The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

And still Mortarion pulled on the chain, pulling the screaming gunship closer.

‘I’ve hooked him!’ yelled Mortarion. ‘Now finish it!’

The pilots fought to escape his grip. The Fire Raptor’s engines shrieked in power, but hand over hand, the downed primarch reeled the gunship in like a belligerent angler.

Horus appeared at Mortarion’s side, running.

Even in his towering armour he was running. Jumping.

He vaulted onto the shattered remains of a cryo-capsule and launched himself through the air. Hooked by the Death Lord, the gunship was powerless to evade. Horus landed on its prow and knelt to grip the haft of Silence as the gunship lurched with the impact of his landing.

He saw the pilots’ faces and drank in their terror. Horus never normally gave any thought to the men he killed. They were soldiers doing a job. Misguided and fighting for a lie, but simply soldiers doing what they were ordered to do.

But these men had hurt him. They’d tried to murder him and his brothers. They’d lain in wait for an opportunity to behead their enemy. That he’d been foolish enough to believe Shadrak Meduson would only have one plan in place inflamed Horus’s humours as much as the attempt itself.

He lifted his right arm, and Worldbreaker’s killing head caught the firelight.

The mace swung and demolished the pilot’s compartment.

The last Fire Raptor swung around the dome. Seeing him atop the second gunship and knowing it was doomed, the Fire Raptor’s cannons roared.

High explosive, armour penetrating shells ripped along the fuselage of the wallowing gunship, shearing it in two. It exploded in a geysering plume of fire, but Horus was already in the air.

Silence in one hand, Worldbreaker in the other, he landed on the back of the last gunship, slewing it around. The Fire Raptor gunned its engines as it tried to shake him from its back. Horus swung Silence in a wide arc and split the Fire Raptor’s spine.

Still roaring, the gunship’s engines wrenched free with a screech of tortured metal. Horus swept Worldbreaker around like a woodsman’s axe and its flanged head ploughed through the gunship’s fuselage, obliterating the pilots and turning the prow to scrap.

The shattered remains fell away as Horus dropped into the dome with both Silence and Worldbreaker held out at his sides.

An explosion mushroomed behind him.

Horus dropped both weapons and ran to Mortarion. He knelt and reached out to clasp his blood-soaked brother to his burned breast. Mortarion’s arms hung limp, tendons ripped from bones and muscles acid-burned raw.

Neither moved, a living tableau of the ashen sculptures of the dead left in an atomic detonation’s wake.

One touch and they would crumble to cinders.

‘My brother,’ wept Horus. ‘What have they done to you?’

THREE The Bringer of Rain / House Devine / First kill

1

At first, Loken thought he’d misheard. Surely Russ hadn’t said what he thought he’d just said. He searched the Wolf King’s eyes for any sign that this was another test, but saw nothing to convince him that Russ hadn’t just revealed his purpose.

‘Kill Horus?’ he said.

Russ nodded and began packing up the hnefatafl board, as though the matter were already concluded. Loken felt as though he had somehow missed the substance of a vital discussion.

‘You’re going to kill Horus?’

‘I am, but I need your help to do it.’

Loken laughed, now certain this was a joke.

‘You’re going to kill Horus?’ he repeated, carefully enunciating every word to avoid misunderstanding. ‘And you need my help?’

Russ looked over at Malcador with a frown. ‘Why does he keep asking me the same question? I know he’s not simple, so why is he being so dense?’

‘I think your directness after so oblique an approach has him confused.’

‘I was perfectly clear, but I will lay it out one last time.’

Loken forced himself to listen intently to the Wolf King’s every word, knowing there would be no hidden meanings, no subtext and no ulterior motives. What Russ required of him would be exactly as it was spoken.

‘I am going to lead the Rout in battle against Horus, and I am going to kill him.’

Loken sat back on the rock, still trying to process the idea of a combat between Leman Russ and Horus. Loken had seen both primarchs make war over the last century, but when it came down to blood and death he saw only one outcome.

‘Horus Lupercal will kill you,’ said Loken.

Had he named any other individual, Loken had no doubt the Wolf King would have torn his throat out before he’d even known what was happening. Instead, Russ nodded.

‘You’re right,’ he said, his eyes taking on a distant look as he relived old battles. ‘I’ve fought every one of my brothers over the centuries, either in training or with blooded blade. I know for a fact I can kill any one of them if had to… but Horus.’

Russ shook his head and his next words were spoken like a shameful confession, each one a bitter curse.

‘He’s the only one I don’t know if I can beat.’