Vengeful Spirit

by Graham McNeill

  Those pages had presumably been ripped from the hundreds of astrological primers, Crusade logs, histories of Unity and mythological texts that lay scattered like autumn leaves.

  Aximand tilted his head to catch a few of the titles, He who saw the Deep; The Nephite Triptych; Monarchia Alighieri; Libri Carolini. There were others, with titles both mundane and esoteric. Some, Aximand noticed, were lettered in gold-leaf Colchisian cuneiform. Before he could read any further, a booming voice called his name.

  ‘Aximand,’ called Horus. ‘You know better than to stand there like some poxy ambassador, get in here.’

  Aximand obeyed, limping past haphazardly stacked piles of books and data-slates towards the primarch’s inner sanctum. As always, it gave him a thrill of pride to be here, to know that his gene-father esteemed him worthy of this honour. Of course, Horus always dismissed such lofty nonsense, but that only made these moments more precious.

  Even seated and without the encasement of armour, Horus was enormous, a heroic Akillius or Hektor, a cursed Gylgamesh or Shalbatana the Scarlet Handed. His skin was pink and raw with grafts and regeneration, especially around his right eye where the charred ruin of his skull had been exposed. His hair was still bristly with regrowth, but the attack on the Dome of Revivification appeared to have left no permanent scars. At least none that Aximand could see.

  In the immediate aftermath of the ambush, the three primarchs had withdrawn to their flagships to heal and recuperate. The Sons of Horus had levelled Tyjun in a spasm of retaliation, murdering its populace and leaving no stone upon another to root out any other attackers.

  Five days later, the Warmaster’s assembled fleets set sail from Dwell, leaving the planet a smouldering wasteland.

  Horus worked at a table encircled by a curtain-wall of books, folded charts, celestial hierarchies and tablets of carven formulae.

  From the thickness of its spine and tabular aspect of its pages, the book that currently held the Warmaster’s attention was a Crusade log. Even upside down, Aximand recognised the violet campaign badge in the upper corner of the facing page.

  ‘Murder?’ said Aximand. ‘An old tally, that one.’

  Horus closed the book and looked up, a strange irritation in his eyes, as though he had just read something in the log he hadn’t liked. Puckered scar tissue pulled at his mouth as he spoke.

  ‘An old one, but still relevant,’ said Horus. ‘Sometimes you can learn as much, if not more, from the battles you lose as the ones you win.’

  ‘We won that one,’ pointed out Aximand.

  ‘We shouldn’t have had to fight it at all,’ said Horus, and Aximand knew not to ask any more.

  Instead he simply made his report. ‘You wanted to know when the fleets translated, sir.’

  Horus nodded. ‘Any surprises I should know about?’

  ‘No, all Sons of Horus, Death Guard and Titanicus vessels are accounted for and have been duly entered in the mission registry,’ said Aximand.

  ‘What’s our journey time looking like?’

  ‘Master Comnenus estimates six weeks to reach Molech.’

  Horus raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s quicker than he originally calculated. Why the revised journey time?’

  ‘With the Ruinstorm behind the fleets, our esteemed shipmaster tells me that, and I quote: “the path before us welcomes our fleets like a bordello welcomes bored soldiers with full pockets”.’

  Horus’s earlier irritation vanished like a shadow on the sun. ‘That sounds like Boas. Perhaps Lorgar’s rampage across the Five Hundred Worlds has been more useful than I expected.’

  ‘Lorgar’s rampage?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose Angron is doing most of the rampaging,’ chuckled Horus. ‘And what of the Third Legion?’

  Aximand was used to swift changes of tack in the Warmaster’s questioning, and had his answer at the ready. ‘Word comes that they set course for the Halikarnaxes Stars as ordered.’

  ‘I sense a “but” missing from that sentence,’ said Horus.

  Aximand said, ‘But the word did not come from Primarch Fulgrim.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t have,’ agreed Horus, waving to a couch set against one wall upon which hung a variety of punch daggers and quirinal cestus gauntlets. ‘Sit, take some wine, it’s Jovian.’

  Aximand poured two goblets of wine from an amethyst bottle and handed one to Horus before sitting on the portion of the couch not obscured by the primarch’s reading material.

  ‘Tell me, little one, how are your Mournival brothers?’ asked Horus as he sipped some wine. ‘Fulgrim’s power shielded us from the worst of the gunships’ fire, but you…’

  Aximand shrugged, also taking a drink and finding its flavour much to his liking. ‘Burns and bruises mainly. We’ll heal. Kibre acts like it never happened, and Grael is still trying to figure out how the Tenth Legion kept three Fire Raptors hidden for so long.’

  ‘Some dark age tech salvaged from Medusa, I expect,’ said Horus. ‘And Ezekyle?’

  ‘He’s about ready to fall on his sword,’ said Aximand. ‘You were almost killed, and he blames himself for that.’

  ‘I dismissed the Justaerin, if you remember,’ pointed out Horus. ‘Tell Ezekyle that if there’s blame to be apportioned, the bulk of it’s mine. He’s not at fault.’

  ‘It might help if that came from you.’

  Horus waved away Aximand’s suggestion. ‘Ezekyle is a big boy, he’ll understand. And if he doesn’t, well, I know Falkus covets his rank.’

  ‘You’d make the Widowmaker First Captain?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Horus, lapsing into silence. Aximand knew better than to break it and took more wine.

  ‘I should have known Meduson would have a contingency in case the White Scars failed,’ said Horus at last.

  ‘Do you think Shadrak Meduson was on one of those gunships?’

  ‘Perhaps, but I doubt it,’ said Horus. He finished his wine and placed the cup to one side. ‘But what aggrieves me most is the destruction the Legion unleashed in retaliation. Especially the loss of the Mausolytic. Razing it and Tyjun was unnecessary. So much there still to be discovered.’

  ‘With respect, sir, it had to be done,’ replied Aximand. ‘What you learned, others could learn. And truthfully, I’m not sorry we burned it.’

  ‘No? Why?’

  ‘The dead should stay dead,’ said Aximand, trying not to look over the Warmaster’s shoulder at the ornately wrought box of lacquered wood and iron.

  Horus grinned, and Aximand wondered if he knew of the dreams that had plagued him before the reattaching of his face. Those dreams were gone now, consigned to history in the wake of his invincible rebirth and rededication.

  ‘I never considered the Dwellers truly dead,’ said Horus turning to address the box. ‘But even so, a man ought not to be afraid of the dead, little one. They have no power to harm us.’

  ‘They don’t,’ agreed Aximand as Horus rose from his seat.

  ‘And they don’t answer back,’ said Horus, hiding a grimace of pain and beckoning Aximand to his feet. With a stiff gait, Horus made his way into an adjacent room. ‘Walk with me. I have something for you.’

  Aximand followed Horus into a reverentially dim arming chamber, illumined only by a soft glow above the steel-limbed rack supporting the Warmaster’s battleplate. Spindle-limbed adepts in ragged chasubles worked to repair the damage done by the Fire Raptors’ cannons. Aximand smelled fixatives, molten ceramite and dark lacquer.

  Worldbreaker hung on reinforced hooks next to the left gauntlet. The lion-flanked amber eye upon the plastron seemed to follow Aximand as they traversed the chamber. Horus might have died, it seemed to say, but Aximand shook off the sensation of judgement as they approached a high-vaulted forge of smelting and metalworking. The seething glow of a furnace hazed the air.

  Only when Aximand followed Horus into the chamber did he see his error. No natural light of a furnace illuminated the forge, but something bright and dark at the same time, somethi
ng that left a fleeting succession of negative impressions on his retina. Aximand felt corpse breath on the back of his neck and tasted human ash at the sight of a flame-wreathed abomination floating a metre above the deck.

  It had once been a Blood Angel. Now it was… what? A daemon? A monster? Both. Its crimson armour was broken, cracked where the evil within it licked outwards in unnatural, eternal flames.

  Whoever the legionary within that armour had once been was immaterial. All that remained of him was the scorched prime helix symbol of an Apothecary. It called itself the Cruor Angelus, but the Sons of Horus knew it as the Red Angel.

  It had been bound and gagged by chains that were originally gleaming silver, but had since been scorched black. Its head went unhelmed, but its features were impossible to discern through the infernal flames, save for two white-hot eyes filled with the rage of a million damned souls.

  ‘Why is it here?’ said Aximand, unwilling to voice its name.

  ‘Hush,’ replied Horus, leading Aximand towards a timber workbench upon which rested implements that looked more akin to surgeon’s tools than those of the metalworker. ‘The Faceless One’s aborted angel has a part to play in our current endeavour.’

  ‘We shouldn’t trust anything that came from that scheming bastard,’ said Aximand. ‘Exile was too easy. You should have let me kill him.’

  ‘If he doesn’t take my lesson to heart I may let you,’ said Horus, lifting something from the workbench. ‘But that’s a murder for another day.’

  Only reluctantly did Aximand let his gaze turn from the Red Angel, as any warrior was loath to let an enemy fall from sight.

  ‘Here,’ said the Warmaster, holding a long, cloth-wrapped bundle before him. ‘This is yours.’

  Aximand took the bundle and felt the weight of strong metal. He unwrapped it with reverent care, guessing what lay within.

  Mourn-it-all’s edge had been badly notched in the fight against Hibou Khan, the White Scar’s borrowed Medusan blade proving to be more than the equal of Cthonian bluesteel.

  ‘Hard as a rock and hot as hell in the heart,’ said Horus, tapping his chest. ‘A weapon that’s Cthonia to the core.’

  Aximand gripped the leather-wound hilt of the double-edged sword, holding the blade out before him and feeling a last part of him he’d not even appreciated was missing now restored. The fuller was thick with fresh etchings that glittered in the daemon-thing’s firelight. Aximand felt lethal potency within the blade that had nothing to do with its powered edges.

  ‘I need you and your sword, Little Horus Aximand,’ said the Warmaster. ‘The war on Molech will test us all, and you’re not you without it.’

  ‘It shames me I was not the one to restore its edge.’

  ‘No,’ said Horus. ‘It honours me that I could do it for you, my son.’

  Arcadon Kyro had learned a great many things during his time as a Techmarine of the Ultramarines, but the teaching he’d taken most to heart was that no two vehicles were ever wholly alike in temper or mien. Each was as individual as the warriors they carried into battle, and they too had legacies worthy of remembrance.

  Sabaen Queen was as good an example of this as he could wish for. A Stormbird of Terran provenance, it had led the triumphal fly-by over Anatolia in the last days before the XIII Legion launched the campaign to reclaim the Lunar enclaves from the Selenar cults alongside the XVI and XVII Legions. Kyro was yet unborn, but felt Sabaen Queen’s pride to have been part of the Great Crusade’s first true battle.

  It was a proud aircraft, haughty even, but Kyro would sooner pilot a prideful craft than a workhorse made resentful by poor treatment. He banked Sabaen Queen around the easternmost peaks of the Untar Mesas, dropping his altitude sharply and pushing out the engines as the landscape opened up. The flight from the defence readiness inspection along the Aenatep peninsula had been a long one, and the Stormbird had earned this chance to flex her wings.

  With brown hills and golden fields stretching to Iron Fist Mountain on the horizon, Molech resembled a great many of the Five Hundred Worlds, and was dotted with efficient agri-collectives and crisscrossed by wide roads, maglevs and glittering irrigation canals. It had been brought to compliance without the need for war, yet – for reasons unknown to Kyro – still boasted a garrison force numbering in the millions.

  Ultramarines boots were still fresh on the ground, newly deployed as part of a regular rotation of Legion forces between Ultramar and Molech. Vared of the 11th Chapter had returned to Macragge with full honours, passing the Aquila Ultima to Castor Alcade, Legate of Battle Group II within the 25th Chapter.

  With the Warmaster’s host said to be somewhere in the northern marches there was likely little glory to be won on Molech, but few warriors were so in need of glory as Castor Alcade.

  Thus far, Alcade’s career had been unremarkable. He had assumed the mantle of legate by dint of a service record that showed him to be a warrior of due diligence and requisite ability, but little flair.

  Under Alcade’s command, Battle Group II had acquired a largely unearned reputation for ill-fortune. Two particular examples in the last thirty years had turned arming-chamber whispers into ‘fact’.

  On Varn’s World, they had fought alongside the Ninth and 235th Companies to crush the greenskin host of the Ghennai Cluster. Alcade coordinated a gruelling flanking campaign, routing the feral greenskin in the highland latitudes before arriving an hour after Klord Empion had broken the enemy host comprehensively at the battle of Sumaae Delta.

  During the final storming of the cavern cities of Ghorstel, a series of malfunctioning auspex markers saw Alcade’s assault through the ventral manufactories misdirected into dead end arcologies. Hopelessly lost in the maze of tunnels, the absence of Battle Group II’s companies left Eikos Lamiad and his warriors to fight the bio-mechanical host of the Cybar-Mekattan unsupported.

  Lamiad’s heroically-earned victory cemented an already formidable stature and led to his appointment as Tetrarch of Konor, while consigning Alcade’s reputation – through no fault of his own – to self-evident mediocrity.

  It was said that the Avenging Son himself had remarked on the matter, saying, ‘Not every commander can be the proudest eagle, some must circle the aerie and allow others to fly farther.’

  Kyro had his doubts as to the remark’s authenticity, but that didn’t seem to matter. Those who knew of Alcade’s reputation named him ‘Second String’ – Filum Secundo – forgetting that, by its original meaning, the archer’s second string had to be just as strong and reliable as the first.

  A threat auspex chirruped in Kyro’s ear as a mountaintop battery of Hydra anti-aircraft guns unmasked and locked onto the Sabaen Queen. He sent a communion pulse, telling the gunners that he was a friendly, and the threat disappeared from the slate.

  ‘The Untar Mesas guns?’ inquired Legate Alcade, appearing in the hatchway linking the troop compartment with the cockpit.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Kyro. ‘A little slow in acquiring us, but I was making them sweat for it.’

  ‘A little sweat now will save a lot of blood when Horus’s dogs reach Molech,’ said Alcade, strapping himself into the co-pilot’s seat across from Kyro.

  ‘You really think the traitors will come here, sir?’

  ‘Given Molech’s location, eventually they must,’ said Alcade, and Kyro heard the hope that such an event might come sooner rather than later. Alcade wanted war to reach Molech. He had the scent of glory in his nostrils.

  Kyro understood glory. He’d earned his share of it. Such an allure was more potent than any Apothecary’s opiates. The power of its need was something to be feared, even by transhuman warriors who claimed to be above such mortal weakness.

  Alcade scanned the avionics display. His battleplate’s onboard systems would already have given him the Stormbird’s approximate location, but Ultramarines didn’t work with approximates.

  ‘So what’s your verdict on the Aenatep peninsula?’

  Kyro nodded slowl
y. ‘Fair.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘It’ll do if all they have to fight are mortals and xenos, but it’s not Legion strong.’

  ‘How would you strengthen it?’ asked Alcade. ‘Give me a theoretical.’

  Kyro shook his head. ‘In the forge we prefer speculative and empirical – all the potentials and all working actuals. Even the best practical doesn’t become empirical until it’s been proven combat-effective a significant number of times.’

  ‘A subtle difference,’ said Alcade. ‘Too subtle for most when the bolts are in the air.’

  ‘That’s why Techmarines are so valuable,’ said Kyro, bringing them down towards the valley of Lupercalia, a name that must surely be changed in light of the Warmaster’s treachery. ‘We calculate how things need to be so the commanders in the field don’t have to.’

  More range-markers and Hydras fixed on them, and Kyro let Sabaen Queen dismiss their interrogations with lofty disdain.

  ‘What would we do without our brave brothers in the forge to keep us mere commanders in line?’ said Alcade.

  Kyro said, ‘Good to know you appreciate us, sir.’

  ‘Did you ever doubt it?’ grinned Alcade. ‘But you didn’t answer the question.’

  Kyro spared his legate a sidelong glance. As heroic a warrior of the XIII Legion as any, not even transhuman genhancments could smooth out his patrician features or the finely sculpted planes of his cheekbones. His eyes were pale aquamarine, set in skin like weathered birch upon which he wore a waxed beard forked in the manner of the Khan’s sons. Perhaps he thought it gave him a rakish, dangerous appearance, but together with his tonsured silver hair, it made him look more monk than warrior.