The Talon of Horus

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  And then he is gone. His armour totters forwards to crash against the avenue, splitting the marble with a dozen fresh cracks.

  I lift his axe to use as a crutch. The weapon is called Saern according to the runes along its length. I speak a handful of Fenrisian dialects. Saern means ‘Truth’.

  I hear Abaddon laughing, clapping his gauntleted palms together. ‘Such heroism!’ he mocks me with a smile.

  Any sense of victory is short-lived. The huge wolf bears me to the ground in a tumble of wounds and weak limbs. I have no chance to defend myself. Jaws that could swallow my head whole gouge into my breastplate and shoulder-guard. Its fangs go through ceramite like iron knives through silk. The thing’s weight upon me is the weight of a Rhino troop carrier. Armour comes free in a vicious crack, and bloody flesh rips away with it. I am too cold, too sore, to feel it as fresh pain.

  And then the wolf stops. It just stops, standing above me with my blood running from its teeth. The creature’s flesh ripples beneath the smoke-stained fur. Lacerations peel open, revealing muscles, bones, organs.

  My eyes are wide open when the beast bursts open above me, raining gore in every direction. Viscera stings my face and burns with the saltiness of boiling seawater on my tongue. The pressure against my chest is gone. A shadow of something ghosts away from me, but for several seconds I can do nothing but stare at the sky, needing time to salvage enough strength to rise.

  The wolf stands several metres away from me – black where its fur had been grey-white; predatory intelligence in its stare where before there had been only bestial cunning.

  I know that stare though I have never seen it before. I know the mind behind it. I know the spirit animating the dead wolf’s half-fleshed ghost.

  ‘Gyre?’

  The wolf stalks to my side, submissive in its greeting. She – and this is the very first time I see Gyre as distinctly, unarguably female – gives a wolfish whine. Gone are the fractal creature’s wind-chime words, yet she is too new to this stolen form to communicate in silent speech. I feel a flare of wordless devotion from her as the wolf’s heart taints the cold geometry of the daemon’s spirit. From now on she will be neither wolf nor daemon, but something of both.

  ‘A loyal creature,’ says Abaddon, watching from nearby. Three Thunderhawks scream overhead, their vulture shadows flickering across our armour plating. ‘It saved your life.’

  ‘She,’ I tell him as I run my bloodstained gauntlets through Gyre’s black fur. ‘Not “it”. She.’

  SECRETS

  I was the first to awaken. Telemachon and Lheor stood in boneless slouches, the former with his head tilted forwards in mimicry of slumber, the latter staring at nothing with glazed eyes and parted lips. The unspooling of their memories was a muted hum in the back of my mind. I could sense their recollections without making out any detail.

  Sargon made a hand gesture in Legion-standard battle-sign.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied softly. ‘I am well.’

  Never before had I experienced such a clear psychic vision, but Sargon’s artistry was in how it didn’t feel like a violation. Abaddon had walked with me through my memories, sharing my regard for my brothers before they turned to dust and witnessing the birth of my wolf in the moment I came closest to death. Yet I did not begrudge him what he saw, nor feel threatened by it. He saw many of the key moments in my life, living them with me, yet my deepest reflections remained sacrosanct. That spoke of breathtaking control over the Art. Perhaps no staggering degree of power, but incredible discipline.

  ‘I was right to choose you,’ Abaddon said from where he stood by Sargon’s side. ‘All you’ve seen, Khayon. All you’ve done. The way you fight against repeating the mistakes of the past. You wear your father’s cobalt and his blood runs through your veins, but we all have a chance to become so much more than our fathers’ sons. You, I, and those like us. You crave true, honest brotherhood – a man who would form such bonds with daemons and aliens is a man who was born to be among kindred.’

  I narrowed my eyes, unsure if he mocked me or not. Nefertari had expressed the same sentiment, though in profoundly different words.

  At my glare, he tapped his fingertips to his heart, just as Falkus always did. ‘I mean no insult. I miss it, too, Khayon. I miss a Legion’s unity and its bonds of loyalty. Its explicit purpose. Its focused pursuit of victory.’

  Those were strange words to hear from the warrior whose abandonment of his brothers had become a legend in its own right. I said as much to him, earning a contemplative smile.

  ‘Now you’re being stubborn. You know of what I speak. I miss what a Legion could do, and the fact it was empowered to do it. All of our forces now... They are Legions in name, colour and the dregs of culture, but they are a horde, not an army, linked by fading loyalties and fighting to survive. Once they were bound by brotherhood and fought only to win. Our kind no longer wage war, we raid and pillage. No longer do we march in regiments and battalions, but scatter into packs and warbands.’

  I laughed. I did not mean to mock him, but I could not hold the laughter back. ‘You believe you are the one to change all that, Abaddon?’

  ‘No. No one can change it now.’ Zealous fervour burned in his golden eyes. The veins beneath his skin pulsed blacker. ‘But we can embrace it, my brother. How many among the Nine Legions cry out to be part of a true Legion once more? Are you so vain as to believe you are alone in your ambitions, Tizcan? What of Valicar the Graven, more loyal to his Martian spider-queen and the world they share, than to the Iron Warriors? What of Falkus Kibre, willing to lay down his life to murder Horus Reborn, turning to you for aid? What of Lheor – the gene-child of that blood-mad avatar Angron, who never bore a shred of love for his own sons? Even Telemachon stands with you, and you deceive yourself by pretending it’s purely the result of you rewriting his mind. You’ve stolen his capacity to sense pleasure without your permission, but you’ve not rewritten his entire psyche. He would be a true brother if you’d allow it, rather than a prisoner.’

  ‘You cannot know that for certain.’

  ‘Even birth is uncertain, Khayon. Nothing is certain but death.’

  His deflection made my lips curl in a snarl all too reminiscent of Gyre. ‘Spare me the schoolroom philosophy. Why should I trust Telemachon?’

  ‘Because he’s like us, aching for the same purpose we desire. He’s the son of a broken Legion, the same as you. The Third Legion is long lost to honourless excess and meaningless indulgence. Once the Emperor’s Children took pleasure in victory. Now they seek pleasure at any cost, hungering for torment over triumph. Thousands and thousands of warriors inside the Eye cry out for something worth fighting for, Khayon. This is not the first time I’ve walked in your thoughts. My pilgrimage with Sargon was about more than learning how the tides of the Eye ebb and flow. It was about seeking those who would stand with me.’

  I said nothing in the face of his passionate defiance. What, really, was there to say? He laid my directionless life bare and gave an offer of hope in place of the hollowness. I had never imagined I would hear another legionary speak such words, let alone one who had long ago walked into myth.

  ‘There’s strength and purity in what we’ve become,’ said Abaddon. ‘There’s a savage honesty in the Nine Legions’ warbands now. They follow warlords of their choosing instead of those assigned to them. They create traditions rooted in the cultures of their parent Legions, or completely defy their origins according to their own whims. I admire that unshackled freedom and have no desire to walk back from where we stand, sorcerer. I’m speaking of taking what we have and... refining it. Perfecting it.’

  I found it difficult to speak. The words lay upon my tongue, yet forcing them forwards was no easy task. To give them voice would be to speak the same righteous madness that Abaddon so fiercely declared.

  ‘You do not just mean forming a new warband. You mean a new Legion. A new war.’<
br />
  His gaze never left mine. I felt it holding my eyes to his, felt the ambitious heat of fevered thoughts.

  ‘A new war,’ he agreed. ‘The real war. We were born for battle, Khayon. We were made to conquer the galaxy, not to rot here in Hell and die upon our brothers’ blades. Who are the architects of the Imperium? Who fought to purge its territory of aliens and expand its borders? Who brought rebellious worlds to heel and slaughtered those who refused the light of progress? Who walked from one side of the galaxy to the other, marking their passage in a trail of traitorous dead? This is our Imperium. Built across the worlds we burned, over bones we broke, with the blood we shed.’

  What stunned me most was not his passion, nor even his ambition, though both were breathtaking in their scope. No, what stunned me more than anything else was his motive. I had expected a failure’s bitterness, not a champion’s idealism. He did not want vengeance, whether it was petty or ultimately justified. He wanted what was ours by right. He wanted to shape the Imperium’s future.

  ‘You see it, too,’ he said, baring his teeth in a snarling grin. Like the rest of the Justaerin, his teeth were engraved with Cthonian runes of fortitude and resolve. They seemed very apt all of a sudden, in the smile of a pilgrim returning to his people to become a crusader. ‘You feel it now, don’t you?’

  ‘A new war,’ I said slowly, softly. ‘One not born of bitterness nor founded on revenge.’

  Abaddon nodded. ‘The Long War, Khayon. The Long War. Not a petty rebellion swallowed by Horus’s pride and his hunger for the Terran Throne. A war for the future of mankind. Horus would have sold the species to the Pantheon for the chance to sit on the Golden Throne for a single heartbeat. We cannot allow ourselves to be used the way he was. The Powers exist and we can’t pretend otherwise, but nor can we allow a sacred duty to devolve into such weakness, as Horus did.’

  ‘Pretty words,’ Lheor said from behind me. I turned back – both he and Telemachon were restored to themselves, a fact I had not sensed until now. Doubtless they had heard most of Abaddon’s ardent words. Lheor’s dark-skinned and stitch-ruined features were given over to a ruthless solemnity I had never seen before. He tried to sound mocking but I believe we all heard the edge of awe there.

  Telemachon said nothing. The forged beauty of his silver deathmask stared at our host in silent judgement. I wondered what he would have said to all of this, had I not rewritten his mind.

  Abaddon seemed to sense my reflections, for he said, ‘You have to free the swordsman, Khayon. You’ve stolen more than his aggression against you.’

  ‘I realise that, but we would kill each other if I freed him.’

  He smiled then, and it was no longer quite so indulgent. Here was a glimpse of the iron tyrant beneath the charismatic warlord.

  ‘You wish to take your first steps in this new era with a collar around your brother’s throat?’

  ‘First steps? I have agreed to nothing yet, Ezekyle. And despite your words, I sense you are holding back as well. You have been alone on your pilgrimage for so long that you are barely ready to trust anyone else.’

  He stared into my eyes. I felt him accede to my judgement, letting it lie between us unchallenged.

  ‘Revelation is a process, Khayon. I am wiser than I was during my father’s rebellion. I have seen a great deal more of what the galaxy can offer, as well as what lies behind reality’s veil. But I’m not arrogant, my brother. I know there’s a great deal left to do, and a great deal left to learn. All I know for certain is that I’m finished with my years of walking alone. So now I reach out to those most like me – in thought, in action, and in ambition. I do not offer any of you a place in a tyrant’s plan. What I offer is a place at my side as we find a path together.’

  ‘Brotherhood,’ Lheor said quietly. ‘Brotherhood for the brotherless.’

  Abaddon tapped his heart again.

  As the Sons of Horus legionary fell silent I turned to Lheor, noting how his hands shook. ‘What did you dream, brother?’

  ‘Many things. The war on Terra was one of them.’ The World Eater looked down at his gauntlets, watching his hands closing and opening with the purring chorus of knuckle servos. Just as I had re-lived the moment I almost died on Prospero, Lheor had obviously re-lived the moment he lost his hands.

  I did not force myself into his mind. For the first time, he welcomed me there. I saw him atop a wall of stone battlements, commanding his warriors and directing their storm of fire with baying calls. The chatter of innumerable heavy bolters was the stuttering voice of a mechanical god. The sky was a tempest of howling black shadows as gunships strafed overhead.

  The Imperial Fists advanced behind layered plasteel boarding shields, bolters kicking in their hands. Lheor, at the forefront of his warriors, levelled the massive weight of his plasma cannon at the enemy. It gave its draconic whine as it charged, fusion taking place within its cabled guts.

  One bolt. One moment of misfortune. A single shell cracked against the cannon’s magnetic accelerator coils, with the kind of impact that the weapon had endured a hundred times and more. But this time, jagged debris clattered through an intake valve, choking the cannon the very second it was primed to release its payload.

  The weapon detonated in his hands. The explosion threw him clear, but bathed several of his men in dissolving spills of violet fire. Lheor smashed back against the battlement wall, left behind in the advance of his surviving men. The Nails were biting; his warriors had not even noticed he’d fallen.

  I could not sense his pain in the memory, nor even see it with his face covered by the scorched helm. But I saw him look down at his hands... which were no longer there. His erupting cannon had vaporised them. Both of his arms ended at the elbows.

  I pulled back from his mind. As I did so, he gave a violent shudder.

  ‘What of you, Telemachon?’ I asked. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Old regrets. Nothing more.’

  I could have asked what he meant or simply pulled it from his memory, but the distant dignity in the swordsman’s voice dissuaded me from doing either. After seeing Lheor’s darkest hour, I had little desire to dwell in Telemachon’s misery.

  Gyre.

  Her name came unbidden. A feverish reminder.

  As I turned away, Abaddon’s hand fell on my shoulder-guard, careful but commanding.

  ‘Where are you going, sorcerer?’

  I met his eyes, refusing to be cowed. ‘To find my wolf.’

  Both of us turned at the gentle clang of ceramite on ceramite. Sargon dragged his knuckles along his forearm – another gesture in Legion-standard battle-sign. The motion for one’s own blood. He knew of my bond with her, from the bridge of His Chosen Son as well as seeing into my thoughts.

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked him.

  The prophet’s freakishly youthful features turned to Abaddon. He made the left-handed gesture for ‘engage target’ followed by palm over his heart. Several more signs followed – ones I did not recognise as traditional battle cant.

  Abaddon’s hand lifted from my shoulder. ‘Sargon has your wolf. She attacked him, and is now... incapacitated.’

  I moved the moment he said the last word.

  A jamdhara is a traditional Tizcan weapon, somewhere between a dagger and a short sword, with a handled grip and a blade that extends from the bearer’s fisted knuckles. It is not unique to Prospero by any means – other human cultures on other worlds call similar weapons ‘push knives’ or punch daggers, as well as the soveya, ulu, qattari and – in at least one dialect of Old Induasian – the katar.

  My jamdhara had a grip made from the thigh bone of the Tizcan astrological philosopher Umerahta Palhapados Sujen, who, upon his death, insisted that his bones be offered up to the Thousand Sons Legion to be reshaped into ritual tools and taken among the stars he so adored.

  This wasn’t uncommon among the Prosperine i
ntellectual and cultural elite. It was considered a great honour to be ‘buried within the void’ in this way, still contributing to the future of mankind even beyond the grave.

  The weapon’s blade was black, from alloying adamantium with my birth world’s native metals, and the metal itself had spiralling runic mandalas carefully hand-etched into the surface, replicating one of Umerahta’s last and most renowned lectures in minute print. It had been a treatise on the nature of the universe. Every few months, I would find myself reading by the false candlelight of illume-globes once more, meditating on its meaning.

  I had been given the jamdhara by Ashur-Kai upon my acceptance into his philosophical coven, on the last day of my apprenticeship to him. The Thousand Sons had its primary Cults based on each warriors’ psychic expertise, but they were considered merely the most obvious – and most militant – tier in a layered society. Beneath the Cults were philosophical salons, scholarly circles, symposia, and ritual orders that were more concerned with matters of enlightenment than military structure.

  ‘I am proud of you,’ he had said – once, and never again – as he handed me the blade. ‘You stand amongst equals here, Sekhandur.’

  In that moment I had pressed the flat of the dagger to my forehead, closed my eyes, and thanked him in a silent pulse of telepathy. It was the blade that marked the end of my apprenticeship. It was the blade that signalled I was ready for induction into the Art’s deeper mysteries.

  And decades later, when Abaddon told me his prophet had incapacitated my wolf, it was the blade that I held into the side of Sargon’s neck.

  Some deaths resonate. They are more charged with emotion than others, and force a ruthless communion between slayer and slain. Few deaths resonate as much as cutting a man’s throat. There is no feeling, and no sound, quite like it. The wet gargles that try so hard to become gasps. The way the throat still aches to work, lungs quivering and straining for breath that cannot come. The ruthless, hateful intimacy of him dying in your arms.