by Various
‘That is to be expected,’ Rakshel slurred. ‘I am bound to tell you once again of the priesthood’s sense of sorrowful rejection.’
‘Your people tutored the wretch Erebus,’ said Maloghurst coolly. ‘You are lucky to be alive.’
‘We healed the Warmaster. We guided him to the truth that the false Emperor hid from all of you. Do not dismiss us. You will appreciate the import I attach to this issue, that I come here almost certain to be greeted with rejection. There are powers we are aware of – powers we taught to Erebus. We can share them with the Warmaster. We have great influence with the lords of creation.’
Maloghurst replied tersely. ‘Powers? Influence?’ He scoffed. ‘The Warmaster is far beyond your petty sorceries.’
‘Powers, yes. Influence, yes. Some powers are malignant. Some influences can be bent to ill ends. The warp dances in agitation. Great forces are moving.’
‘None is greater than mighty Lupercal.’
‘No matter how mighty one is, there is always someone mightier,’ countered Rakshel. ‘Let us help guard our master against these powers. Allow us our audience with Horus. Neither you nor he will regret it.’
Maloghurst leaned forward, lacing the fingers of both hands over the head of his cane. ‘Is that a threat, Rakshel? So many groups outside the Legion jockey for the primarch’s attention. Do not become an irritant to the Warmaster. Do not become a problem for me. Go away.’
Rakshel obeyed without demur. He bowed. ‘You do your duty, I do mine. I am sorry that we remain at an impasse.’
‘Leave.’
The Davinite bowed again and departed.
‘Seal the doors,’ said Maloghurst to the Justaerin. ‘That is enough for today. Tell the rest to consider their petitions carefully before they come back tomorrow. Perhaps a few executions will encourage them to keep their pathetic problems to themselves.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ growled the Justaerin. The warrior did nothing to hide his disdain. Maloghurst was powerful, but not in a way that Falkus Kibre’s men appreciated.
The equerry was no longer a fighter, and the newest recruits of the Legion did not even remember the days when he had been. The Sons of Horus had little respect for politics. They had only a little more for commanders who could not take to the field.
Maloghurst headed for the doors that led to the command deck, avoiding the petitioners in the antechamber. Away from his stool, no light but that of the stars illuminated him. Scraped clean of Erebus’s influence, the court appeared a more wholesome place, more fitting to a leader of Horus’s stature.
The impression was a misleading one. The shadows of the Vengeful Spirit harboured hidden things. The animus of the place was anything but clean. The whispers were at their worst in the quiet spaces. Ever since Davin they had been there, hiding, out of the way. Now they plagued the whole ship. Recently, Maloghurst had heard them even in Horus’s sanctum. Despite his growing mastery of the primal mysteries, Maloghurst hurried through the court, impatiently awaiting the opening of doors to the hubbub of the bridge.
Maloghurst… Twisted…
He could not stop himself from looking over his shoulder. There was nothing he could see, of course, but he sensed something. He was quite sure of that. An emotion took his hearts.
Not fear – never that – but unease, certainly.
He muttered a cantrip he had torn from a dying sorcerer. The sense of presence diminished slightly in response.
Light and noise dispelled the whispering entirely. Maloghurst stepped through, and walked gladly among the command crew. The tapping of his skull-topped cane heralded his presence. Officers, thralls and legionaries alike stood to attention as he passed their stations.
He welcomed the vox-chatter, the orders, the endless rounds of reports, the mindless drone of servitors. Human bodies warmed the air. It smelled of people, of sweat and soap and the dusty heat vented by machines. The machine-mind of the Vengeful Spirit belonged still to the mundane realm, even if its soul did not.
Maloghurst…
He gritted his teeth behind his breathing mask. The voice had come to him six weeks ago. Always just behind his left shoulder. He fixed his face into an imperious glare. Let none know of his disquiet. A display of weakness could doom him.
Nevertheless, he walked more quickly.
The next day, Maloghurst took the Avenue of Glory and Lament from his quarters in the command spires. His bodyguard thumped after him, towering over the serfs that swarmed the way. Corridor-trains whirred past, taking personnel from one end of the massive vessel to the other. The avenue exhibited little sign of the changes brought on by the war. All was bustle and hurried efficiency, as it always had been.
The distance between the spires and the door he sought was short, but already the walk troubled him, his mis-set bones grinding against one another. He locked his pain in a grimace hidden behind his respirator, keeping it from his eyes.
Most people got quickly out of his way, whether they were Space Marines or thralls. His disability meant that he passed slowly along the great avenue of the ship, but he did so unimpeded.
Irritation gnawed at him. Dealing with the day to day management of the fleet was tedious. He longed for the next battle. More and more Horus favoured directing the war from the front line, leaving Maloghurst in command of the flagship. But the battles were always disappointingly brief. A week, maybe two, and another world burned.
No. He was honoured, he chided himself. Who else could the Warmaster trust? Imperial sympathisers were still to be found within the ranks of the old 63rd Expedition. There were none so astute as he. Anyone else given his role would fail to spot those who were less than loyal. He appraised those who passed him. Few were bold enough to look him in the eye – most hurried by, intent on their own business. A handful were less afraid. Ranking officers and his legionary brothers saluted him with varying enthusiasm.
Brothers. How little that word meant to him now. Save for Horus, he was alone.
Better that way, perhaps. A lone predator, aware of its surroundings, makes fewer errors.
He heard the whispers underneath the clamour of the avenue. Psychic overspill, the imprints of the dead and betrayed, and increasingly the honeyed words of the denizens of the warp. Their endless temptations terrified the menials and the serfs. The fervour of many for their new creed was wavering. When a menial succumbed to the whispered promises and turned upon his comrades, it was invariably to the sound of wicked laughter.
They were always there. At the edge of hearing, accompanied often by a smell like warm blood and spoiled milk so strong that it coated the back of the throat.
He had a flash of himself raging.
Isn’t it glorious?
He saw himself stripped to the waist, his hands covered in the blood of others.
Isn’t it sublime?
He saw himself pull his bolt pistol and place it against the eye lens of the Justaerin flanking him.
Welcome me in, Twisted One. Be as Tormaggedon. Known true power. You made him. You see the power of the Luperci like none other. Take it for yourself.
Maloghurst pushed the unwelcome image away. He found himself staring a gunnery rating in the face. Over his high, armoured collar, his face was an unhealthy pallor. The whites of his eyes were a watery pink with black rings under them. The holy octed tattooed upon his cheek had become livid, raised like a scar.
Change was all about them, fuelled by the dark majesty of Horus.
Why should you not change too? asked the voice.
Not yet, thought Maloghurst. Not yet.
If he said that he had not considered taking the path of the Luperci himself, it would be a lie. So much power there, in that twining of souls. But the costs were too high for him to contemplate paying.
He was a puppeteer, not a puppet.
They descended a wide spiral stair languishin
g under a hellish heat and a crushing sense of claustrophobia. A hollow shaft at the centre stretched away to black infinity up and down, the steps wrapped round it as tightly as a coil of steely DNA. Mechanical sighs wheezed from the depths on hot winds, disembodied machine sounds pushed before them. The faint strains of songs of devotion were split by a scream.
And the voices… Every sound here carried a parasitic whisper.
Silence fell.
In the deep, faint and running footsteps pattered. They stopped. A door seal hissed. Then nothing. The whispers died. The sighing of the ship alone remained. Maloghurst was left with the sound of his breath wheezing into his respirator, his own unsteady steps, the whine of power armour grumbling at his unnatural gait, the steady clang of the Justaerin’s feet following behind him.
They reached their destination. A metallic groan fled up the shaft as Maloghurst unlocked the door with his key wand.
A round room, the centre occupied by pipes as profuse as those of a devotional organ. Twenty individual cell-beds were set into the wall. A door to one side led off to crude facilities: a mess and latrine block.
Those who lived there were expecting them. They were gathered before the door, their pale grey uniforms grubby and torn. For some time the Sons of Horus had added fetishes to their armour, and Maloghurst saw them displayed by the thralls more and more in imitation. A medicine pouch, a crude octed scratched into a piece of scrap and worn as a medallion. Symbols painted in dark fluids on dirty cloth. Once the Vengeful Spirit had been a clean ship. They had lost some things in choosing the path that had always been inevitable.
Power always had a cost. Maloghurst was wise to that.
The thralls were couriers. They were among the very lowest, but their function was vital. In the tumult of battle, vox-systems failed. Data squirts might not carry, the cogitator units burned out by electromagnetic surges. A runner with a message was slower, but more reliable. A valuable back-up. A few carried data-sockets so that they might inload their messages to surgically isolated parts of their brains. They knew without knowing.
This issue Maloghurst had chosen to deal with himself. It would be useful edification for others. They were lowly, yes, but the men who carried the Warmaster’s word must know that his eye was always upon them. Maloghurst must remind them how close they were to Lupercal. They would grovel when they remembered the honour it did them.
One of their number was in chains, on his knees and heavily bruised. His fellows and captors knelt beside him as the legionaries entered their cramped world. But there was a man at the fore of the group who did not kneel. His eyes were bright and hard in sockets purpled by lack of sleep.
He must be the ringleader, the accuser. Maloghurst wondered what calculation he had made to call directly upon the ship’s lords. Attracting the attention of the Legion could have gone badly for him. It still might. The hard-eyed man dropped his eyes and pointed to his captive wordlessly.
‘You defy the Warmaster,’ Maloghurst said to the man in chains.
The captive would not look at him, but he did speak. ‘Not defiance, a request. We do not have enough water. We are dying.’ Upon the man’s shoulders were rank stripes. A subordinary indentured officer. This must be his command.
Maloghurst knew the story. The fleet pushed on and on with little pause, Terra firmly in its sights. There was no time for resupply, no time for repair. Many parts of the ship were left without basic requirements. The couriers’ leader intended to alleviate their suffering; perhaps he had been there, waiting outside Lupercal’s Court yesterday when Maloghurst had declared the audiences at an end. His men, panicked, had thrown themselves upon the Legion’s mercy. They would rather risk the slow death of thirst than anger their masters. Too bad for him.
Behind his respirator, Maloghurst smiled. True power was invested by fear. Here it was, as plain as the Emperor’s lies. Had the man come to him, it might have been different. But the couriers had acted, and Maloghurst was in no mood for mercy.
Maloghurst pulled out his sacred dagger and swept it across the man’s throat. Let it feed – it had not been blooded for some while. Bright blood spread a crimson fan across the decking.
‘Your concern is heard. There is one less of you. The rest may drink more deeply.’
A sinuous laugh twisted on the air. Maloghurst turned swiftly to its source. A great shape stood at the farmost left of the couriers, a column composed of dark smoke and a palpable malevolence.
Maloghurst, it said. Become. Open the way.
The shape had no visible sensory organs, but it surely stared back at Maloghurst, for he could feel it scrying his very soul. A hand formed momentarily in the smoke. A long finger traced the jaw of a nearby courier. He shuddered, but the man’s dread of the legionaries stopped him from looking up.
A hand touched his elbow. Maloghurst twitched.
‘My lord?’
His gaze fell to the deck. The blood had gone, as though greedily absorbed by the ship itself.
The subordinary courier’s men kept their eyes fixed upon the decking. Maloghurst searched the limits of the chamber, but the shadow was nowhere to be found.
‘My lord,’ said the Justaerin. Criticism of Maloghurst’s lack of control was implicit in his tone.
‘We are done here,’ he muttered. His blade slid back into its sheath with a click, and he pointed to the hard-eyed man. ‘You. You are now in charge of this group.’
‘Aye, my lord,’ the man whispered.
He left the couriers to dispose of their erstwhile commander. The urge to look over his shoulder as he left was almost impossible to defy, but defy it he did.
A Space Marine was not intended to dream in the manner of mortals. The dreams of normal men were a clumsy way of managing memories and learning. A legionary had no need to manage his memory, for his was as ordered as a well-kept library. His dreams therefore lacked the allegorical nature of mortal dreams, tending to the quotidian: the mastering of new skills, sped up by carefully designed hypnotic shaping.
But that night, Maloghurst dreamed as mortals dream.
He was in the abode of fire, and it burned him. The Warmaster stood in impossible company. A sorcerer in an azure parody of the Crimson King’s garb stood to one side. Fulgrim was behind his brother, unchanged from his original form, while sundry other degenerates and warp-beasts clamoured all around. Erebus had returned to them, though his face was now a mask of grim spite. A holographic orb of Terra hung in the air in front of Horus.
Maloghurst was there, too. He saw himself from outside, as if he viewed the scene through another’s eyes. How old and broken he looked, his ruined face hidden behind his ever-present respirator. The eyes gleamed with a touch of madness. This other Maloghurst wore a patchwork tabard of flayed human skin over his armour.
Everything was wrong. And the fire, burning hot, pressed around on all sides. Only he, the observing Maloghurst, appeared aware of it. His doppelganger – or was it the true Maloghurst, and he was some other? – appeared entirely ignorant of the heat.
The others continued their debate unconcerned. Horus laid out his plans for the conquest of Terra. His subordinates, aides and adjutants gave their opinions. Their words were short and to the point. Their comments were elaborations, details. None would gainsay the Warmaster’s flawless strategy. None could.
Horus looked directly at Maloghurst-the-observer. His face was majestic, alive with fierce intelligence and the grand power of the warp.
‘Maloghurst! You have joined us.’ He addressed him as though it were perfectly normal that there were two embodiments of his equerry in attendance.
‘My lord…’ said Maloghurst. Confusion muddied his thoughts. A dream. He clung to the certainty of that as hard as he could. ‘I am sorry.’
His double chittered an idiot chant in a forgotten language. His bloodshot eyes rolled back into his head. Black liquid ran f
rom the edges of his respirator.
Over Horus’s shoulder, the presence loomed.
This was no pillar of smoke, but Maloghurst knew it for the thing he had seen in the couriers’ barracks. Long, multiple-jointed fingers stroked the fur of Horus’s cloak. It crooned a song fit for the cradles of dead infants. Maloghurst stepped back.
The Warmaster fixed his full attention on him. The weight of it was unbearable.
‘Is there something wrong, Mal?’
‘My lord, I…’
The creature stared at him. The form of it was oily black, a liquid born of congealed smoke. A hundred eyes looked at him unblinkingly from a long, equine face. Arms that hinted at the nightmares of insects slid over each other in countless profusion.
Horus laid his hand upon Maloghurst’s shoulder. ‘This is not befitting of my equerry.’
‘No, lord.’
‘This war taxes us all, Mal.’ Horus’s face was neutral, the blaze of otherworldly power that possessed him burning behind unreadable eyes. He looked at Maloghurst’s cane. ‘Perhaps you should rest.’
‘I am fine, my lord,’ said Maloghurst. He stood taller in defiance of his injuries. His gaze kept sliding from Horus’s face to the warp-horror standing behind him. Why did Lupercal not see it? An image of the fat logistician was projected into his mind, glancing fearfully at the Justaerin. He gasped at the invasion.
‘And I say you are not fine. Stand down, equerry. Go to the Apothecaries, and have yourself examined. Then return to your quarters. Rest.’
‘My lord, I am fit for my duties,’ Maloghurst protested. ‘When have I ever failed you?’
Horus squeezed Maloghurst’s shoulder, the claws of his talon lightly scraping against the equerry’s war-plate.
‘Never, my friend. But then nothing fails, until the time that it does. Your time approaches.’
‘My lord–’
‘Do as I command!’ said Horus. The change in his expression afforded Maloghurst a glimpse of what lurked behind his eyes. He took a faltering step backwards.
