The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘What if you’re wrong?’ asked Russ, leaning over the board and toppling his own king. ‘What if he goes back to the Warmaster? The things he’s seen and done. The things he knows. Even if he is as loyal as you believe, you can’t know what will happen when he enters the belly of the beast. You know how much rests upon this.’

‘Only too well, old friend,’ said Malcador. ‘Your life, the Emperor’s. Perhaps all of our lives. The Emperor wrought you for a terrible purpose, but a necessary one. If anyone can stop Horus before he gets to Terra, it is you.’

Russ’s head snapped up and his top lip curled back over his teeth, like an animal sensing danger. ‘He’s here.’

Malcador looked down the valley and saw a lone figure cresting the Sigillite’s bridge far below. At this distance, he was little more than a speck of steeldust grey against the white of the cliffs, but his poise was unmistakable.

Russ rose to his feet and watched the distant figure approach, regarding him as though he were a wounded hound that might turn on its master at any moment.

‘So that’s Garviel Loken,’ said Russ.

2

Shimmering fluorescent light filled the Dome of Revivification with the arrival of the cryo-cylinders, and Aximand felt the not unreasonable discomfort at seeing those who were alive and yet ought to be dead. The thought triggered a memory of a dream, a half-heard echo of something best forgotten.

‘Who are they?’ asked Mortarion, his deathly pallor made even more corpse-like by the glow of the life-sustaining mechanisms of the Mausolytic.

‘They are Dwell’s greatest resource,’ said Horus, as Fulgrim moved through the suspended cylinders with the leathery scrape of unnatural flesh over broken glass. ‘A thousand generations of its most brilliant minds, held forever at death’s threshold in the final instant of their life.’

Horus waved Aximand forward and he took his place at the Warmaster’s right hand. Horus placed the taloned gauntlet on his shoulder guard.

‘Aximand here led the assault to take the Mausolytic Precincts,’ said Horus with pride. ‘At no small personal cost.’

Fulgrim turned to him, and Aximand saw the change in the Phoenician went far deeper than his physical transformation. The narcissism Aximand always suspected lay at the heart of the Emperor’s Children’s obsessive drive for perfection was rampant in Fulgrim. Nothing he said could be taken at face value, and Aximand wondered if trusting Fulgrim had been Perturabo’s downfall. Surely Horus would not make the same mistake?

‘Your face,’ said the Phoenician. ‘What happened to it?’

‘I got careless in the vicinity of a Medusan blade.’

Fulgrim reached out with one of his upper arms and took hold of Aximand’s chin, turning his head to either side. The touch was repellent and exhilarating.

‘Your whole face removed in one cut,’ said Fulgrim with grudging admiration. ‘How did it feel?’

‘Painful.’

‘Lucius would approve,’ said Fulgrim. ‘But you shouldn’t have re-attached it. Imagine the bliss of that pain each time you were helmed. And one less of you looking like my brother is no bad thing.’

The Phoenician moved on and Aximand felt a curious mix of relief and regret that the primarch’s touch was no longer upon him.

‘So you can talk to them?’ asked Mortarion, examining the controls of a cryo-cylinder. The tech-adept next to him dropped to his knees, soiled and weeping in terror.

The Warmaster nodded. ‘Everything these people knew is preserved and blended with the hundreds of remembrancers and iterators who came to this world after Guilliman restored it to the Imperium.’

‘And what do they say?’

Horus made his way to a gently glowing cylinder in which lay the recumbent form of an elderly man. The Mournival followed him and Aximand saw the body within was draped in a red-gold aquila flag, the planes and contours of his features suggesting he was not a native Dweller.

‘They try to say nothing,’ grinned Horus. ‘How the galaxy has changed isn’t to their taste. They scream and rage, trying to keep me from hearing what I want, but they can’t scream all the time.’

Fulgrim coiled his serpentine lower body around the mechanisms of the cylinder, rearing up and peering through the frosted glass.

‘I know this man,’ he said, and Aximand saw that he also recognised him, picturing the preserved face as it had been nearly two centuries ago when its owner had boarded the Vengeful Spirit.

‘Arthis Varfell,’ said Horus. ‘His iterations during the latter days of Unity were instrumental in the pacification of the Sol system. And his monographs on the long-term benefits of pre-introducing advocatus agents into indigenous cultures prior to compliance overtures became required reading.’

‘What’s he doing here?’ asked Mortarion.