The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

The pathfinders scattered. Severian dragged Cayne’s body away from the spreading lake of smoking fluid. Loken lowered his sword and let out a shuddering breath that felt like it had been held within him for decades.

Altan Nohai rushed to Cayne and knelt beside him.

‘There’s nothing you can do for him,’ said Loken.

‘He that is dead, take from him the Legion’s due,’ said Nohai as the reductor portion of his gauntlet slid into place.

Loken registered the muted crack of the gunshot a fraction of a second before the faceplate of Nohai’s helmet exploded outwards.

The Apothecary slumped over Cayne’s body, a smoking entry wound drilled through the back of his helmet.

Armoured warriors dropped to the deck from the upper reaches of the chamber. Sons of Horus. Two dozen at least, armoured in blackened plate the colour of night. Their helm lenses flickered with dead light, as though cold flames seethed behind them.

Most were armed with bolters. He saw a plasma gun. A melta too.

Loken fought the urge to reach for his own weapons.

‘Raise a single weapon and you all die,’ said a warrior without a helmet. Loken didn’t recognise him, but saw the planed features of what they’d once called a true son.

‘Noctua? Grael Noctua of the Warlocked?’ said Severian.

Loken’s head snapped around.

Severian shrugged. ‘He was Twenty-Fifth Company, same as me.’

‘Severian?’ said Noctua, his shock evident. ‘When the Warmaster said two faithless cowards had returned with the prodigal son, I had no idea he meant you. And Iacton Qruze? Your name has been a curse ever since you deserted the Legion at the moment of its greatest triumph.’

Qruze flinched at Noctua’s words, but he squared his shoulders and said, ‘You mean the moment my Legion died.’

Loken had never respected Iacton Qruze more.

The pathfinders reluctantly divested themselves of their weapons as the black-armoured Sons of Horus closed the noose on them. Now that he looked closely, Loken saw their proportions were subtly wrong, asymmetric and out of true, as though the warriors within were not legionaries at all, but things ill-formed and unnatural.

Or that was what they were becoming.

‘And you, Thirteenth Legion’ said Noctua. ‘Especially you.’

Proximo Tarchon slowly laid down his gladius, and Loken saw a depth of calculating hatred in his clear eyes like nothing he’d ever seen before. The blood had hardened to scabs on the ritual cuts, and the smeared ash would mark the scars forever.

‘When I hold this again, it will be to put it through your heart,’ said the Ultramarines warrior.

Noctua smiled at that, but didn’t reply.

‘Grael Noctua, you little bastard,’ said Severian, setting his blade down. ‘Did you know I advised against your advancement three times when your name came up? I always said you were too sly, too eager to please. Not good qualities in a leader.’

‘Looks like you were wrong,’ said Noctua.

‘No,’ said Severian. ‘I wasn’t.’

‘I think you were, I’m Mournival now.’

Loken’s heart skipped a beat at the mention of the Mournival, that confraternity to which he and Torgaddon had once belonged. A brotherhood as close to the Warmaster as it was possible to be.

‘Did someone say Mournival?’

The speaker dropped from the roof spaces, and Loken groaned as he saw the modified bolter he carried. Rama Karayan’s weapon. Blood dripped from the breech and muzzle.

‘I remember the Mournival,’ the warrior said.

Like the others surrounding them, his armour was black and non-reflective. Like Noctua, he went without a helm, and something in his saturnine, cocksure swagger struck him as hideously familiar.

He retrieved Tarchon’s gladius from the deck and turned the darkly-sheened blade over as though curious at what had been done to it. He shook his head and slid the weapon into an empty shoulder sheath.

‘Poor bloody Samus,’ he said to Loken with a grin. ‘He’d only just earned his return after a warrior as straight up and down as you killed his host flesh on Calth. It’s getting to be a thing.’

‘Who are you?’ said Loken.

‘No one remembers me,’ said the warrior. He grinned, exposing perfect white teeth. ‘I’d be hurt if I wasn’t already dead.’

‘You’re Ger Gerradon,’ said Qruze. ‘One of Little Horus Aximand’s scrappers.’

‘The body is his, admittedly,’ said Gerradon. ‘But he’s long gone, Iacton. I’m Tarik reborn, he-who-is-now-Tormaggedon.’

5

Alivia led the Ultramarines and her five soldiers ever downwards along a twisting series of switchback stairs beneath the Sanctuary. The walls were glassy and smooth, cut down through the geomantic roots of Mount Torger by the colossal power of the galaxy’s most singular mind.

No light shone this deep, and only the Ultramarines suit lights pierced the darkness. If felt like nobody came here precisely because nobody ever came here.

‘How much deeper is this gate, mamzel?’ asked Castor Alcade. The smell of plasmic fire still clung to his armour, and his breath had the hot flavour of burned stone to it.