The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Loken looked up as the shimmering aegis-field rippled with energy across the wedge of light above them. He saw no difference in its appearance, but assumed the Iron Hand had improved its performance in ways he wasn’t equipped to register. The field’s mechanics concealed the platform’s location via a blend of refractive fields and geomagnetic scramblers. To all intents and purposes, the entrance of the landing field was invisible.

Voitek stood and the servo-arms arranged themselves across his back and midriff with a clatter of folding metal. Voitek’s left arm was a brutal augmetic from the elbow down, gleaming silver and kept lustrous by a regime of polishing that went beyond obsessive.

‘If it’s that good, will Rassuah be able to find it?’ asked Varren.

‘She already has,’ grumbled Voitek, his voice artificially rendered and grating through a constant burble of machine noise.

‘Then let’s be waiting for her,’ said Loken.

The five warriors climbed a switchback of iron stairs to the raised platform as the aegis-field rippled with the passage of an aircraft. A bare metal Valkyrie assault carrier descended on rippling cones of jetfire, deafening in the close confines of the shaft. The air became hot and metallic as it turned ninety degrees on its axis to land with its rear quarters aligned with the embarkation ramps.

‘You got them all?’ asked Varren.

‘All four,’ confirmed Loken.

‘Does word come of where we are bound?’ asked Rubio.

‘Saturn’s sixth moon,’ said Loken. ‘To pick up Iacton Qruze.’

‘And after Titan?’ said Ares Voitek. ‘The Warmaster?’

‘We’ll learn that when we are assembled,’ said Loken as the roar of the Valkyrie’s engines diminished and its assault ramp dropped.

Four figures marched from its troop compartment, all in the burnished silver of the Knights Errant and armed with a variety of weaponry. Loken knew them from their data files, but even without that information it would have been child’s play to identify the four warriors.

Bror Tyrfingr; tall, slender and hollow-cheeked, with a long mane of snow-white hair and a loping stride. A Space Wolf.

Rama Karayan; keeping to the shadows, shaven headed, sallow of complexion and dark eyed. Without doubt a son of Corax.

The shaven headed warrior with a forked beard waxed to points could only be Altan Nohai, an Apothecary of the White Scars.

And finally, Callion Zaven. Patrician and haughty, his bearing was a hair’s breadth from arrogant. Zaven’s gaze swept over the waiting warriors, as though judging their worth. A true warrior of the Emperor’s Children.

Loken heard Ares Voitek’s vox-grille blurt a hash of static, and didn’t need Mechanicum augmetics to translate his bone-deep anger at seeing a warrior from the Legion that had murdered his primarch.

The four new arrivals halted at the base of the ramp, and both groups took a moment to gauge the measure of the other. Loken took a step forward, but it was Tyrfingr who spoke first.

‘You’re Loken?’ he said.

‘I am.’

Tyrfingr extended his hand and Loken took it in the old way, palm to wrist. Tyrfingr’s other hand shot up and gripped the back of Loken’s neck, as if to tear out his throat with his teeth.

‘Bror Tyrfingr,’ he said. ‘You brought the silver wolf to bring down the rogue wolf. That’s the best decision you’ll ever make, but if I think your roots are weak, I’ll kill you myself.’

SIX Nine-tenths of the lore / Tarnhelm / Adoratrice

1

Though its original purpose had been subverted, the so-called ‘Quiet Order’ of the Sons of Horus still met in secret. The dormitory halls had once housed thousands of deckhands, but only echoes dwelled here in the normal run of things.

Before Isstvan, a time that no longer held meaning for the Legion, the lodge had met only as often as campaign necessity allowed. It had been an indulgence permitted by the primarch, encouraged even, but always subservient to the demands of war. Now it met regularly as the Sons of Horus learned more of the secret arts.

Close to a thousand warriors gathered in the long, vaulted chamber, an army of sea-green plate, transverse helm-crests and crimson mantles. War-blackened banners hung from the dormitory arches, and bloodied trophies were speared on long pike shafts along the chamber’s length. Wide bowls of promethium billowed chemical fumes and orange flame. A slow drum beat of fists on thighs echoed from the walls of stone and steel.

The sense of anticipation was palpable.

Serghar Targost felt it too, but he forced himself to keep his steps measured and his bearing regal. The captain of the Seventh Company was broad and powerful, as were all legionaries, but there was a density to him that gave sparring partners pause when they drew his name in the training cages. His blunt features were not those of a true son, and the old scar bisecting his forehead had been overwritten by a more heinous wound.