The Talon of Horus

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  ‘Fate demanded it,’ replied the corpse.

  ‘I have no faith in fate. Give me a real answer.’

  ‘Fate spins ever onwards whether you regard its passage or not, Iskandar Khayon. It is as inevitable as the turning of time.’

  The fact he knew my name was no revelation; there were a hundred ways he might have gleaned it. I was more concerned with his zealotry, which was audible even in a dead man’s voice.

  ‘Give me a real answer,’ I repeated.

  ‘I know where the Vengeful Spirit is hidden. I bring that lore to those who need it most.’

  ‘That is a highly dubious degree of generosity. How do you know where the flagship of the Nine Legions lies?’

  The Word Bearer’s mismatched eye lenses locked to mine. ‘Because I have been aboard it.’

  I turned back to Falkus. ‘This is a trap. It cannot be anything but a trap.’

  Lheor was nodding. Falkus was not. ‘Is he lying?’ the Sons of Horus legionary asked. ‘Do you sense any deceit in his words?’

  I was forced to admit that I did not. ‘But his mind is warded, and I have no idea who sealed it.’

  Falkus was relentless, and even the note of triumph couldn’t cloak the desperation in his voice. ‘But he’s telling the truth, yes? You can say that for certain? He knows where the Vengeful Spirit lies?’

  ‘Brother, did you ask me to sail for weeks purely so I could be your truth detector?’

  ‘Is it the truth, Khayon?’

  I sighed, sensing it was a losing battle. ‘Yes, your prisoner is speaking the truth. For whatever that is worth.’

  ‘The best traps,’ Lheor pointed out, ‘are set with irresistible bait.’

  The two of them descended into conversation – or an argument, I paid no attention to which. I was still watching Sargon. What galled me most about his warded mind was that I could feel his openness in all other ways. He was making no effort to deceive us. He almost yearned to be cooperative, just as he willingly wore the manacles at his wrists.

  ‘Where is the Vengeful Spirit?’ I asked him.

  ‘On the edge of the Radiant Worlds,’ said the corpse behind me. ‘As I told Falkus Kibre, I now tell you.’

  I finally looked away from him. ‘Falkus, if he needs the dead to speak, how does he communicate when there are no corpses nearby?’

  The Sons of Horus legionary shook his head. ‘He usually doesn’t. He’s used Legion battle-sign a handful of times but we are hardly short of dead bodies on the Baleful Eye, especially not since the Monument fell.’

  ‘And you believe him? You believe he can lead us to the Vengeful Spirit?’

  I could not see Falkus’s face but I could feel him weighing his answer carefully. ‘This isn’t about belief, Khayon. My men and I don’t have the luxury of choice. We’re dead if the Third Legion hunts us down, and dead if we stand and fight. Their fleshsmiths and blood mages may take forever to clone the primarch, if they ever manage it at all, but I will strike early and deny them the chance. If Sargon is lying we may die out there on the Eye’s edge. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.’

  Put in such a stark light, I could see why Falkus considered it to be no choice at all.

  ‘I will come,’ I reaffirmed. ‘I am with you.’

  I felt a headache threatening. The temptation burned to simply reach into the others’ minds and converse in wordless communion. I had been around my mindless Rubricae kindred for too long, exercising my psychic control on those who had no right to resist. Speaking to others in actual discussion required more patience than I was used to.

  Ashur-Kai was delighted by this talk of prophecy. I felt him watching through my eyes, his focus as keen as a whetted blade. He hungered after any shred and scrap of oracular possibility. I was less enamoured of such unreliable foresight – the defences that had reshaped Sargon’s mind concerned me, and Falkus’s cold sincerity only made it more troubling.

  ‘We live in the underworld itself,’ I said. ‘Ghosts and madmen outnumber those of us who have stayed sane by a thousand to one. I owe you, Falkus. I do not trust this oracle, but I will come with you.’

  Lheor never had the chance to agree or disagree. Our enemies did not allow it.

  They came from the storm. The red-violet tides swelled and darkened, filled with the lethal bulk of the first warship ploughing through the storm’s aetheric clouds. It came in a shaking run, cutting through the turgid tides and lancing into the storm’s calm heart. Smoky contrails of warp-essence trailed from its battlemented spires and flaring engines.

  The Anamnesis cried out a warning across the vox. Gyre gave a psychic snarl. Lieutenants across our united fleet hailed their lords and leaders, to warn us of imminent attack.

  I couldn’t see the enemy ships from aboard His Chosen Son’s dead bridge. I saw them through the Tlaloc’s occulus – seeing them because Ashur-Kai could see them. When the lead vessel burst into view, the first thing I saw with my brother’s eyes was Imperial purple armour plating bleach-burned into ghostly lilac. We knew who they were even before the Tlaloc’s auspex scanners told us.

  ‘The Emperor’s Children,’ came the Anamnesis’s toneless murmur.

  ‘Get back to the ship,’ Ashur-Kai voxed in the same moment. Through our psychic bond, I could almost taste his disgusted aggression.

  Falkus lifted a hand to the side of his helm, heeding a voice I couldn’t hear, no doubt receiving the same words of warning from the command crew of the Baleful Eye. Then he gave an order I was hoping he wouldn’t give – the Sons of Horus levelled their double-barrelled bolters, not at my companions and I, but at Lheor and his warriors.

  For his part, the World Eaters commander made no hostile move.

  ‘Don’t threaten me,’ Lheor said, as calm as the blackness between worlds. ‘I’m many things, Falkus, but I’m not a liar. I wouldn’t bring betrayal to neutral ground.’

  ‘No other soul knew of this meeting,’ Falkus had his sword in his hand now, facing the impassive World Eater.

  Lheor was helmed, so his smile was something I sensed rather than saw. He tilted his head in amused disregard, considering how best to address the unravelling threads before him.

  ‘Brothers...’ the standing corpse hissed, as Sargon sought to calm them down.

  I was the one to stand between them, my axe heavy in my left hand. All three of us were roughly of a height.

  ‘He did not betray us,’ I stared into Falkus’s eye lenses, seeing the reflection of my own Kheltaran-crested helm, and tuning out the sound of Ashur-Kai repeatedly demanding I return to the ship.

  You know Lheor, I sent the words as a lance through the stubborn walls of Falkus’s ironclad thoughts. Why would he betray you to the dogs of the Third Legion? He despises them as much as you. Moreso, after Skalathrax. Lower your weapons before you turn one of your last allies into an enemy.

  I thought he might still press the issue. It took a fierce heart to lead any warband, and the undercurrent of self-righteous rage was ice in his veins. But Falkus turned to his men, voxing orders for them to run. There was nothing to be proud of in the way they fled the chamber, except for the truth of necessity. Even though the Sons’ squads fell back in admirable order, it was still a retreat. The lack of gravity was an aid to them as they kicked off from the walls and launched down the hallways, heading to the hangar bays where their gunships waited.

  Sargon rose to his feet, making no attempt to flee. In curious rhythm, as he rose, the corpse he had animated slouched into true lifelessness, no longer bound to his will. I also stood my ground, though not out of pride. I simply had another avenue of escape.

  ‘Come with me,’ I said to Lheor and Falkus. ‘All of you. Bring your men. Your ships will be dead before you ever reach them. The Tlaloc is on the storm’s edge, and ready to run.’

  ‘You can get us off this ship?’ Lheor’s question wa
s a throaty growl.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have a teleportation crucible capable of locking on despite the storm?’

  ‘No.’

  Lheor shook his head. ‘Then spare me from the whims of sorcerers.’ He turned to run, kicking off from the deck and soaring towards the wide-open doors leading to the ship’s spinal thoroughfare. His warriors had already fled.

  ‘Falkus,’ I began.

  ‘Fortune be with you, Khayon.’ With that, he fled after his men with a heavy-stepped grace, hauling Sargon by the warpriest’s shoulder-guard. I watched them leave, silently cursing them for fools. Ashur-Kai’s voice in my ear had an air of sardonic nursemaiding.

  ‘I cannot conceive why you are not back aboard the ship yet,’ he muttered. ‘You do realise these Third Legion fools are launching boarding craft, Sekhandur? That is something I should not need to point out.’

  After his dry reprimand, I heard him call out to the Tlaloc’s bridge crew, ordering them to ready the ship for submersion back into the storm. ‘Will you please make haste?’ he added, speaking to me again. ‘Open the conduit.’

  I didn’t reply. I was watching the occulus screen through his eyes, seeing through our bond. Our ships were already outnumbered. The enemy fleet had broken formation, eager for the kill, powering closer to reach terminal weapon range. Initial torpedo salvoes already cut the dusty void, streaming fire as they dived towards our vessels.

  Behind the warhead salvoes, in the screen’s lower quadrant, flickering auspex runes tracked boarding craft cutting right for us. Not just at our ships, but also the crippled hulk of His Chosen Son. The first impacts were coming.

  We had five ships. Five against seven. Falkus’s flagship, the Baleful Eye, was a cruiser of lethal beauty capable of running against the best in any Legion fleet in her prime, but those days were far behind her. She was riven by scars inflicted in our years of exile. Royal Spear was a sleek huntress, a long-range killer best suited for running alone in the deep cold, hardly armed or armoured for protracted fleet engagements even without the abundant wounds she wore. And Rise of the Three Suns, my brother’s newest warship, looked as though it had died months ago and forgotten to stop sailing.

  Jaws of the White Hound, armoured in the red and bronze plating of the XII Legion, was already pulling close to the dead ship’s wreck, ready to retrieve Lheor and his warriors from His Chosen Son. If she joined the fight – a fact I was not willing to rely on – she could duel one of the destroyers or smaller cruisers, but she was next to useless against the primary capital ships.

  Five to seven. Even one on one they would have destroyed us.

  I was raising my axe to open the conduit when the vox-network exploded in conflicting voices, each bringing its own share of fresh curses. Through Ashur-Kai’s eyes, I saw why. Huge, treacherous silhouettes were breaking cloud cover at the storm’s edge, coming in from every direction.

  It was no longer just five to seven. Escape had been an illusion, and I couldn’t help but admire the surgical precision of the ambush. Whoever wanted us dead had arranged our murders to perfection.

  The lead vessel was a battleship, its blunt prow shaped into the golden, ripped-wing avatar of a crucified Imperial eagle. That ship alone would have been capable of tearing all five of our vessels to pieces. The fact that it sailed at the head of a murder-fleet only added insult to injury. They weren’t even holding to an attack formation. They didn’t need to, they knew they had us by the throat.

  This fleet was far, far too large to be brought together for this lone engagement. Surely they were part of the armada that had ravaged Lupercalios, tasked now with hunting down the Sons of Horus survivors.

  ‘We are being hailed,’ said Ashur-Kai. ‘Or rather, you are being hailed.’

  I watched death sailing closer in the form of the colossal battleship, with the shark-spread of its lesser kindred trailing behind.

  ‘Accept it,’ I replied.

  The voice that crackled over the vox was unfamiliar. It was also restraining itself – I could hear the smile, the suppressed triumph in the tone, but the speaker held back from direct gloating. Such rare restraint, for one of his Legion.

  ‘Captain Iskandar Khayon of the Tlaloc.’ He spoke ‘captain’ as Cua Thāruāquei, ‘leader of souls’, in perfect Tizcan Prosperine. I had always imagined I would be killed by a blood-maddened Fenrisian primitive, and here I was about to be murdered by a scholar.

  ‘I am Khayon. Though I have not called myself a captain for some time.’

  ‘Times change, do they not? Am I also addressing the commander of the Jaws of the White Hound, Centurion Lheorvine Ukris, known by the name “Firefist”?’

  ‘Don’t call me Firefist,’ Lheor voxed back at once. He sounded neither angry nor offended, though I knew he was almost certainly both. Behind his reply, I could hear the muted whirring of his armour joints as he sprinted through the ship.

  ‘I am Kadalus of the Third Legion, and my rank is Sardar of the Sixteenth, Fortieth, and Fifty-First Companies. As your bridge crews may have already relayed to you, my fleet is not firing on your vessels, only upon the cruisers in Sons of Horus colours. In that regard, I bring you an offer: your lives. I have no quarrel with the Thousand Sons or the Eaters of Worlds. Get back to your ships and you will be allowed to sail back into the storm, unbloodied and unbroken.’

  ‘Sardar Kadalus,’ I replied, ‘I do believe you are lying to us.’

  A crackle of vox did nothing to hide his grimy, knowing chuckle. ‘Just let me take Falkus and his men, Khayon. I have no interest in your petty conjurings, nor in that fool Firefist. So I say again, get back to your ships, and leave the Sons of Horus to me. You have my word that I will let you live, and you may carry the tale of my mercy with you back to your strongholds.’

  ‘What drives you to hunt Falkus with such tenacity?’ I asked.

  ‘He is one of them,’ said Kadalus.

  One of them. A legionary of the Sons of Horus. The Legion that left us to die on the renewed anger of Imperial guns. How easy it is to flee from retribution, yet how impossible it is to outrun shame.

  ‘Strange to take the moral high ground when your Legion’s performance in the Terran War was hardly beneficial, Sardar. What were you doing while the rest of us spent our blood and lives against the palace walls?’

  ‘I have made my offer,’ the Sardar replied, refusing to be baited, though I was sure he was no longer smiling.

  I looked back to my companions. Mekhari and Djedhor stood in mute witness. Gyre stalked around the thrones and the dry corpses that still sat in them, her inhuman mind unreadable but for sullen discontent.

  Through Ashur-Kai’s eyes, I watched the runic symbols of several assault boats drifting closer to the upper decks of His Chosen Son. We had less than a minute before the first boarders struck iron.

  ‘I fear I must refuse, Kadalus. I appreciate the offer but I wouldn’t trust you to burn even if I was the one to set you aflame. Your word is less than excrement to me, son of Fulgrim.’

  He laughed, rightfully assured of his victory whether we betrayed Falkus or not.

  ‘That is a shame, Khayon. And what of you, Firefist?’

  ‘I’m with the Tizcan.’ I heard Lheor’s reinforced bronze teeth click together as he grinned. ‘But if you surrender now, perhaps I’ll be merciful.’

  ‘Is this what passes for defiance in your Legion, Lheorvine?’

  ‘No, it’s what passes for humour.’ Lheor’s teeth clicked together again. The vox-link to Kadalus went dead in a smear of static.

  I am opening the conduit, I sent to Ashur-Kai. His reply was a wordless pulse of irritation at how long it had taken me to agree.

  Keeping your senses bound to another’s mind is no easy feat, even through a psychic bond as strong as the one I shared with Ashur-Kai. I could not open the conduit and remain mind-linked with my br
other, so I braced myself for the waspish severance to come.

  I felt him lift his sword as I raised my axe. Hundreds of kilometres separated us, but I felt the unity of movement, just as I felt the way we both stopped in the same second, with our blades held high.

  Ready, I sent.

  Ready, he pulsed back in the same moment.

  Mekhari. Djedhor. To me.

  My dead brothers marched to my side, bolters braced to fire. Gyre circled the three of us, snarling silently in my mind.

  My senses snapped back from Ashur-Kai’s with a whipcrack of force. With my axe, I cut a wound in reality.

  My axe had a name, as all weapons should. It was called Saern, ‘Truth’ in the dialects of several Fenrisian clans, most notably the Deinlyr tribe.

  I had carried Saern since Prospero burned, when I took the blade from the lifeless grip of a warrior who came far too close to killing me. At the time, I knew nothing of him beyond the fact he carried hate in his eyes and death in his fists.

  Many of the Legions’ rituals and habits reflected the brutal simplicity of the most primal cultures: those tribal societies of humanity’s Stone Era, or warrior cultures of its Bronze and Iron Epochs. Taking trophies from enemy Legions is beyond merely common; it is as expected and informal as the habitual exchange of posturing and threats between rival commanders.

  Many of the Adeptus Astartes Chapters that were spawned from the spineless breaking of the Great Crusade forces consider themselves above such behaviour, but we of the Nine Legions rarely shy away from indulging in evocative threats. A great deal of a warband’s respect among its kindred comes down to its warlord’s reputation, after all. His warriors will shout his triumphs to the foe, and cry out their enemy’s defeats.

  So the claiming of weapons and armour from the fallen is no rare thing. Despite that, even though I no longer owe any allegiance or devotion to the Thousand Sons, my skin still crawls to imagine how many relics the Wolves bore with them from the bones of Prospero. My ire rises from how they considered our treasures maleficarum, ‘tainted’, and almost certainly destroyed them rather than wield them in battle.