[Horus Heresy 12] - A Thousand Sons

by Graham McNeill - (ebook by Undead)

  Magnus slowed his descent, feeling the heat of one flame in particular.

  Ahriman. Always it was Ahriman who burned brighter than the others.

  His Chief Librarian stood before his pavilion with Sobek at his side. He was speaking with three mortals whose minds were little more than faded embers.

  Magnus read them in an instant and knew them better than they knew themselves.

  One was Lemuel Gaumon, Ahriman’s new Probationer. The taller of the two women was Camille Shivani, a psychometric, while the slighter one was Kallista Eris, an asemic writer.

  She carried a handful of papers, though her aura told Magnus she was unhappy to be holding them. Shivani stood behind Gaumon, who spoke with some force to Ahriman.

  Ahriman stared at the page he had been handed. Magnus floated closer to Ahriman, reading what was written.

  Over and over and over again, the same phrase. The Wolves are coming.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Skarssen / The Demands of War / Wyrdmake

  It was a day like any other. The sun beat down on the salt plains of Aghoru, the shimmer haze and dryness of the air as punishing as it always had been. A hot wind blew from the Mountain, snapping at the scores of scarab and hawk banners of the Thousand Sons as they formed up into two lines on either side of a processional a kilometre long.

  Five Fellowships of the Legion, nearly six thousand Astartes, stood resplendent in crimson and ivory battle armour, jade scarabs gleaming on breastplates, golden crests rearing from the atef helmets of the Scarab Occult. The deshrets of the rest of the Legion were polished and plumed with gold and amethyst.

  It was a day like any other, but for one thing.

  The Wolves were coming.

  Word had come down from the Photep that a small fleet of Astartes vessels had translated from the Great Ocean and was closing with Aghoru with frightening speed. Like a blade through water, the fleet had sliced through the outer reaches of the system on the swiftest route towards the 28th Expedition’s anchorage. Auspex interrogation protocols revealed them to be ships of the Space Wolves, but the Thousand Sons already knew who they were.

  Magnus had shown no surprise when Ahriman had presented Kallista Eris’ words, merely ordering his captains to have the Legion ready to parade at dawn. To sense the arrival of a fleet of ships through the warp should have been no great feat for the Thousand Sons, but, save for Magnus, none of its warriors had any inkling of the imminent arrival of the Space Wolves. Ahriman had broached this with Magnus, but the primarch had dismissed his concerns, saying that while their understanding of the currents of the fluid medium in which starships travelled was second to none, it was not infallible.

  That hadn’t reassured Ahriman.

  Thousands of Legion serfs gathered to witness this reunion of brothers, though they watched proceedings from afar. The remembrancers too were kept at a distance, including Magnus’ personal scribe, Mahavastu Kallimakus. Ahriman sensed Lemuel, Camille and Kallista among them, sharing their sense of foreboding. He feared there was more to Kallista Eris’ message than he understood, yet a night spent in contemplation trying to divine the echoes of the future from the Great Ocean had once again met with failure.

  The frustration of the remembrancers at being excluded from today’s proceedings was palpable, but this was a meeting of Astartes, a private thing. As auspicious as this day was, there was no mistaking the martial atmosphere, or the tension in the too rigid, too precise postures of the Thousand Sons.

  This was not simply an honour guard to welcome a brother Legion: this was a show of force, a warning, and a declaration of purpose all in one.

  The primarch stood beneath a glorious canopy of white silk held aloft by sixty bronze-skinned Legion eunuchs and attended by eighty-one Terminators of the Scarab Occult. Dressed in his full battle-plate, Magnus had eschewed many of the more intricate accoutrements of his armour in favour of a simpler aesthetic, one more suited to the directness of the Wolves. A cloak of dark mail hung from the golden pauldrons of his armour and his plumed helmet rose like a glorious cockade. His great book was absent, secreted within his pavilion behind locks that none save him could open.

  Ahriman glanced at the sky, a searing white plate of metal ready to press its great weight down upon them. He would not see the iron-grey drop-ships until they were almost upon them, but kept looking anyway. The inconstant forms of the Tutelaries shimmered above their heads, barely visible against the glare of the sunlight on armour plates. Aaetpio flickered in and out of sight, its nervousness matching his wariness. Utipa and Paeoc held close to their masters, while Sioda pulsed in time with Khalophis’ heartbeat, red as blood.

  Uthizzar’s Tutelary, Ephra, was almost invisible, a hidden skein of timid luminosity that shrank from proximity to the others of its kind.

  “They spend all this time racing to get here, and then can’t hurry up now that we’re ready for them,” complained Phosis T’kar.

  “Vintage Space Wolves,” said Hathor Maat, and Ahriman saw that his brother had shaped his flesh into a less sculpted cast, no longer the porcelain features of ancient statue, more the rugged warrior. “Isn’t that right, Uthizzar?”

  Uthizzar nodded without looking at Maat. “The warriors of Russ are unpredictable. Except in matters of war,” he said.

  “You should know,” said Phosis T’kar. “You served with them for a time.”

  “For a short time only,” said Uthizzar softly. “They are… not fond of outsiders.”

  “Ha!” barked Phosis T’kar. “They sound just like us. I almost like them already.”

  “The Wolves? They’re barbarians,” said Khalophis, surprising them all. He bristled like the alpha male of a hunting pack. The Captain of the 6th Fellowship was a brutal man, but Ahriman understood his sentiment. As much as he relished destruction, Khalophis was never imprecise or needless with his violence.

  “Kindred spirits for you, Khalophis,” said Hathor Maat. “You should get on famously.”

  “Say what you will, Pavoni, but don’t think I can’t see your newly-fleshed features.”

  “Merely adapting to the circumstances,” replied Hathor Maat archly, his Tutelary flickering with irritation.

  “Why do you call them barbarians?” asked Phosis T’kar. “No disrespect, but you are not a subtle man.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but I have studied their campaigns and they are a blunt instrument of war. There is no subtlety or precision to their fights, simply swathes of destruction without control. When the Emperor unleashes them, be sure not to get in their way, for when the Wolves slip their leash, nothing will stop them until only ashes remain. Perturabo’s warriors, now that’s controlled aggression. We could all learn a lot from them. Precise force delivered exactly where it is needed.”

  “For once I feel myself in agreement with Khalophis,” said Ahriman. “I must be ill.”

  They laughed, though Ahriman saw Uthizzar’s grimace.

  As part of their training, all Captains of Fellowship undertook a secondment to another Legion to learn its ways and further the Thousand Sons’ understanding of the galaxy. Khalophis had served with the Iron Warriors, a Legion he admired and ranked second only to the Thousand Sons. Phosis T’kar fought alongside the Luna Wolves, and never tired of regaling his brothers with tales of meeting Horus Lupercal, or boasting of his close friendship with Hastur Sejanus and Ezekyle Abaddon, the First Primarch’s closest lieutenants.

  Hathor Maat’s secondment had seen him serving with the Emperor’s Children in their earliest days as they fought alongside the Luna Wolves. As Hathor Maat told it, he had caught the Phoenician’s eye with his perfectly moulded features, and had fought within his sight on many an occasion. Maat’s proudest possession was an Oath of Moment carved by Fulgrim, and fixed to his breastplate as he took his leave to return to Prospero.

  Uthizzar’s secondment had been amongst the shortest ever served, lasting a little less than a Terran year. Ahriman was never sure whether the Wolves or
Uthizzar had ended the exchange. Athanaeans shunned large gatherings or those whose thoughts were too loud, too brutal, too jagged and too raucous.

  Ahriman had spent five years with the Word Bearers, learning much of their Legion and methods of war. It had been an unhappy time for Ahriman, for the scions of Lorgar were a zealous Legion, their devotion to the Master of Mankind bordering on the fanatical. All the Legions were devoted to their lord and his cause, but the Word Bearers lived and fought with the passion of those who claimed to carry the fire of the divine before them.

  Their auras had been blazing pillars of certainty; certainty Ahriman felt was unwarranted, for it was unsupported by foundations of knowledge. Some called it faith, Ahriman called it hopeful ignorance. Save for a warrior named Erebus, he had made few friends in the XVII Legion, for their fervour left no room for those who did not share its passion.

  Lorgar’s Legion bore an inauspicious number, for in the traditions of ancient Tali, the number seventeen was one of ill-fortune. XVII was considered as the anagram and numerical value for the ancient Gothic expression VIXI, which meant, “I lived”, and whose logical extension was, therefore, “I am dead”.

  Ahriman’s thoughts were dragged back to the present by a wordless expression of unease from Aaetpio. He looked up to see a pair of angular grey aircraft plunging down through the hard yellow sky, dropping as though their engines had failed. They screamed down, flaming contrails blazing from the leading edges of their wings.

  “They’re in a hurry,” said Phosis T’kar.

  “Is that a good thing?” asked Ahriman.

  “No,” said Uthizzar, his face pale beneath the darkness of his browned skin. “It is never good when the Wolves race towards you.”

  “You can read them?” asked Hathor Maat. “Even from here?”

  “I could read their thoughts from orbit,” said Uthizzar, fighting to keep his tone even.

  Ahriman watched as the drop-ships fell, plotting their approach vectors and realising they would miss the landing fields.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said. “They are off target. Way off.”

  The drop-ships fell like meteors that would impact on the salt flats and leave nothing behind save devastation and a giant crater. The image fixed in Ahriman’s mind for a moment, and he wondered if it was imagination or a fragmentary glimpse of the future.

  The drop-ships fired their engines just as Ahriman was sure it was too late to arrest their descent, the roar of retros like the howls of a thousand wolves as they slammed down, off to the side of Magnus’ silk canopy. Gritty clouds of exhaust roared out from the landing site, a hurricane of hot air and burned salt crystals. The gene-bulked eunuchs fought to hold the wind-blown canopy down in the face of the drop-ships’ jetwash.

  Even before the obscuring clouds had begun to dissipate, the assault ramps of the drop-ships slammed down. Grey-armoured figures emerged from the swirling, stinging smoke; their lithe power wolf-clad, sure and honed to a lethal edge, a pack of voracious predators who relish the fight at bay. Leading them was a figure in grey, a leather-masked warrior of pure, streamlined aggression.

  Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson, Lord of the 5th Company of the Space Wolves.

  Ahriman hadn’t known what to expect from the Space Wolves. Uthizzar had not exactly been forthcoming after his secondment had ended. They were not friends enough for him to press for details, but he had assumed the grand tales and hyperbolic praise heaped upon the sons of Russ was the exaggeration of storytellers. Now he knew that was not so.

  A pack of slavering wolves, dappled grey and white, with powerful, muscular shoulders, ranged ahead of the Astartes. Their eyes, slitted yellow, were locked on Magnus, and their jaws drew back to expose masses of long, overdeveloped fangs like ivory daggers.

  The wolves snapped and snarled, and their monstrous, shaggy heads swung from side to side, as though deciding what to attack first.

  Behind the wolves came hulking warriors in steeldust Terminator armour, with Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson at their head. He marched through the smoke and dust towards the ruin of Magnus’ pavilion, shoulders down as though he were advancing into the teeth of a blizzard. His armour was the battered grey of a thundercloud, and a blackened wolf pelt was secured around his neck on a bone clasp, the slain beast’s enormous skull and teeth forming his right shoulder guard.

  Instead of a helmet, Skarssen wore a tight-fitting leather mask fashioned in the form of some hideous amalgam of wolf and demon, lacquered and pierced with fragments of stone. His eyes shone through the mask, cold flint to match the grey of his armour, and a black-bladed axe with an edge like napped obsidian was sheathed across his back.

  His warriors were no less feral, their weapons and armour festooned with talismans and fetishes torn from the corpses of wolves. They followed in their leader’s wake, carried along in the slipstream of his march, juggernauts of ceramite that Ahriman wasn’t sure were going to stop.

  He rose through the Enumerations, outraged at this blatantly challenging behaviour. Aaetpio squalled in fear, and Ahriman’s concentration slipped as his Tutelary fled to the sanctuary of the Great Ocean. He looked back at the snarling wolves, their form blurring for a moment as they stared at him with intelligent eyes that were chilling in their perception.

  It took him a moment to realise that all the Tutelaries had fled. Anger turned to momentary confusion, and all eyes turned to Magnus.

  Ahriman felt his primarch’s soothing presence in his mind, the words unspoken, but heard by all the Captains of Fellowship.

  Hold, my sons, this is posturing, nothing more.

  The giant wolves halted, forming a rough semi-circle around them and the terrified eunuchs. The wolves lowered their heads, teeth bared. The urge to send a pulse of destructive energy along the length of his heqa staff was almost overwhelming.

  “Magnus the Red,” said Skarssen, as though there might be some doubt. His voice was booming and harsh, the voice of a killer. “I am called Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson, Lord of the 5th Company of the Space Wolves, and I bring a call to arms from Leman Russ, Great Wolf of the Legions of Fenris. You are to muster your forces and make all haste to the Ark Reach Cluster. This the Wolf King commands.”

  To stand before a being so mighty as a primarch and deliver such a baldly aggressive demand beggared belief. Without being aware of it moving, he realised his hand was on the butt of his gun, and seething waves of outrage shone in the auras of his fellow captains.

  His limbs trembled with aetheric energies, the gently lapping tide within roiling into a series of roaring breakers that demanded release. The influence of the Corvidae was at its lowest ebb, but Ahriman could still draw on the power of the Great Ocean to unleash phenomenal powers of destruction.

  The aether swelled around him as he built energy in his flesh. This was what it meant to be alive, to tap into the wellspring of the Primordial Creator and wield that power as deftly as a swordsman wields a blade.

  That energy swirled around Skarssen and his warriors, yet where it easily passed through the Astartes of the Thousand Sons, the Space Wolves were anathema to it. Skarssen’s aura was little more than a dulled haze, like winter sunrise through thick fog.

  Was Skarssen veiled?

  That seemed unlikely, though perhaps the many fetishes hanging from his armour were shielding him. The protection offered by such talismans was largely illusory, but belief in such things could be a potent force. Even as he formed the thought, Ahriman caught a flash of a bearded warrior in a leather skullcap in the midst of the Terminators, like a shadow amongst the deeper darkness or a whisper in a thunderstorm.

  He sensed kindred power, but in the instant of its recognition, it vanished.

  “Show some damned respect!” snarled Phosis T’kar, and the moment passed.

  The captain of the 2nd Fellowship stepped forward with his heqa staff planted in the ground before him and said, “Speak thusly again and I swear by the Great Ocean I will end you.”

  To h
is credit, Skarssen didn’t flinch, which was impressive considering the bludgeoning force of Phosis T’kar’s choler hammering his aura.

  Skarssen kept his attention fixed solely on Magnus.

  “Do you understand my message as I have spoken it to you?” he asked.

  “I understand it,” said Magnus, coolly. “Take off your mask.”

  The Space Wolf flinched as though slapped, and Ahriman sensed a ferocious build up of power. He gasped as the energy filling him was drained in an instant, siphoned off by a mind infinitely greater than his.

  With painful deliberation, his limbs shaking with the effort of resistance, Skarssen reached up and unfastened the buckles securing his mask. He pulled it from his face to reveal features that were craggy and worn like a storm-carved cliff. Clean-shaven, with high cheekbones and a brow pierced with jutting canine fangs like a crown, his lower jaw was tattooed to mimic the toothed jawbone of a wolf.

  Throbbing veins pulsed at Skarssen’s temple.

  “That’s better,” said Magnus. “I never like to kill a man without first seeing his face.”

  Magnus seemed to swell, growing in stature, while simultaneously remaining as he had always appeared. The wolves yelped, lowering their heads and backing away from the mighty primarch, and Ahriman saw the beginnings of… not fear exactly, but the wariness of prey.

  Skarssen had come with one purpose, to bring the Thousand Sons to the Ark Reach Cluster. He had delivered his message in the most unequivocal way possible, but Magnus could not be so easily dominated by the brute force of the Space Wolves.

  “Kill me and you will suffer the wrath of the Great Wolf,” hissed Skarssen.

  “Be silent!” thundered Magnus, and the world stilled. All sound died as the wind ceased its moaning and salt crystals hung motionless on the hardpan. “You are nothing to me, Amlodhi Skarssen Skarssensson. I can kill you where you stand, before you or any of your savage brethren could lift a hand to stop me. I can smash your ships to debris with a thought. Know this and choose your next words carefully.”