The Talon of Horus

by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  I pressed on, seeking anything and finding nothing. All sense of the Neverborn was gone, lost in the current of the warriors’ beating hearts and swirling thoughts. The daemon spread itself so thin between several hosts that it was almost wholly hidden.

  ‘... Khayon?’

  I opened my eyes, only then realising they had been closed. So focused was I on the pursuit of this maddening daemon that it took several seconds to refocus on my surroundings. Abaddon was looking at me.

  ‘I almost had it,’ I said to him.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked.

  Falkus was looking at me now. All of the Justaerin were looking at me. Red eye lenses set deep in tusked, horned helms stared without a word. Archaic cannons were braced on servo-strengthened arms. Ornate mauls and axes were mag-locked to armour plates the colour of rancid ash.

  Did they know? Did they consider themselves exorcised, or did they feel the daemon’s lingering touch in a place away from their conscious minds? Had Sargon arranged this fate for the Justaerin at Abaddon’s behest, or was this simply another cut from the twisting knife of fortune? If the daemon was diluted to near-nothingness within their bloodstreams, were they even truly possessed at all?

  Questions, questions, questions.

  This is what it is like to live within a Nine Legions warband. To see things that cannot be possible and pursue answers that may never come. To wonder over the state of your brothers’ souls, knowing they doubt your sanity in return.

  Loyalty is everything, yet trust is the one thing we so rarely have.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘A momentary distraction. All is well.’

  That was the first time I lied to Ezekyle. He knew I lied, yet I sensed no anger or threat of reprisal. What I sensed from him was a slow pulse of approval. A test passed. An offer of trust given and accepted. I was not lying to him, after all. We were both lying to the Justaerin.

  ‘We should begin at once,’ Falkus said, tapping his heart with Cthonian sincerity.

  I had paid no attention to the meat of their conversation. I knew nothing of what they were saying. It became clear when Abaddon returned the gesture, fingertips clanking against his chestplate.

  ‘With Khayon’s aid,’ he said, ‘the Vengeful Spirit will sail again. My brothers, we are few and they are many, but the Canticle City will fall.’

  PREPARATION

  We returned to the dormant flagship, gathering to plan our assault. On our first night aboard the Vengeful Spirit, several of us still wore the colours of Legions to which we no longer felt any allegiance. Abaddon himself was clad in his unmatching battleplate, making him seem a member of every Legion yet loyal to none.

  In a few short decades we would stand together in the black that the Imperium came to dread, each representing our own armies and fleets at Abaddon’s war councils. Hundreds of us would stand on the bridge of the flagship, making our voices heard as we argued over which of the Imperium’s worlds to kill. All of this glory was yet to come. First we had to fight the battle that would bind us together or see us dead.

  The gathering took place on the Vengeful Spirit’s command deck, where Horus and his primarch brothers had once stood with the lord-captains of the Space Marine Legions, first presiding over the fate of the Great Crusade, then deciding the fate of the rebellion. Banners depicting old glories hung in rows, some woven as tapestries, others more primitive collections of trophies leashed together and raised as victory standards. Most of the hanging flags commemorated the planetary conquests and fleet engagements of the Luna Wolves during their two hundred years of crusading, before the Emperor offered them the right to change their name in recognition of their honour as Horus’s sons. The more raw and ramshackle icons were battlefield trophies – not from worlds taken but from battles fought with Throne-loyal forces on Horus’s road to Terra. Between these were the ritualistic emblems of the warrior lodges that spread illumination and treason in equal measure throughout the XVI Legion’s ranks.

  Looking around the expansive bridge it was difficult to picture the empty chamber populated by thousands of officers and enlisted crew. Entire ranks of legionaries had mustered here, reporting in campaign briefings and adding their voices to the decisions made by the Great Crusade’s inner circle of commanders. Galleries were arranged in concentric crescents to accommodate a military presence that had not been seen within these walls for centuries.

  From every ceiling rafter and wall mounting, the slitted and livid yellow Eye of Horus stared down upon us. Perhaps I should have felt judged by that feral gaze. In truth I felt nothing but pity. The Sons of Horus had fallen as far as it was possible to fall. I spoke from experience, for the Thousand Sons had done the same.

  We stood around the central hololithic table, a handful of warriors standing where armies once stood. I felt like a scavenger, come to sift through the dust of the glorious past.

  I will list the names of those present, to be recorded now in Imperial archives. Some of these warriors are long lost, fallen as casualties in the Long War. Others are unrecognisable with their true names forgotten, their original identities buried beneath a host of warmongering titles granted by a fearful Imperium. These are the names they bore then, back on that distant day.

  Falkus Kibre, the Widowmaker, last chieftain of the broken Justaerin and lord of the Duraga kal Esmejhak warband. With him were almost thirty of his brothers, clad in the heavy plate of their murderous clan.

  Telemachon Lyras, sword-captain of the Emperor’s Children. He stood alone – the only one of his brothers not fed to the hungry lusts of my eldar companion. The shadows that darkened the entire command deck were unable to diminish the silver sheen of his rapturous face mask.

  Ashur-Kai, the White Seer, sorcerer and sage of the Thousand Sons. He stood with a phalanx of our Rubricae, numbering one hundred and four of our ashen brothers. Tokugra, his carrion crow, watched proceedings from its perch on his shoulder.

  Lheorvine Ukris, known – much to his gall – as Firefist, gunnery-captain of the World Eaters and commander of the Fifteen Fangs. He stood with Ugrivian and their four surviving brothers, each one holding a massive heavy bolter at ease.

  Sargon Eregesh, Abaddon’s oracle, a warrior-priest of the Word Bearers’ Brazenhead Chapter. He also stood alone, clad in the faithful red of the XVII Legion, his armour inscribed with Colchisian runes in worn gold leaf.

  And I, Iskandar Khayon, in the age before my brothers called me Kingbreaker and my foes called me Khayon the Black. My armour was the cobalt and bronze of the Thousand Sons and my skin then – as it is now – the equatorial duskiness of the Tizcan-born. At my side was Nefertari, my eldar bloodward, dark of armour and pallid of flesh, with her grey wings closed tightly to her back. She leaned on an ornate spear stolen from a tomb on an eldar crone world, deep in the Eye. Gyre stood at my other side, the black wolf’s malignant white eyes ever-watchful. Her mood matched my own, as my eagerness translated through her physical form. She reeked of the blood we would soon spill. Her fur smelt of murder, her breath of war.

  Abaddon looked over this disparate conclave, and tapped his heart in Cthonian humility.

  ‘We’re a sorry and ragged warband, are we not?’

  Low chuckles sounded across the chamber. Of all those gathered, I kept my commitment on the tightest leash. My thoughts kept straying to Ezekyle’s pilgrimage chamber far across the ship, where the Talon of Horus lay as a museum relic. It pressed against my thoughts even though the psychic resonance of the bloodied blades was shrouded in stasis.

  Abaddon invited others to have their say before he spoke his own piece. There was no formal order beneath the dusty banners of the past, only warriors speaking of their intent. When one faltered in a retelling, Abaddon would encourage them with further questions that revealed more of the speaker’s past to all those listening. He was bridging the divides between us without forcing the issue, mak
ing us recognise all we had in common.

  I admit, in that light, it felt almost fated. Each of us spoke of Legions we no longer believed in, of fathers we no longer idolised, of daemonic Legion home worlds we refused to claim as havens. These doubts were nothing new, but they were matters rarely spoken aloud. In a way our words bordered on confession, the way sinners once sought absolution by admitting their crimes to ministers of the oldest faiths. On a much more practical level it was plainly a tactical appraisal. We were soldiers citing our histories, laying out how our hatreds and talents alike bound us to a greater whole. It was all done with a lack of posturing or brooding pomposity. I admired that.

  These were introductions more than long retellings, however. Mere formalities before Abaddon spoke the reason we were gathered together. Warriors are not brought together by talk of the past, but by living through battle in the present. For Abaddon’s ambitions to bear any weight, he would have to give us a victory.

  He spoke of the Canticle City and how we would plunge a spear tip through the fortress’s heart. He spoke of how the Vengeful Spirit would be able to sail with a skeleton crew of the damned, guided by the mind of the Anamnesis.

  He spoke of the threat posed by Horus Reborn. Doubtless a distant threat – he acknowledged that the Emperor’s Children surely had decades of failed alchemical experimentation ahead of them before they even synthesised the first stage of the Emperor’s genetic wonderwork. Distant as the potential was, we would hit before it became a threat, striking to prevent the Emperor’s Children winning the Legion Wars. He cared nothing for extinguishing the XVI Legion’s shame – he cared only for casting aside those last shackles from the past. The primarchs were dead or ascended past mortal concerns in the tides of the Great Game of the Gods. He listed the Imperial dead and the traitorous ascended, ending with names that were fast becoming mythic even to those of us within the Eye: Angron, Fulgrim, Perturabo, Lorgar, Magnus, Mortarion. The names of fathers elevated beyond the ken of their mortal sons; patrons who now paid us little heed, lost as they were to the winds and whims of Chaos. The names of fathers precious few of us still admired, with their legacies of dubious success.

  I had expected a stirring speech, a rousing diatribe before a battle, but Abaddon knew better than to play us false with zealous words. This cold-blooded assessment was ice to our senses. We stood like statues through a stripped-back accounting, taking stock of our lives and our Legions’ failures, confronting the truth alongside those going through the same revelations. No lies to bolster us. The truth broke us down, letting us choose where to go from there.

  As he finished speaking, Abaddon promised us a place aboard the Vengeful Spirit if we desired it – if we would stand with him for this one brutal assault.

  ‘A new Legion,’ he concluded, surprising several of the others with the offer. ‘Forged as we desire, not as slaves to the Emperor’s will and cast in the image of his flawed primarchs. Bound together by loyalty and ambition, not nostalgia and desperation. Untainted by the past,’ he said at last. ‘No longer the sons of failed fathers.’

  Intelligent enough not to hammer the point too far, he let the offer ride in our minds, trusting us to come to our own conclusions while he moved on to his final gambit. He told us what we would have to do if our siege was to succeed. He told us what he expected of each of us when battle was joined. Without nominating himself as our commander, he nevertheless took the reins with effortless skill, detailing expectations of resistance and many of the possible outcomes. Like all skilled generals, he came prepared. When preparation was not enough, he relied on experience and insight.

  We would strike without warning, with overwhelming force. The Canticle City did not matter, nor did the enemy fleet. All we needed to concern ourselves with were the cloning facilities and the fleshcrafters who laboured at their arcane science within those halls.

  ‘No protracted engagements. No running battles. We strike, we kill, we pull back.’

  We listened as Abaddon outlined his plan. No objections were raised, though several of us shifted uncomfortably at what we were hearing. None of us had ever taken part in an assault quite like this.

  Last of all, he turned to me. He told me that the honour of striking the very first blow would be mine.

  Then he told me what I would need to do.

  And then he told me what I would need to sacrifice.

  I boarded the Tlaloc with my wolf and my war-maiden, journeying down into the Core. The Anamnesis greeted me with lukewarm regard, staring dead-eyed at my arrival. She floated in her tank, her skin pale as ever in the nutrient-rich fluid.

  When I looked at her I always saw my sister. It did not matter to me that she was so much more and so much less than she had been in life. The female husk drifting in its preserving fluid and connected to all this life-giving machinery was still Itzara, even if her skull now housed a thousand other minds as well as what was left of her own.

  I told her what Abaddon was asking of me. It had always been my intent to install the Anamnesis aboard the Vengeful Spirit to serve as the warship’s machine soul, but Abaddon’s approval of my plan came with a warning.

  I brought that warning to the Anamnesis. As I spoke she seemed to pay my words little heed, instead exchanging stares with Gyre and Nefertari. When I paused in my explanation, she greeted my most loyal companions with toneless hails.

  Nefertari favoured the machine-spirit with an elegant bow. Gyre lowered her head as she walked around the tank, prowling around and around.

  Once my explanation was complete, I asked her what I believed was a simple question.

  ‘If I let you do this, can you win?’

  The Anamnesis turned in a slow glide to stare at me through the milky ooze, and her voice resonated from the vox-gargoyles around the ostentatious chamber.

  ‘You ask us to measure the immeasurable,’ she said.

  ‘No, I am asking you to guess.’

  ‘We are not capable of calculating an answer on conjecture alone. You define a situation with unclear parameters. How are we to judge possible outcomes?’

  ‘Itzara...’

  ‘We are the Anamnesis.’

  Nefertari rested her hand on my forearm, sensing the rise of my temper. I doubt she even felt my gratitude, for I kept my focus on the Anamnesis.

  ‘If we bond you to the Vengeful Spirit, the lingering traces of its soul-core may devour your consciousness. You will no longer be yourself. Your identity will be subsumed.’

  ‘Phrasing the same situation in different words is no aid to our calculations, Khayon. We cannot give you an answer.’

  I thudded both my fists on the containment tank, leaning there and staring in at her. ‘Just tell me you will resist whatever strength remains in the flagship’s machine-spirit. Tell me you can win.’

  ‘We cannot state any of these eventualities with certainty.’

  I had expected and dreaded such an answer. Wordlessly, I sat with my back to her immersion tank, refusing to make any more futile demands for reassurance. For a time I was content merely to breathe in and out on the edge of meditation without committing to it, listening to the churning engines of Itzara’s life-support systems and the bubbling of her containment fluid.

  ‘The Vengeful Spirit was the queen of Terra’s fleet,’ Abaddon had said at the conclusion of the briefing. ‘Her soul-core is stronger and more aggressive than any other battleship that ever sailed the stars. I want you to be prepared for what might happen, Khayon.’

  So we needed the Anamnesis’s unique systems, her ability to control a vessel with a sentient mind. Installing the Tlaloc’s machine-spirit within the flagship would enable us to rekindle its soul and sail without the hundreds of thousands of necessary crew.

  But reactivating Abaddon’s warship might mean feeding my sister’s soul to its machine-spirit.

  I replayed Abaddon’s words over and over in m
y mind as I sat there, and that was how Lheor and Telemachon found me. The final doors rumbled open, admitting both of them into the very heart of the Core. My surprise at seeing them was threefold – firstly that they would seek me out down here, secondly that they would be together at all, and thirdly that the Anamnesis would allow them to enter her presence.

  ‘Brothers,’ I greeted them, rising to my feet. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for you.’ Lheor was tense, with tremors afflicting his left hand. ‘We returned to help you with the preparations.’

  Both were still armed and armoured, and both turned their faceplates to the Anamnesis, regarding the ship’s unique machine-spirit for the first time in the flesh.

  ‘Greetings Lheorvine Ukris and Telemachon Lyras,’ she said, floating in the murk before them.

  Lheor walked over to her, looking up at the nude figure entombed in the thin sludge of aqua vitriolo. He tapped his finger against the reinforced glass, the way a child might trouble fish in a tank.

  The Anamnesis did not smile, of course, but nor did she order him to desist. She looked down upon him as if his behaviour were a momentary curiosity, the strange game of an insect, nothing more. Lheor grinned at her staring features.

  ‘So you’re his sister, eh?’

  ‘We are the Anamnesis.’

  ‘But you were his sister before... all this.’

  ‘We were once alive as you are alive. Now we are the Anamnesis.’

  Lheor looked away. ‘It’s like arguing with a machine.’