The Talon of Horus

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  The Sons of Horus legionary laughed at that, the filthy hair clinging to his pale cheeks. ‘Very well, my brother. Whatever you wish.’

  As we continued talking, Lheor paced the chamber, examining the machinery and discerning each engine’s function. His gaze lingered longest on the weapons.

  ‘Don’t touch that,’ Abaddon warned at one point. Lheor put the rotor cannon down. Its multiple barrels whined to a halt.

  I gave voice to the question warriors of the Nine Legions had been asking for an eternity.

  ‘Why did you abandon your Legion?’

  Abaddon had turned to work on his bolter resting upon his workbench, oiling the mechanisms and flushing the detached components with cleansing solution.

  ‘Horus’s war was over. That war mattered, this one does not. With the real conflict left in ashes, why should I care about this meaningless, endless skirmishing between the Nine Legions?’

  My blood was up, and not just in the aftermath of the Talon’s revelation. Abaddon’s effortless, endless knowledge of me and my brethren certainly was not easing my sense of caution, while his blithe dismissal of the lives lost in the Eye since the beginning of the Legion Wars turned my saliva sour.

  ‘Something to say, Khayon?’ I was not imagining the challenge in his tone.

  ‘The Third and Twelfth have lost more warriors to each others’ blades than they ever lost in Horus’s rebellion. Ahriman has murdered the Fifteenth. Few souls can even deal with the cursed Fourteenth since their loss to the God of Life and Death. The Eighth are here only in fragmented numbers at most, and the Fourth rules over its isolated bastions, rising only to trade and raid at the vanguard of daemonic machine hordes. Of the Twentieth, no one can say with any surety, but–’

  ‘They’re here,’ Abaddon interrupted with a smile. ‘Take my word on that.’

  ‘How can you be so ignorant?’ I felt my voice hardening as I listed the Legions’ fates, to open Abaddon’s eyes to the war he had ignored. ‘Your Legion is dead,’ I pressed. ‘You left them to die.’

  He looked at me, not needing to spare any attention for the bolter he was cleaning. His gaze let me know I had not only failed to convince him, but I had said exactly what he’d been expecting to hear.

  ‘Such strident words, Tizcan. Yet how loyal are you to your own bloodline? How often do you return to that wraith-blighted world where Magnus One-Eye weeps atop the Tower of the Cyclops?’

  My silence answered for me. His golden eyes flared with inner light as he continued. ‘The Legion Wars will never end, Khayon. They’re endemic of life here in Hell, and they will never, ever end. More than that, they’re the savage inevitability of those too proud and too wrathful to accept their past defeat. These aren’t my battles. Shedding blood for slaves and territory? I’m not a barbarian, to fight over trivial nothingness. I’m a soldier. A warrior. If the Legions wish to raid one another’s hunting grounds for table scraps and steal each others’ toys, then I’ll let them. I feel no need to save them from their petty fate. They chose to fight and die in a worthless war.’

  Telemachon was the one to speak. He had been the only one of us to fight at Abaddon’s side more than once in the Great Crusade.

  ‘You have changed,’ he said, his soft voice matching the serene silver face mask.

  Abaddon nodded. ‘I’ve walked the surface of every world here in this purgatorial prison. I had to – to learn this realm’s boundaries, to see its secrets.’ He looked back at the bolter, beginning to reassemble it now it was clean. ‘Old grudges and old allegiances no longer interest me. Whether we wish it or not, this is a new age.’

  I released a breath I had not realised I was holding. One last try.

  ‘That is all you have to say – that you are better and wiser than those of us still mired in the Legion Wars? Your gene-line is practically extinguished, Abaddon.’

  My entreaty did nothing but amuse him. ‘Listen to yourself, my brother. You argue and argue as though you weren’t guilty of the very same sins you lay at my feet. Do you stand before me and rail against my decisions because you truly disagree with them, or because you’re here as Falkus’s advocate?’

  Lheor barked a laugh by my side. I sensed Telemachon was smiling behind his helm.

  ‘You misunderstand the gravity of the situation,’ I said. ‘Lupercalios is gone, wiped from the face of creation.’

  ‘I am all too aware of what happened at the Monument.’

  For several seconds, I had nothing to say. ‘I do not understand how you can be dealing with this so calmly.’

  ‘Should I shriek in childish rage?’ Abaddon countered. ‘Fury is a weapon, my brother. A blade to be used in battle. Outside of war, it tends to cloud judgement. Why should I mourn a Legion I chose to leave behind? I’m no longer one of them.’

  I could scarcely believe I was hearing these words from the former First Captain of the Sons of Horus. Abaddon took my silence for capitulation and pressed his point harder.’

  ‘Answer me this, Khayon – are you still a legionary of the Thousand Sons? Lheorvine, are you still a World Eater? Telemachon, whose Legion name rings hollowest of all, are you still one of the Emperor’s Children? The Emperor and his failed sons gave your Legions those names. Do they still ring proud in your heart and soul? Are you still the sons of your fathers, respecting them and embodying their failures? Do you see their flaws and weaknesses, and wish to repeat them? Sargon looked into the paths of the future and told me there was more to all of you than the call of worthless bloodlines. Was he wrong?’

  His demanding accusations sobered the three of us. We lapsed back into silence; when you have a thousand questions to ask, it becomes difficult to know where to begin. Abaddon paid us little attention, etching Cthonian runes on the casings of his bolter shells.

  Lheor continued wandering the chamber, looking at the biological components Abaddon was preserving in various fluids. Eyes, hearts, lungs. The Gods alone knew where he had acquired them; most weren’t human in origin, and preserving the organs of Neverborn requires a special breed of patient alchemical expertise. You could walk for a week in that memorial chamber and still not witness half of its wonders.

  When he returned, Lheor drained another flask of our host’s foul concoction. His dark features split into a smile.

  ‘I’m no student of black magic, but have you added sorcery to the things you’ve been learning?’

  Servos in Abaddon’s neck armour growled quietly as he turned to regard us again.

  ‘I’m used to being alone so if I miss the nuances in your sense of humour, I can only apologise, brother. What do you mean?’

  ‘He means the somnus-cry,’ I said. ‘Where is your astropath?’

  ‘Ah. I have no astropath. I have the brains of three astropaths floating in suspension fluid and wired into the psy-resonant crystals that grow across the ship. You were poking at them a few minutes ago, Lheorvine.’

  He gestured to a collection of organs and broken crystals in a transparent cylinder of sickly grey juice. ‘It is the beacon I use to find my way back when I return from my wanderings. One of the brains came from an eldar priestess. She put up quite a fight, let me tell you. Sargon maintains the life-support engine, though. I’ve never developed the expertise to keep it functioning myself.’

  ‘Sargon is dead,’ said Lheor. ‘He died months ago when the Emperor’s Children ambushed our fleet.’

  Abaddon turned back to his inscription work. ‘I doubt that, for I spoke to him only three days ago. He’s in the Vaults, several dozen decks below us. He goes there to meditate.’

  So Sargon lived, and had been instrumental in luring us here to Abaddon. That was another question answered before I could ask it. Just how Sargon had escaped was something I resolved to tear from the Word Bearer’s brain if I had to, yet something more urgent pressed against my mind.

  ‘Did any of your s
ervo-skulls detect a wolf?’

  Abaddon raised a scarred eyebrow. ‘One of Russ’s warriors? Or do you mean the Kanas lupis mammals of Old Earth?’

  ‘The latter. A Neverborn, incarnated as a Fenrisian wolf. I have not heard from her since we came aboard.’

  ‘I believe I’d remember seeing one of those aboard. I assume this creature is yours?’

  ‘Yes, she is mine.’

  Abaddon’s laugh was a bear’s wet, rumbling growl. ‘You call it “she”. How wonderfully sentimental.’

  Lheor availed himself of another flask of the oily brew. After a heavy swallow, a grim smile crossed over his patchwork face. He really did enjoy the stuff.

  ‘You know we’re still going to steal this ship,’ he said genially. Abaddon showed no surprise or unease at all.

  ‘A fine ambition. She’s one of the worthiest monuments to mankind’s ingenuity.’

  Telemachon came to stand by my side. He was the only one of us still wearing his helmet. Conversely, I sensed he was the one most at ease in Abaddon’s company. I wondered if it was from my evisceration of his thoughts and emotions. I had reshaped him to encourage easy obedience, but he was disappointingly passionless so far. The last thing I desired was to engineer more servants similar to my Rubricae. Already I could imagine Ahriman’s words – the next time he and I crossed paths, he was bound to consider my neural manipulation of Telemachon as the basest hypocrisy. What irritated me most of all was that he would be right.

  ‘You said you summoned us,’ Telemachon said. ‘You haven’t said why.’

  The former Sons of Horus legionary finally set his work aside. ‘Forgive me, I thought that would be obvious.’

  ‘Humour us,’ the swordsman said.

  Abaddon looked into our eyes, each in turn. He had a way about him even then – even after so many decades alone – of conveying the most ruthless sincerity without a shadow of awkwardness. When your eyes met his golden gaze, there was a feeling of being honoured by trust, of being taken into his confidence. Here was the first sign of the charismatic chieftain who had commanded the elite regiment of the Imperium’s most renowned Legion. His time as a pilgrim had layered wisdom and perspective atop the brutality of his former command. I wondered how Falkus and the other Sons of Horus would react to this reborn figure.

  ‘Horus,’ he said. ‘Have you heard how the Neverborn speak of him? They name my father not for his victories but his failures, calling him the Sacrificed King.’

  ‘I have heard it spoken,’ I admitted.

  ‘Sometimes, Khayon, I wonder where free will ends and destiny begins. But that is a discussion we shall have another day. Horus cannot be allowed to walk once more. Not because of destiny, or fate, or the whims of the Pantheon. The First Primarch died in shame and failure, my brothers. My last gift to the Legion I abandoned is to let them die with dignity. The Emperor’s Children and their allies threaten that dignified end. Each of you is already primed to work towards that very task. You could call it manipulation if you choose, or call it a simple aligning of goals. I’m done with cold allegiances and temporary alliances. If I’m to return to the battles raging throughout the Eye, I seek something more real. Something pure. A war that means something. Now, I have the ship you want, I share the goal you wish to achieve, but both of those truths pale against the fact that I have the answers you require.’

  Lheor was the one to bite at that dangling thread. ‘What answers?’

  Abaddon smiled, bringing dark light to his metallic eyes. ‘We have a warrior-sorcerer with the heart of a scholar and a swordsman with a poet’s soul, yet it’s the bloodthirsty axeman who asks the questions that really matter.’

  He did not reach for his bolter as he made his way towards the huge doors leading back to the ship’s deeper innards.

  ‘Come with me. There’s something you should see.’

  VISION

  It would be gratifying to say that we of the Black Legion simply follow a prophecy that assures us all will be well, that our path is preordained, and that victory is inevitable.

  It would be very gratifying indeed. It would also be a lie.

  I have always regarded prophecy with great distaste. I loathed it when I first walked the decks of the Vengeful Spirit with Telemachon and Lheor. I loathe it all the more fervently now – eternity with Ashur-Kai, Sargon, Zaraphiston and Moriana has done nothing to kindle any reverence in me. No soul is as self-righteous as one that believes it gazes into the future.

  I reserve my most ardent distaste for Moriana. More than one of Ezekyle’s lieutenants has threatened to slaughter his contrary prophetess. Several of them have been executed for trying to make their threats a reality. In one case I wielded the killing spear myself, stealing a brother’s life by the Warmaster’s command. How I burned to turn the blade on Moriana as she looked on, smiling, at Ezekyle’s side. I have never forgiven her for that day. I never will.

  The Warmaster is no fool. Though he values his seers and soothsayers above many of his other subcommanders, he has rarely bound the Black Legion’s fate to their prophecies. Only a madman heeds the Four Gods’ promises as anything more than teasing possibility. The best way to survive living in the Eye of Terror is to understand the warp. The best way to prosper is to master it. The quickest way to die is to trust it.

  So we lay claim to no overarching vision guiding our wars of conquest. Foresight is just another weapon in the Warmaster’s arsenal.

  The night we met with Abaddon, where the Vengeful Spirit was hidden within the crust of a time-lost world, he took us from his pilgrimage museum to where Sargon prayed in the silent stillness of the lower decks. The further we walked, the stronger the smell, for those decks carried the ripe spice of advanced decay with no discernible source. I felt the abattoir stink sinking into my skin.

  The Word Bearer was waiting for us down there in the deeper dark, meditating in a humble isolation cell with nothing but a cold metal pallet for slumber. He was still clad in the crimson of his Legion, the ceramite inscribed with layers of Colchisian runic scripture just as before. And just as before, his mind was almost impenetrable to my questing senses.

  The sight of his face was a revelation in itself. Most warriors of the Nine Legions – and our thin-blooded cousins in the Imperium’s shattered Space Marine Chapters – possess an ageless quality to their appearance. Our genetics generally preserve us in our physical and soldierly prime, leaving us resembling augmented human males between three and four decades of age. Beneath Sargon’s helm I had expected to find a weathered veteran visage; a warrior-priest who wore his age and scars with pride.

  I had not expected this pale youth, whose features seemed barely into adulthood. He looked freshly inducted from his Legion’s reserve companies, no more than two decades of life behind him. Grievous burn-scarring ran from his chin down his neck, and into the collar of his gorget. A plasma burn. There was the wound that stole his voice. He was lucky it had not severed his head.

  ‘My prophet,’ Abaddon greeted him. ‘These men desire answers.’

  Sargon rose from his knees, greeting us with a familiar gesture in Legiones Astartes battlefield sign language. His fist rested against his heart, then his hand opened as he offered it towards us – the traditional greeting between loyal brothers, showing proof of no weapon in his grip. Telemachon, to my surprise, returned the gesture. Lheor merely nodded.

  ‘Sargon,’ I said. ‘Do I have you to thank for saving Falkus and his brethren?’

  His eyes were green, rare for the desert clans of Colchis, who were near uniformly as dusky skinned as most Tizcans, and shared the same darkness of iris. In answer to my question he nodded once and offered a small, crooked smile. Legion battle-sign had no word for ‘sorcery’ but he conveyed its meaning well enough by piecing together several other gestures.

  Another mystery solved. I did not mention that Falkus and his warriors were suffer
ing in the throes of possession. For now I wanted to be given answers, not to provide them.

  At the end of his explanation, Sargon looked to Abaddon and tapped a thumb beneath one of his own eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ said the former First Captain. ‘Show them.’

  Sargon closed his bright eyes and held his arms to the sides in imitation of the Catherics’ crucified god. I felt the tension rising, no different from the way the air is charged in the moments before a storm breaks. Whatever psychic control he was exerting, I raised my guard against it.

  ‘Cease that,’ I said softly. When he did not obey, I lifted my hand towards him with a shove of telekinesis. Sargon’s eyes snapped open as he staggered three steps back, surprise writ across his young features.

  ‘Is something wrong, Khayon?’ asked Abaddon, drily amused by my resistance.

  ‘I have seen the future as Ashur-Kai watches it, divined from the entrails of the dead and the blood spatters of the dying. I have stared into scrying pools with my brother Ahriman, and listened to the babbling of gods, ghosts, and daemons. I care nothing for prophecy and its endlessly unreliable pathways. Whatever you wish to show me of the future will be of no interest to me, and even less use.’

  Sargon smiled again – that same barely-there expression – and made the chopping motion for ‘negative’.

  ‘You do not plan to show us the future, prophet?’

  Again, the same gesture. Negative.

  ‘Then what?’

  Abaddon answered for the silent seer. ‘The future is unwritten, Khayon, because we haven’t yet written it. I didn’t bring you across the Great Eye to bribe you with the warp’s promises of what might come to pass.’

  ‘Then why did you lure us here?’

  ‘Because I chose you, fool.’ He mastered it well with a smile, but the first taste of temper crept into Abaddon’s voice. ‘I chose all of you.’