by Guy Haley
‘The situation is fluid,’ said the Khan. He spoke without rancour, but his objections were clear. ‘Horus will land all his Legions soon. I prefer to act now, while I am still free to do so.’
‘If you do, you will provoke his attack!’ said Dorn.
‘Making the enemy change his plans is strength. Force your enemy to react to you. A general who waits for the enemy to act is already defeated, I learned this as a child.’
‘Your wars were different to mine,’ said Dorn.
‘Then perhaps you should listen to me,’ said the Khan. ‘The ordu are better served in swift battle. On the walls they are worth ten men – if we ride, twenty or more. I will not stand by while billions die.’
‘Jaghatai!’ said Dorn in exasperation.
‘Brothers,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Arguing over eventualities that have not yet come to pass serves nothing.’
‘Every strategic sense I possess tells me that Horus will direct his forces to reave the planet to exploit our concern for humanity,’ said Dorn. ‘He does this expressly to divide our efforts. When we are split, and our warriors spread, that is when the Warmaster will fall on us and seize victory. We must stand united.’
‘Then you do not disagree with me,’ said the Khan. ‘The population is at risk.’
‘I anticipated slaughter long ago,’ said Dorn, ‘and I regret that this chain of events came to pass, but we cannot respond to whatever provocation Horus presents to us. We cannot let ourselves be lured out. We cannot follow his plan. We will make ourselves weak, then all is lost.’
‘Since when was saving mankind from the darkness a sign of weakness?’ said the Khan. ‘Sanguinius, my brother and comrade, what do you see? Lend me your foresight.’
Sanguinius shut his eyes. Like that, he appeared drawn and tired, a funerary monument to himself. Dorn suppressed a shudder.
‘My sight is not so clear as father’s,’ said Sanguinius. ‘The future is ever in flux. Only some events…’ He paused, finding the words hard to say. ‘Only some events are certain.’
‘Do you see me? What will be the consequences of inaction?’
‘I see fire, and blood, and a world laid waste if you do not act.’
‘If I act?’ said the Khan.
Sanguinius opened his eyes to look at him.
‘There is grave risk to you. A confrontation unlooked for, and if you survive, a flight from one danger into greater peril.’
‘Who will I face?’
‘I cannot divine.’
‘Will I save lives?’
Sanguinius nodded. ‘Many.’
‘That is what I was made for,’ said the Khan. ‘I will ride out.’
‘We will save lives by holding the Palace,’ said Dorn. ‘So long as the Emperor lives, Horus cannot be victorious.’
‘You hold the Palace,’ said the Khan, turning his hard brown eyes back on Dorn. ‘I will not leave the ordinary citizenry of Terra defenceless.’
‘Jaghatai, I insist…’
‘Half my Legion remains here, at all times.’ The Khan spoke across him. ‘This is my word, but I ride with the rest of the ordu. I will say no more other than to swear that I will return when I am needed. I will be here when the time comes. Do not try to stop me. I will not be dictated to, not even by you. If the Emperor Himself were to tell me I should not go, I would not listen.’
The Khan left the room.
Dorn let him go. Sanguinius rested a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
‘Trust to fate, brother. There are kinder powers at work who favour us.’
‘I do not believe in such things,’ said Dorn with a troubled sigh. ‘But I shall ask them to watch over the Khan anyway.’
The Lord of Iron
Iron circle
Superior intelligence
The Vengeful Spirit, Terran high anchor, 9th of Quartus
Perturabo arrived aboard the Vengeful Spirit in a foul temper.
His Stormbird put in to a small hangar high on the command spines of the vessel, where Sons of Horus in gleaming armour waited for him with all the pageantry of inter-Legion diplomacy. Were it not for the polished skulls hanging from armour upon cords and the bright red banners bearing Horus’ baleful eye, the greeting could have taken place during the Great Crusade.
Those days were done. Perturabo saw through the display. There was nothing of the old glory nor anything of honour. He was insulted his brother did not greet him personally and saw only threat in the welcoming party, a feeling that intensified when Horus Aximand stepped forwards to greet him.
‘My Lord Perturabo,’ said Aximand. ‘Welcome to the Vengeful Spirit. It has been far too long since you graced us with your presence.’
Perturabo had never warmed to Little Horus. He was a preening man, full of borrowed confidence. His resemblance to the Warmaster made him think himself better than others, when all he had been was an image of Horus reflected on dirty water. Now his face was ruined, he was not even that.
‘Get on with it and take me to Horus,’ grumbled Perturabo. ‘There is no time for this pantomime. I must speak with my brother immediately.’
The side hatches of the Stormbird slammed down. The booming tread of iron feet on metal echoed from the belly of the ship. The Iron Circle, Perturabo’s bodyguard of six towering battle robots, marched out, formed a crescent around their master and slammed their hazard-striped shields together to make a wall behind him.
‘I see you have company,’ said Aximand. His attempt to raise an eyebrow succeeded only in pulling at the scarred wreck of his face and making him even uglier.
‘The Iron Circle goes where I go,’ he said.
‘You have more forces with you? Why don’t you call them out?’
‘There are always more,’ said Perturabo.
Ten Iron Warriors in modified Cataphractii plate stepped onto the deck and took up position beside the battle automata. They aimed their weapons pointedly at their hosts.
‘Is that Captain Forrix I see there?’ said Aximand mildly, ignoring their show of strength.
‘Him?’ Perturabo said with complete disinterest. ‘Yes. It is Forrix.’
‘I shall see to it that they are refreshed,’ said Aximand.
‘They will remain here. They are staying to guard my ship,’ said Perturabo. ‘Refreshments are not required.’
Aximand looked over the Terminator-armoured Space Marines and the automata, and gave a little sigh. ‘Your caution is a credit to your genius, but you should trust your brother, my lord,’ said Little Horus. ‘You are held in high esteem here. You have nothing to fear.’
Perturabo glowered. ‘I fear nothing, but I trust no one,’ he said. His cape of blades clanked behind him as he strode past Little Horus. ‘Not even my brother.’
The Iron Circle came noisily alive, and stamped after their master.
Aximand looked at Forrix. The Iron Warrior acknowledged him with a tiny dip of his helmet, no more than that. Aximand smiled a crooked smile and followed Perturabo from the hangar, leaving the sons of two primarchs staring at each other over their guns.
Perturabo walked swiftly through the Vengeful Spirit, his Iron Circle clanking behind tirelessly. The ship shuddered in time to the firing of its guns. Having skulked behind Luna for several weeks, it had come out and joined the bombardment of the Throneworld. Horus was putting on a show of leadership from the front. A screen of destroyers and frigates protected the flagship from defence batteries that Perturabo would have destroyed many times over had his brother not kept him at the edge of the system. The story was the same as it ever was; Perturabo was exiled, ignored, called upon only as a weapon of last resort.
He would not let that stand. Already a master of the material sciences, he coveted the power of the warp. He saw possibilities beyond anything his genius could accomplish were it to remain shackled to the materium. But he was wary. His investigations were thorough. He would not follow his brothers into damnation and throw himself blindly upon the mercies of the gods, but cir
cumvent them altogether and become a god himself.
As he proceeded through the vessel, his armour’s auto-senses recorded everything for later examination.
The Vengeful Spirit was a living textbook on how not to grasp the warp’s might. In every way, it had changed for the worse. The taint of mutation lay on all things. Perturabo deeply disapproved. The warp was chaos. If approached carelessly, it was uncontrollable. He prized order. He would impose order upon chaos where his brothers had not. In securing his own apotheosis Fulgrim had tricked Perturabo but ultimately, like Angron, he had become a puppet of his passions. Magnus had chosen the esoteric path and fallen from it. Mortarion had been humbled. Lorgar was abandoned by the creatures he had unleashed.
These things would not happen to him, for he was Perturabo. He was logical when the others were impulsive. Methodical when they were rash. Passionless when they were indulgent. He was the Lord of Iron, and he was better than them all.
If the Vengeful Spirit were his ship, he would have burned the rot out. Horus didn’t even bother to hide it. Corruption was in plentiful evidence. The smell of spoiled meat blasted from atmospheric cyclers. Crew and legionaries bore the marks of flesh change. When he ascended a huge staircase leading up towards the command deck he encountered an entire wall subsumed by a mat of throbbing flesh, a tapestry of skin that presented a madness of rolling eyes and dribbling orifices. As the automata passed it, each chimed out a warning and powered its weapons. It was a supreme effort to order them to stand down, and not send them to cut away the canker.
Perturabo saw things other men did not. His psychic abilities were nothing compared to some, but he was nevertheless a primarch, and had an affinity for the warp. He had always been able to see the weeping sore in reality he had dubbed the Ocularis Terribus. Being on the Vengeful Spirit was like looking into the depths of the Ocularis and being unable to look away. There was a shifting of reality there. Nothing was real. Falsehood had stolen in behind every atom.
He wanted to be off the Vengeful Spirit. It reeked of slavery, and Perturabo was no one’s slave.
He made good distance from the hangar without the irritation of Aximand, but the dog caught up with him to nip at his heels.
‘My lord,’ said Aximand, jogging to keep up with Perturabo.
‘What do you want, Aximand?’ said Perturabo.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Lupercal’s court. I know the way, you need not follow me like a lost child. Begone, I am here to speak with the Warmaster, not a spoiled facsimile.’
‘Horus is not in Lupercal’s court,’ said Aximand.
Perturabo stopped. The instant he did, so did the Iron Circle.
‘Where is he?’
‘In his temple. It is a new location on the ship. I must take you there.’
‘Must you,’ said Perturabo.
Aximand turned them about and led the party back down the stair and off towards a large lifter platform. Perturabo stared at it suspiciously before he and his robotic guardians clambered aboard.
‘I prefer stairs,’ he said. ‘Less opportunity for assassination through mechanical interference.’
Aximand said nothing, but worked the controls, sending them down towards the base of the command spire.
At the bottom, he led Perturabo down a long corridor whose portside windows showed a fine view of the fleet and whose starboard side gibbered nonsense from thousands of chattering mouths. Presently they came to an ornate doorway carved of black, faintly luminous stone with a bestiary’s worth of leering faces. Perturabo had seen such stone before, in the Cursus on Tallarn. Recognising the door as an artefact of the warp, he greedily set the devices of his armour to analyse it. As always, the stone showed only as a blank space to his equipment.
‘The Iron Circle must remain outside,’ said Aximand, interrupting his evaluation.
‘My machines pose no threat to Horus,’ he said, still playing his instruments over the black stone.
‘So you say,’ said Little Horus. ‘How can I be sure?’
Perturabo’s furious grey eyes stared at him, but he held up his fist and clenched it, and the Iron Circle took a simultaneous step backwards. Their hammers thudded onto the floor, their shields they brought across their bodies, and they deactivated as one, sinking into themselves with a hiss of released pressure.
‘Satisfied?’ said the Lord of Iron.
Little Horus bowed his head; again there was an air of mockery to his show of respect.
‘You may enter, my lord,’ he said.
The doors opened.
Perturabo stared at Little Horus long enough for his disgust to be known before passing through the portal.
The doors closed behind him, sealing him in a chamber that should not have been there.
Perturabo took in the silent Unspeaking standing guard in alcoves; the raised walkway; the black oil, strangely alive-looking, in the channels cut into the floor; the windows that looked upon an alien cosmos.
Horus sat upon a throne at the far end of the walkway, which was fashioned of the same black, lustrous stone as the doors. He sprawled carelessly, armoured legs thrust out in front of him, his hands on the screaming daemon heads worked into the armrests. A penetrating sense of unease had Perturabo in its grip; the warp was close here, its otherworldly tides practically lapping at his feet. The lights were dim, but they shone with painful wavelengths not found in the material realm, and Perturabo squinted against them to see his brother.
Horus was armoured, his hands encased in the huge machinery of his power claws, his great maul leaning against the throne. He stirred and sat upright. The machineries of his battleplate were loud in the sepulchral quiet.
‘Brother,’ said the Warmaster. ‘It is good to see you.’
Perturabo hesitated. He should go to his brother. Caution held him back.
So much of the scene was wrong. The many Word Bearers vastly outnumbered the two Justaerin standing sentry at the entrance, whose presence was the only acknowledgement that this was a Sons of Horus ship.
‘Brother,’ said Horus again. ‘It is unlike you to dither. Come to me and greet me. You have performed well. I wish to thank you. We have a great deal to discuss.’
The Lord of Iron advanced steadily to mask his worries. Perturabo felt no fear, but he was paranoid to the core, and the voice that whispered treachery and death into the hidden folds of his mind was screaming at him to get out.
‘My brother,’ he said. He believed he hid his internal conflict, but Horus watched him sharply, so that he feared he had betrayed himself.
With difficulty, for his famed battleplate, the Logos, was a massive construction, Perturabo knelt at his brother’s feet.
‘My Warmaster,’ he said.
‘Rise, Lord of Iron,’ Horus said.
Perturabo had no choice. He had to obey. Horus’ gift was his ability to command men. Long ago he had done so artfully, through argument and persuasion as much as force of will. His charisma had been such he convinced others to follow him gladly. Now his presence demanded obedience. There was such power in him, yet he was also lesser than he had been, to the extent that Perturabo barely recognised his brother. Imperiousness replaced nobility. The easy smile had become a knowing leer. His thoughtful countenance had become slightly wild, suggesting wisdom too terrible to hold. Yet there was a glimpse of the old Horus when he stood from his throne and looked upon Perturabo fondly, causing the Lord of Iron to doubt himself.
‘We shall talk awhile, you and I,’ said Horus.
A febrile heat rose off the Warmaster. The sourceless light shining up from his gorget stained his skin a lurid magenta. So much power was invested in Horus. Perturabo recognised authority when he saw it, and though he shied away from others who would dominate him, to Horus he grudgingly submitted.
‘You have waited too long to summon me,’ Perturabo said sourly. ‘Why did you not allow me down with the Mechanicum landing parties? I have examined their work. It is pedestrian at best. Th
eir contravallation is full of weaknesses. Had Dorn half the wits he ascribes himself, he would have overrun the siege camps a dozen times already. Lucky it is for us that he is arrogant, and afraid, choosing to skulk behind his fortifications. Let me at the Mechanicum to show how feeble Dorn’s efforts are. Let me down to Terra, my lord, and I shall win this war for you. You promise me honour and respect, then leave me to languish in the outer system digging ditches. We delay when we should strike, we–’
‘Perturabo,’ said Horus, silencing him.
Perturabo’s stolid face showed surprise as his words jammed in his throat and would not come out.
‘Do not complain. Not until you have heard me out.’ Horus stepped down from the throne dais to come to his brother’s side.
‘My lord,’ Perturabo gasped, able to speak again.
‘Dear brother,’ Horus said. He rested his massive claw on Perturabo’s shoulder. Perturabo’s teeth and bones ached at the otherworldly power emanating from the Warmaster. ‘Always looking for the poison in the meat and never at the feast. I did not summon you until now for good reason, and I assure you it is the exact opposite of the suspicions churning around in that mind of yours. You see deviousness when truthfully I set you to work as I do because you are the only one of our brothers I trust. Be aware of this. You are blind to the affection I have for you. It offends me.’
‘My lord…’ said Perturabo haltingly.
‘Fulgrim is flighty,’ said Horus. ‘Angron is consumed with rage. Mortarion has fallen on the sword of his pride. Magnus cannot be trusted, for he serves only himself. But you are here, Perturabo, you are still strong. You have not cravenly begged for the mercies of the Four. You see in me what the true power of the warp can grant.’ He held up his other hand. ‘I am the master of the Pantheon, not their servant. The others are diminished creatures, slaves to darkness. The lost, and the damned.’ Horus smiled regretfully. ‘They were not strong enough. They give themselves to one small aspect of the warp. But you, Perturabo, you are too wise for that. Too clever. You preserve your individuality when the others have lost theirs without realising it has gone.’