The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Loken never thought to hear such a bald admission from any primarch, let alone the Wolf King. Its frank honesty lodged in his heart, and he would take Leman Russ’s words to the grave.

‘Then what can I do?’ he said. ‘Horus must be stopped, and if you’re going to be the one doing it, then I want to help.’

Russ nodded and said, ‘You were part of my brother’s inner council, his… what did you call it? The Mournival. You were there the day he turned traitor, and you know the Sons of Horus in a way I cannot.’

Loken felt the import of the primarch’s next words before he said them, like the tension in the air before a storm.

‘You will go back to your Legion like the aptrgangr that walks unseen in the wilds of Fenris,’ said Russ. ‘Lay a hunter’s trail within the rogue wolf’s lair. Reveal the flaw to which he is blind, and I can slay him.’

‘Go back to the Sons of Horus?’ said Loken.

‘Aye,’ said Russ. ‘My brothers all have a weakness, but I believe that only one of his own can see that of Horus. I know Horus as a brother, you know him as a father, and there are none who can bring down fathers like their sons.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Loken, shaking his head. ‘I barely knew him at all. I thought I did, but everything he told me was a lie.’

‘Not everything,’ said Russ. ‘Before this madness, Horus was the best of us, but even the best are not perfect.’

‘Horus can be beaten,’ added Malcador. ‘He is a fanatic, and that’s how I know he can be beaten. Because beneath whatever horrors drive them, fanatics always hide a secret doubt.’

‘And you think I know what that is?’

‘Not yet,’ said Russ. ‘But I’m confident you will.’

Loken stood as the Wolf King’s certainty filled him. He sensed the breath of someone standing near him, the nearness of the ghost that finally convinced him to accept Malcador’s summons to Terra.

‘Very well, Lord Russ, I will be your pathfinder,’ said Loken, extending his hand. ‘You may have your sights set on the Warmaster, but there are those within the ranks of the Sons of Horus to whom I owe death.’

Russ shook his hand and said, ‘Have a care, Garviel Loken. This isn’t a path of vengeance I’m setting you on, nor is it one of execution. Leave such things to the Rout. It’s what we do best.’

‘I can’t do this alone,’ said Loken, turning to Malcador.

‘No, you cannot,’ agreed Malcador, reaching to take Loken’s hand. ‘The Knights Errant are yours to command in this. Choose who you will, with my blessing.’

The Sigillite glanced down at Loken’s palm, seeing the fading echo of a bruise in the shape of a gibbous moon.

‘A wound?’ asked Malcador.

‘A reminder.’

‘A reminder of what?’

‘Something I still have to do,’ said Loken, looking up to the ruined citadel high on the cliff side as the hooded figure of a man he knew to be dead withdrew into its shadow.

Loken turned from Russ and Malcador, following the snaking path that led back down the valley. As he left, the clouds gathered beneath the dome split apart.

And a warm rain began to fall in the Hegemon.

2

The blood-red Knight climbed through the rocky canyons and evergreen highlands of the Untar Mesas with long, loping strides. At nearly nine metres tall, its mechanised bulk simply splintered the lower branches of the towering bitterleaf trees it didn’t bother to avoid. Some broke apart on impact, some were sheared cleanly by the hard edges of the Knight’s ion shield. A wonder of ancient technology, the Knight was lighter kin to the Titan Legions, a lithe predator to their lumbering war engines.

Its name was Banelash, and a crackling whip writhed at one shoulder mount. Upon the other, banked racks of heavy stubber barrels whined with the energy stored in their propellant stacks.

The Knight’s hull plates were vermillion and ebony, segmented and overlapping like burnished naga scales. It had reaved the borders between warring states of Molech a thousand years before the coming of the Imperium. The Knight was a predator stalking the mountain forests, seeking dangerous quarry to bring down.

Encased within the pilot’s compartment, Raeven Devine, second-born son of Molech’s Imperial commander, let the sensorium surround him with graded representations of the landscape. Plugged into Banelash via the invasive technology of the Throne Mechanicum, its every motion and stride was his to command.

His limbs were its limbs; what it felt, he felt.

Sometimes, when he rode into the secret canyons to join Lyx and her intoxicated followers, the Knight’s heart would surge with memories of its previous pilots; a ghostly parade of wars he’d never fought, foes he hadn’t killed and blood he’d never shed.

Its powered whip had belonged to Raeven’s great-great-grandfather, who was said to have slain the last of the great nagahydra of distant Ophir.