The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘Damn you, boy, I told you to wait for me!’ snapped his father. ‘You aren’t Knight Seneschal yet! First kill isn’t yours to make.’

The skimmer-bikes circled the two Knights, several retainers dismounting to check the miners for signs of life.

‘As always, your snap judgement of my actions is entirely misplaced,’ said Raeven, lowering his pilot’s canopy to the mallahgra’s body and studying the shredded mass of its flanks and chest. By themselves, none of these injuries were mortal, but each would have been excruciatingly painful. The wound in its belly had killed the beast, a disembowelling cut made by something viciously sharp and with the power to rip through tough hide to the organs beneath.

Raeven pulled the canopy back to its full height and said, ‘I didn’t kill it.’

‘Don’t lie to me, boy.’

‘You know me, father, I’m not shy of taking credit for things others have done, but this beast didn’t fall to me. Look at these wounds.’

Hellblade leaned over the corpse, and Raeven took a moment to study his father’s ravaged features in the manifold. Cyprian Devine had eschewed juvenat treatments that were purely cosmetic, only allowing those that actively prolonged his life. In Cyprian’s world, all else was vanity, a character flaw he saw most evidently in his second son.

Raeven’s older half-brother, Albard, had always been Cyprian’s favoured son, but a failed attempt to bond with his Knight forty-three years ago had broken his mind and left him a virtual catatonic. Kept locked away in one of the Devine Towers, his continued existence was a stain on the ancient name of the House.

‘These tears in the beast’s flesh are messy, like something your chain-sabre would do,’ said Raeven as the Devine retainers carried the bodies of the miners to the skimmer-bikes. From the attention one man was getting from a medicae, it appeared there was actually a survivor.

‘The female must have done this,’ declared his father. ‘They must have fought over the spoils and she gutted him.’

‘An unlikely explanation,’ said Raeven, circling the corpse.

‘You have a better one?’

‘If the female killed her mate, then why did she leave the bodies?’ said Raeven. ‘No, something drove her from here.’

‘What could possibly drive a female mallahgra from her mate?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Raeven, lifting one of his Knight’s clawed feet and tipping the hulking mallahgra onto its front. ‘Something that can do this.’

Bloodied craters punctured the creature’s back, each one unmistakably an exit wound of explosive ammunition.

‘It’s been shot?’ hissed Cyprian. ‘Damn it all. House Kaushik, it’s got to be. Those faithless scavengers must have picked up the distress petition and sent their own Knights into the mountains, hoping to steal glory from my table!’

‘Look at these wounds,’ pointed out Raeven. ‘House Kaushik are little better than Tazkhar savages. Their Sacristans can barely maintain the fusion-powered crankers they favour, let alone anything this powerful.’

His father ignored him and strode towards the tree line where the blood-smeared tracks of the second mallahgra disappeared.

‘Sort out the retainers then follow me,’ ordered Cyprian. ‘The female’s injured, so she can’t have gone far. I’ll have her bloody head above the Argent Gate before morning, boy. And if anyone gets in my way, mark my words, I’ll have their heads up beside it.’

Cyprian walked Hellblade into the darkness beneath the bitterleaf canopy, leaving Raeven to deal with mundane business beneath his notice. Raeven turned Banelash and declined the canopy towards the circle of skimmer-bikes where the dead miners were being strapped down.

He linked with the vox-servile and said, ‘Take the bodies back to whichever hell-hole they were abducted from. Issue standard renumeration for death in service to any dependants and send death notices to the aexactor adepts.’

‘My lord,’ said the senior retainer.

‘Out of curiosity, is the survivor saying anything interesting?’

‘Nothing we can understand, my lord,’ said the medicae, one hand pressed to the side of his helm. ‘It’s doubtful he’ll live much longer.’

‘So he’s saying something?’

‘Yes, my lord.’