Horus Heresy: Scars

by Chris Wraight

  Shiban kept watching him. Everything he had told Torghun was true: he had learned from him. He did respect his way of war. The lack of direction from the primarch was disconcerting, almost as much as the inexplicable presence of the Alpha Legion had been.

  Torghun reached down and withdrew a casket from his belt. ‘It’s nothing much, but these count as badges of inclusion.’ He opened the casket and tipped a silver medallion out into his hand.

  Shiban kept his surprise hidden. Just as before, on Phemus and afterwards, he did not like the look of it. Despite the moon-device and lightning sigil, it did not look Chogorian. Chogorians were not silversmiths; when they worked metal, it was bronze or iron.

  ‘I have seen one of these before,’ he said quietly.

  Torghun toyed with the medal. He seemed unwilling to let it go entirely. ‘I’m surprised. As a general rule, they’re kept hidden.’

  ‘Yet you show me yours.’

  ‘Yes, because you’re a candidate.’ Torghun closed his gauntlet over the medal and replaced it in its casket. ‘You’d get one yourself.’ He smiled self-consciously. ‘Just a token, nothing more.’

  Shiban watched the way Torghun’s fist closed tight, and somehow doubted that. ‘I have heard of these lodges.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I did not stand for any of it in my Brotherhood. I thought the Legion was enough, and I have a token already.’ He gestured to his scar, which, in the Chogorian manner, was deeper and whiter than Torghun’s. ‘That is not hidden.’

  Torghun bowed. ‘I take your point.’

  Shiban sighed then. Torghun was not a skilled deceiver – perhaps that was something to draw comfort from. ‘Hasik sent you.’

  Torghun raised an eyebrow. ‘That obvious?’

  ‘I went to him about a discovery I made on Phemus. Now you turn up showing me the same thing.’

  Torghun spread his hands apart in a gesture of resignation. ‘This isn’t a conspiracy, Shiban. Is it not reassuring, that the noyan-khan is a part of this? He was there at the beginning.’

  Shiban thought of Yesugei then. The zadyin arga had been there at the start too. Where was he? Shiban, like many others, missed his quiet presence at the heart of the Legion. It was no coincidence that matters had drifted in his absence.

  ‘Does the Khagan know?’ Shiban asked.

  ‘About Hasik? That’s between them, I’d say.’

  ‘No, I would not say. If the Khagan knows, that changes everything.’

  ‘I don’t know, Shiban. I’m not really that senior, I’m just one of many.’ Torghun looked evasive. ‘But I would guess he does. Not much gets past him, I’d think.’

  Shiban pushed back from the table. He felt fatigued from the ride, and needed to cleanse his mind with meditation. ‘I said it could not last, did I?’

  Torghun nodded.

  ‘Perhaps it cannot. Everything is fluid. For the first time I can remember, we have no direction. We have nothing to hunt that we can see.’

  Torghun let him speak. Shiban didn’t really know where the words came from. ‘You have not convinced me,’ he said. ‘I do not trust the lodges, but we fought together. You came back for me at the Grinder – do you remember? – and I do not forget. So I will come. I have tried to open my mind. This may be a part of that.’

  Torghun looked genuinely grateful. ‘Good. That’s all I ask. If you don’t approve, it’s just between you and me, and I don’t talk.’

  ‘Will they not know me?’

  ‘We wear… hoods,’ said Torghun, looking a little shamefaced. ‘All rather theatrical, but it helps, at the beginning. No one need know you.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m glad, Shiban. Truly I am. This, the whole thing, it is about the warrior spirit. I know you have it. I’ve witnessed it.’

  ‘You may again,’ said Shiban dryly.

  Torghun grinned. He looked relieved. ‘It would be an honour.’

  Henricos reached for the component, stretching down into the machine’s innards. Not for the first time he regretted the intimate connection he had established with his armour. It was hard to remove almost all of it now, and it made him bulkier than he’d have liked. The instruments implanted into his pauldrons and breastplate had been helpful in jamming the augur sweeps on the outpost, but their size made it difficult to delve fully into the heart of the device. He had clambered halfway down a narrow cleft between two massive chunks of whirring metal and now felt as though he had been buried alive.

  He blink-activated a sensor-frond and a sliver of metal extended from his right gauntlet. He probed again, inserting the sensor into a silver-sheathed input node and trying to understand what emerged.

  The Word Bearers had done something very strange to their machines.

  They no longer output binaric derivatives, but seemed to operate on a base-four internal mechanic, the reason for which eluded him completely. Some components had remained relatively standard – others had been replaced with much less efficient counterparts that made use of leather cam belts, iron cogs or even organic parts. Devotional script had been engraved everywhere, overwriting any useful markings that might once have adorned the housings.

  Henricos shunted the frond-output to his helm buffers. Numbers scrolled past, glowing softly on the interior curve of his lenses. Not for the first time, he felt like smashing the whole thing.

  It is a corruption. They have befouled what they were given.

  Slowly, painfully, he began to piece together the principal parts of the internal workings. Some functions would take weeks of work to reconstruct, but he had isolated a cartographic projection capability amidst all the esoterica. Performing stellar mapping was notoriously difficult, so even the Word Bearers had not ripped out that equipment in favour of their own crazed constructions.

  Stretching as far as his arm would let him, he pushed a binaric reader into a slot buried near the base of the cleft and activated it from his armour’s own power-source. More data scrolled down his helm-feed, and he smiled grimly.

  ‘Got you,’ he growled to himself, then pushed back up to his feet, scraping the edges of the machine as he extracted himself.

  Even touching the traitors’ equipment made him feel soiled. Henricos remained thankful he had not had to take off his gauntlets and expose his remaining flesh to the sullied material. Then again, it was becoming hard for him to contemplate removing his gauntlets for any reason. The sight of his bionic left hand reminded him of Ferrus’s injunctions, and that reminded him of Isstvan, and that sent him into the black mood that only killing seemed capable of stirring him out of.

  It was different for Xa’ven. He at least had the hope of finding his primarch and rebuilding his Legion. Henricos had seen the pict-feeds from the battlefield, routed over a hundred grainy lenses and streamed to every Iron Hands vessel in the system.

  Ferrus was gone. The immortal had proved mortal, the eternal had been ended.

  After that, there was nothing but rage – a howling, anguished rage that drove out reason. The fighting had remained horrific. The enemy had not stopped coming at them, wave after wave, fuelled by their early victory.

  Survival, after that, had been just another curse. It would have been better to die fighting, and it was only blind chance that had kept him alive.

  If he had not encountered Xa’ven, that chance would never have come. There were times in the depths of sleepless nights when Henricos hated him for that. There were other times when he admired him more than any other warrior he had ever met. It was Xa’ven who had guided them out into the void, steering the survivors clear with his calm, steady determination. Xa’ven had kept his head when even his fellow Salamanders were screaming for suicidal vengeance. He was a fine example of his gene-father’s idiosyncratic creed.

  In another universe, Henricos might have been proud to follow Vulkan. His sons were admirable in almost every respect. But there were no other universes, and his loyalty to Ferrus would never die, not until his own soul was exting
uished in combat, even though he knew that this would happen soon enough.

  Never forget. Never forgive.

  He broke free of the machine, stumbling as he negotiated the heaps of cables that snaked around its base. The circular wall of the shaft loomed up over him, vast and dark.

  Henricos knelt down and activated the power units he had placed around the device. Energies snaked and spat down the power lines, rekindling the blooms of colour behind its plasma grilles. A throaty rattle kicked off somewhere in the thing’s interior, sending coughs of smoke through the organ-like exhausts.

  For a moment after that, nothing much happened. Blood gurgled through the coolant tubes, energy arcs lashed between bronze electrodes on the upper housing.

  Then, slowly, the chamber began to fill with light. Henricos took a step back, carefully checking the rad-levels. Above him, a swirling pattern of luminous plasma began to take shape. He stared at it, unable to read the pattern. The writing on the walls glowed brightly, fed by the power of the machine in their midst.

  Then, with a realisation that made him feel thick-headed for not spotting it earlier, he realised what it was doing.

  ‘Xa’ven,’ he voxed, backing away further and gazing up into the shaft. ‘I think you’d better come and see this.’

  Yesugei woke on the Sickle Moon just as he had woken every cycle since leaving Chogoris – with his face lathered in sweat, his hearts pumping.

  The last remnants of the dream still lingered. They were identical each time: a planet of embers, the Khan fighting a nameless, faceless shadow. Yesugei always woke at the same instant.

  When the Khan fell.

  The Khan had never met an enemy that he had not bested. Perhaps Ferrus hadn’t either, before he faced Fulgrim. The rumour had always persisted, fuelled by whispers of past atrocities, that only a primarch could kill another primarch. Perhaps it was even true.

  Yesugei uncoiled his hands from his lap. He had been sitting in the position for meditation, hoping that the old ways would ease the trouble in his mind. It had not worked.

  The experience with Ledak had shaken him. He knew that he would have kept going with the storm-lightning if Xa’ven hadn’t stopped him. He would have kept going until the flesh had been dripping from the Word Bearer’s face and his screams were choked with raw blood.

  Never before had he lost control like that. Killing was one thing – they had been bred to do that – but inflicting pain… That had been consigned to the barbarism before Unity.

  The entrance chime sounded softly. Yesugei got to his feet and walked over to the basin set into the walls of the cell. As he did so, the door slid open.

  ‘A good time?’ asked Xa’ven, standing in the hatchway.

  ‘As good as any.’

  The Salamanders legionary entered, ducking slightly. ‘The same dream?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you see any more?’

  ‘No. Just same. If you have ideas...’

  Xa’ven smiled ruefully. ‘Sounds like Nocturne. Other than that, no.’

  Yesugei rubbed water on his face, scouring the sweat from the skin. ‘About Ledak–’

  ‘I understand, believe me. We need to decide whether he is too dangerous to live.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘For now, no. He might still be useful.’

  Yesugei reached for a rough towel. ‘But you did not come to talk about Ledak.’

  ‘Henricos has discovered something.’

  ‘Ah.’ Yesugei donned his cloak, draping the ivory fabric over his devotional robes. The touch was cool against his flesh. ‘Good news?’

  ‘You will have to tell me,’ said Xa’ven.

  They took a shuttle between the two warships. The Sickle Moon had tech-crews crawling all over it, repairing damage sustained during the warp jump. The Hesiod hung in the distance, a dark grey slab that reflected little light. The Vorkaudar was in the best condition of all of them, though the Word Bearers had done their best to defile its once-proud lines, and its long prow had been covered in glyphs, making it look almost like a xenos craft.

  ‘So, you were going to speak to me of Nikaea,’ said Xa’ven.

  Yesugei looked away from the viewports. ‘I was.’

  Xa’ven sat easily in the crew berth, hands resting upon his knees, and waited.

  Yesugei drew in a long breath. ‘What you know already?’

  ‘Only that the Edict came in swiftly. Vulkan enacted it straight away. By the time news of Isstvan III reached us, we had no active Librarians in the Legion.’

  Yesugei shook his head in disbelief. ‘What did you do with them?’

  Xa’ven shrugged. ‘They took vows. They re-entered the ranks. I don’t know how many survived the massacre. Maybe none did.’

  ‘And you never think, just once, this is madness? You never think you throw away your strength?’

  ‘Some of us did. I remember arguments.’ Xa’ven looked down at his gauntlets. ‘But it was an order, direct from the Emperor. We are a loyal Legion.’

  ‘Hope others were less loyal. Can’t imagine Wolves giving up their priests.’

  Xa’ven snorted in agreement. ‘Russ was there, though.’

  ‘On Nikaea? Don’t know. Not openly. He and Valdor were close, though, and whole place was crawling with Custodians.’ Yesugei leaned back against the crew berth wall, remembering. ‘At the time I thought it was real contest. The arena was full. You would have liked it, Xa’ven – volcano world, air thick with ash. Millions had come. Audience was huge, truly huge. Looked like whole Imperial Palace had travelled to be there.’

  Xa’ven listened. Yesugei did not like to remember it too closely, but kept speaking anyway. As his lips moved, the images crowded back into his mind.

  ‘I was never meant to be there,’ he said. ‘Should have been the Khan. He discussed it with the others.’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘Magnus, mainly. Sanguinius as well. They were the three. Magnus was figurehead, most powerful, but he was not only voice. Sanguinius was always subtle. In some ways, I think he is closest to the aether. On this, though, the Khan always argued same way. He drew up most of rules for Librarius, even though his name was never in datacores.’

  Xa’ven looked sceptical. ‘This was never known.’

  ‘No,’ smiled Yesugei. ‘Of course not. It is as I told you – Magnus never wanted Librarius. He wants every psyker to unlock his full potential. Explore it all, he says. No restraint, no guidance. They had tutelaries fluttering in their ears and speaking to them – though we did not see it. It was dangerous. It needed to be curbed, so the Khan and the Angel both created structure. They limit what psykers can do. On Chogoris, we call it the Path of Heaven. Stray from it, we tell them, and the warp will eat your soul.’

  ‘So you knew it was dangerous.’

  ‘Of course! What is not dangerous? Your Promethean Creed is dangerous. Being alive in universe is dangerous. We balance on narrow ledge. There were those who thought we are witches, ripe for burning, and those who thought we are gods. Neither could be allowed to win argument.’

  ‘But they did. The witch-hunters won.’

  Yesugei nodded. ‘For days afterward, I thought mistake had been made that would be corrected. By the time we knew it was permanent, Legions were already reforming. So quick! You would think we were always eager to throw away our power.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘I spoke,’ said Yesugei sadly, remembering. ‘Awkward. It was in Gothic, and so I did not do well. Some oppression settled on me from somewhere. Magnus spoke too. He did what we feared – he went too far. He never understands how much fear he caused. If he stood up and said “We know we must reform, we know we must be careful,” then we might have won. But no, he preaches about knowledge and power and gives impression he is prophet. When I hear him speak, that is when I began to worry.’

  ‘Who spoke against?’

  ‘A Space Wolf priest. That was strange. I suspect he is there for som
e other purpose, but maybe not. One that spoke longest was Mortarion. He filled amphitheatre with poison.’

  ‘Mortarion. I didn’t know he was even there.’

  ‘Had not expected it to be him. I thought Russ might stand up, or maybe Angron. No, it was Death Lord. He had been on Ullanor too, casting shadow over everything. He has dark soul, and nothing he did on Nikaea changed my view.’

  Xa’ven thought on that for a while. ‘I find it strange that his argument prevailed.’

  Yesugei nodded. ‘You and I both. I told Ahriman we would weep for this, and so it was. If any ask, if all not lost in days to come, who killed Librarius, the name is Mortarion. He did it.’ Even now, the memory exasperated him. ‘Should never have been left to Thousand Sons – the Khan should have been there, standing with the Angel and Magnus. No one could accuse him of being sorcerer. It would have calmed the others, to see warrior-primarch making case.’

  ‘So why did he not go?’

  ‘Horus ordered him away.’ Yesugei stared at the floor, reflecting upon how little he had known. ‘To Chondax, just as Nikaea was preparing. We talked, he and I. He considered rejecting – he could have done – but we both thought Chondax would be over in weeks. Was only greenskins, after all.’ He gave Xa’ven a rueful look. ‘Only greenskins.’

  ‘So Horus ordered it,’ repeated Xa’ven. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘I had no idea then,’ said Yesugei bitterly. ‘No clue. Truly do not believe Horus was corrupted while on Ullanor – would have sensed something. If someone wished the Khan not to be on Nikaea, it was not him.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Who knows? Why was Chondax veiled for so long? Why is galaxy still locked in warp storms? Why does Emperor’s light falter and star-speakers’ visions fail? These are questions. A mind has been at work here, and for long time.’

  Xa’ven looked up. The shuttle was gliding towards the Vorkaudar’s docking bay. ‘They did not succeed in everything,’ he said. ‘Some of us are still alive.’

  ‘Does your optimism ever end, just for moment?’

  Xa’ven smiled. ‘Optimism? That is not what I would call it.’