The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

The former Codicier threw himself at the Samus-thing, his sword a sliver of flame-wreathed bluesteel. Varren’s axe had achieved little, but Rubio’s blade sliced deep into the meat of the thing. The fire leapt from his weapon onto Samus, and the remains of Targost’s robes went up in flames with a roaring whoosh of ignition.

It screamed, finally hurting.

Loken felt something grip his leg and looked down to see Tubal Cayne’s hand scrabbling at his armour.

The other hand was clamped around his own neck. Blood welled between his fingers, pumping enthusiastically from the awful chasm in his throat. He’d ripped his helmet off and his eyes took Loken’s in an iron grip. Anger, vindication and something Loken couldn’t identify poured out of Tubal Cayne. Flickering reflections of Rubio’s white fire shimmered in his widening pupils. The dying warrior tried to speak, but only wet, liquid gurgles emerged.

Loken watched his eyes turn to glass and knew that he was dead.

And the fear that held him rigid vanished.

He’d fought Samus before.

He and Vipus had killed it.

Loken brought his sword up and charged.

3

Rama Karayan tracked the battle below through his bolter’s scope. Something was affecting it. The thing his brothers faced wasn’t registering. He could see Bror, Macer and the others, but not the thing they fought.

But prey could be hunted by its absences as much as by its leavings.

His hunter’s eye had been honed as a youngster in the darkened mine workings of Lycaeus. The lords of the Ravenspire had recognised his gift and developed it. Not invisible enough for the Shadowmasters, but perfect for the silent killers of the Seeker squads.

His auto-senses were linked directly with the scope of his modified bolter, and he took a breath, innately interpolating the locus of his brother’s attacks. Peripheral sight picked out the pellucid white flames of Rubio’s sword.

He found his centre and drew in a breath.

Held it.

He fired. A spent casing dropped to the scaffold boards.

It bounced, slower than should be possible. A web of frosted lines crazed its surface in a pale web.

Strange shadows moved on the walls. Impossible shadows. They were all around him, like stalking wolves in a twilit winter forest or the dust devils of Deliverance’s ash wastes.

Karayan felt grave-cold air and the hard, sharp edge of a blade at his throat.

‘Nice rifle,’ said a rasping voice. ‘I think I’ll take it.’

Karayan moved. Not fast enough.

The blade sliced deep, cutting back to bone.

4

Loken’s sword tore through the Samus-thing’s scorched belly. Bubbling laughter spilled from its smoking skull. Ash and greasy meat cinders billowed around it. Furnace-red light shone through wounds torn in its charred flesh.

Targost’s arms reached for him, stretching and cracking like timbers splitting in a fire. Loken put a bolt-round into its chest and hacked the hand from the arm. Another writhing appendage squirmed into existence at the stump, but it was a twisted, malformed thing.

‘It’s vulnerable!’ cried Rubio. ‘Its link to the warp is fraying.’

The pathfinders surrounded the daemon-thing, hacking and shooting it. Even in such desperate straits, each shot was carefully aimed, each strike precisely placed.

‘I know you, Garviel Loken,’ it hissed, looming over Loken. ‘I claimed your brother’s soul in that mountain cave. He screams in torment still.’

‘Don’t listen to it,’ shouted Rubio, blocking a whipping appendage of glistening dark flesh. The Librarian’s hood blazed with blue white fire.

‘Silence, witcher!’ bellowed the Samus-thing. The force of its words drove Rubio to his knees. It spat a torrent of black fire from its writhing, toothed gullet. Rubio threw up a shimmering wall of witchfire and the flames guttered and died.

Severian closed and slashed his blade into the daemon’s back, tearing upwards. Loken hadn’t even seen him move. Looping coils of what might once have been guts, but were now mouldering loops of dead meat spilled out.

The beast spun around and clubbed Severian to the deck with unnatural speed. It hurled Voitek and Qruze away with a scream of pure force and slammed Loken to the deck with slithering arms like blistered snakes.

Loken saw the gladius Targost had used to mutilate the Ultramarine prisoner. The ivory Ultima on its pommel glittered in the firelight. Its blade was dark, yet sheened with starlight. He reached for it, but a hand of scabbed knuckles and bruised fingers picked it up first.

‘This is mine,’ said Proximo Tarchon.

Loken sprang to his feet as the carved warrior of Ultramar threw himself forward. He rolled beneath the Samus-thing’s writhing arms and thrust his gladius up into its belly.

The effect was instantaneous and devastating.

Targost’s body fell apart, as though every single molecular bond within its flesh was instantly sundered. Its form turned to liquid and collapsed in a stinking pool of rancid matter.