The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘He might be mostly metal, but we’ll be back on Terra before his sedation wears off,’ said Bror, limping over to take a seat. ‘No, I made this. There’s not a lot one of the Vlka Fenryka can’t rustle up after we’ve tasted it.’

Loken took a cup and swallowed a fiery mouthful.

He sucked in a breath as it went down. ‘Tastes just like it. Maybe even stronger.’

‘Aye, well, can’t have folk thinking the Wolves make something weaker than the X Legion,’ said Bror. ‘We’d never hear the end of it.’

‘So what is it you really want?’ said Loken. ‘I’m not much in the mood for company.’

‘Don’t be foolish, man,’ scoffed Bror. ‘Any time you walk away from a fight is just the time to be with your brothers.’

‘Even when I failed?’

Bror leaned forward and aimed his cup at Loken. ‘We didn’t fail,’ he said. ‘We did what we set out to do, we marked the Vengeful Spirit. When the Wolf King comes to fight Horus, he’ll have an easier time of it because of what we did.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Loken not wishing to dwell on broken promises. ‘But Lupercal knows about the futharc sigils.’

Bror sighed. ‘He won’t find them all, and do you think I’d make them all work by being seen. Ah, Loken, you’ve a lot to learn about how clever the Rout really are.’

‘I lost half the men under my command.’

Bror refilled his cup and said, ‘Listen, you didn’t lose them. They died. It happens. But you don’t make sense of deaths in solitude. Mortals might, but we’re not mortals. We’re a brotherhood. A brotherhood of warriors, and that’s what makes us strong. I thought you knew that?’

‘I think maybe I’d forgotten,’ said Loken.

‘Aye, you and this one both,’ said Bror, nodding towards Severian.

‘Alone is where I do my best work,’ said Severian.

‘That’s as maybe, but the rest of us fight best when we fight with our brothers,’ said Bror, knocking back his drink and continuing without pause. ‘It’s fighting for the man next to you. It’s fighting for the man next to him and the one next to him. I heard what you said to Horus, so I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. But what you’re after? You already have it. Right here, right now. With us.’

Loken nodded and held his cup out for a refill.

‘Right, enough with the sermonising,’ said Severian. ‘We want to know what Iacton Qruze gave you. Do you still have it?’

‘I do, but I don’t know what to make of it.’

‘Let’s see it then,’ said Bror.

Loken reached up to a small alcove above his bunk and lifted down a metal box. A box very like the one he’d left aboard the Vengeful Spirit, filled with his few keepsakes of war.

He opened it and lifted out the object Qruze had pressed into his palm. A disc of hardened red wax affixed to a long strip of yellowed seal paper.

‘His Oath of Moment?’ said Severian.

‘The one Mersadie Oliton had me give to Iacton.’

Loken turned it around, so that Bror and Severian could see what was written on the oath paper.

They read the word and looked at Loken.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Bror.

‘I don’t know,’ said Loken, staring down at the word.

Its letters were inked in red that had faded to rust brown.

Scratched by something needle-sharp and precise.

Murder.

3

The corridors of Molech’s Enlightenment were cold and cramped. Vivyen didn’t like it here, there were too many people, and no one seemed to know anything about what was happening. She’d seen lots of soldiers, and daddy told her that meant they were safe.

Vivyen certainly didn’t feel safe.

She huddled in a widened transit corridor, below a ventilation duct that sometimes blew warm air and sometimes blew cold. Her daddy talked in low voices with Noama and Kjell, and they gave her funny looks when she asked if they’d ever see Alivia again.

Miska had her head on Vivyen’s shoulders.

She was sleeping.

Vivyen needed to pee, but didn’t want to wake her sister.

To take her mind off her filling bladder, she pulled out the dog-eared storybook Alivia had given her in the press of bodies at the starport. She couldn’t read the words, they were in some old language Alivia had called Dansk, but she liked looking at the pictures.

She didn’t need to know the words. She’d heard the stories often enough that she could recite them off by heart. And sometimes when she looked at the words, it was like she did understand them, like the story wanted to be read and was unfolding itself in her mind.

The strangeness of that thought didn’t register at all.

It made sense to her and it just… was.

She flipped through the yellowed pages, looking for a picture to conjure the right words into her head.

A page with a young girl sitting at the edge of the ocean caught her eye and she nodded to herself. The girl was very beautiful, but her legs were fused together and ended in the wide tail of a fish. She liked this story; the tale of a young girl who, for the sake of true love, gives up her existence in one realm to earn a place in another.