modern Space Marine but is a far cry from his introduction to the series in Brotherhood of the Storm. The entire Legion is fighting, not just against its physical enemies, but against the destructive mental and psychic effects of a grimly attritional war.
That struggle is not confined to the Loyalists. Mortarion is still resisting, with various degrees of success, the siren call of the daemonic. Even the Emperor’s Children, that most debased of Legions, is in transition, and there remain warriors like Cario who cling on to the purity of the past for as long as they possibly can.
But, in truth, it’s the loyalists that I’ve always found more interesting. A large amount of effort has been expended in the Heresy series to motivate the actions of the traitors, which is just as it should be, but that runs the risk of making those who cleave to the Throne look a little flat-footed. A particular aspect of this is the Emperor’s own plans, which on the face of it seem close to crazy. As the Khan points out in conversation with Ilya, why leave the Great Crusade at its peak, withdraw without explanation, and then say nothing even as Horus kicks off his civil war? Here I’ve tried to sketch out some responses to that, most notably the secrecy element. The Imperial webway project, of which we’ve had hints all the way through the series, has a staggering scope, the product of many years of toil, and which held the promise not only of negating the threat of Chaos, but also sweeping away much of the Imperium – its starships, its Navigators, and possibly more than that. So, there’s a reason for the big man being a bit cagey...
Which brings us to the other major element in The Path of Heaven – the Navis Nobilite. These guys have always been a fascination for me, one of the oldest parts of the Warhammer 40,000 mythos. In the Horus Heresy, the Navigators are (by necessity) playing both sides at once. They’re indispensable, as precious as diamonds even after fighting for your enemies. It seemed implausible to me that elements within their houses would not have had some involvement with the Emperor’s grand scheme, since such a radical shift required the labour and expertise of millions. And if there were some who were working to further those plans, as surely as night follows day there would be others who would resist it. In this war, all institutions – from the Mechanicum to the Imperial Army – are split down the middle.
As you probably noticed, the body count in this book is pretty high. Qin Xa, Torghun Khan and Targutai Yesugei all fail to make it home. The Stormseer, my favourite character in the Legion, was particularly hard to let go, and yet his death was integral to the story. Getting back to Terra ought to be painful. It’s trial by fire, going up against not only the powers of the traitor Legions but also the wrath of the warp itself. Yesugei, as more than one character notes, is the only one not affected by the gradual erosion of the Legion’s wild spirit, and it takes his death not only to locate the path, but also to keep the soul of the Legion intact along the way.
In the end, then, the Khan’s vow is honoured, and the White Scars take their position for the final act of the drama. With them is Arvida, who now knows that the Thousand Sons still exist and that his primarch might not have been annihilated after all. Jubal and Shiban are ready to man the battlements, and Ilya, despite going through the wringer, has survived to see the Palace when many of her transhuman guardians did not.
In fact, of all of the lead characters it’s the Khan himself who probably had the most subdued role in this story. Aside from taking on and slaying a Keeper of Secrets – no mean feat, even for a primarch! – he was mostly defined in this story by what he didn’t do. He lost his flagship, his two closest captains, and fled from the chance to face Mortarion again in honourable combat. But that, of course, is its own kind of triumph. We’ve seen impetuous primarchs rush into ill-advised fights many times, and it’s the Khan’s abnegation that ultimately secures his Legion’s survival. His finest hour is yet to come.
So, there are still stories to tell, and the V Legion’s part in the culmination of the Horus Heresy drama is not yet over.
But they’re home now. That’s an achievement in itself.
And after long months hammering the keyboard, at times despairing of ever getting them close, I am very happy to see them arrive.
Chris Wraight
December 2015
Acknowledgements
With many thanks to the BL editorial team, especially Laurie Goulding, Sarah Greene and Callum Davis, for their help and patience in steering this one home.
About the Author
Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novel Scars, the novella Brotherhood of the Storm and the audio drama The Sigillite. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written the Space Wolves novels Blood of Asaheim and Stormcaller, and the s
hort story collection Wolves of Fenris, as well as the Space Marine Battles novels Wrath of Iron and Battle of the Fang. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, including the Time of Legends novel Master of Dragons, which forms part of the War of Vengeance series. Chris lives and works near Bristol, in south-west England.
An extract from Brotherhood of the Moon.
[Transcript begins.]
I am Torghun Khan, of the Brotherhood of the Moon, and the ordu of Jemulan Noyan-Khan. This is my sworn testimony.
> Tell me where it started.
From Khella?
> No, from before. You told me you were on secondment before then.
Very well.
> Hide nothing.
Do you think I would try?
> Some do. I would not recommend it.
It was during the fractured time. We had had more freedom then. This changed at Ullanor, they tell me, and by the time we were all called to Chondax there were attempts to rein us in. But back then it wasn’t like that.
I had taken my brotherhood on a mission to the plains-worlds of Urj, to re-pacify places we had conquered twenty years before. The Legion had moved on too soon; the roots were not set deep. It was not a heavy task – we were out on our own, five hundred mounts, and a single attack frigate to house them – but it should never have been necessary.
It took three months. It was a punitive raid, and they had no stomach for a long fight. We restored the Imperial banner over the system capital, and called in the Army to resume control. Hakeem was with me, though I did not know him well. We had served together by then perhaps… two years? No more than that. He had been keener than I on the assignment, and I came to appreciate his zeal. We were both Terrans, as were many of my warriors. It was harmonious.
With that done, we waited for orders. I had expected to rendezvous with the ordu again – we had already heard that the muster was underway for something big, but we did not know what it was. Instead, we were re-tasked, told to remain away from the main deployments.
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