The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘Do you think it will be a mobilisation order?’ asked Noctua.

Like all of them, he was eager to be unleashed. The war here was long-ended, and but for a handful of forays beyond the system, the bulk of the Legion had remained in place while their primarch sequestered himself with the dead.

‘Perhaps,’ said Aximand, unwilling to speculate on the Warmaster’s motives for remaining on Dwell. ‘We will know soon enough.’

‘We should be on the move,’ said Kibre. ‘The war gathers momentum while we stagnate with inaction.’

Abaddon halted their march and placed a hand in the centre of the Widowmaker’s breastplate. ‘You think you know the course of war better than your primarch?’

Kibre shook his head. ‘Of course not, I just–’

‘First lesson of the Mournival,’ said Aximand. ‘Never second guess Lupercal.’

‘I wasn’t second guessing him,’ snapped Kibre.

‘Good,’ said Aximand. ‘Then you’ve learned something useful today. Perhaps the Warmaster has found what he needed, perhaps not. Maybe we will have mobilisation orders, maybe we won’t.’

Kibre nodded and Aximand saw him force his volatile humours into balance. ‘As you say, Little Horus. The molten Cthonian core that burns in us all waxes stronger in me than most.’

Aximand chuckled, though the sound was not as he once knew it, the muscles beneath the skin moving in subtly different ways.

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ he said. ‘Just remember that fire needs to be controlled to be useful.’

‘Most of the time,’ added Abaddon, and they moved off again.

They traversed high-vaulted antechambers of fallen pillars and halls of bolt-cratered frescos that had once been battlefields. The air thrummed with the vibration of buried generators and tasted like an embalming workshop. Between murals of cobalt-blue Legion warriors being welcomed with garlands, tens of thousands of names were inlaid on coffered panels with gold leaf.

The interred dead of the Mausolytica.

‘Like the Avenue of Glory and Lament on the Spirit,’ said Aximand, pointing out the fine scriptwork.

Abaddon snorted, not even glancing at the names. ‘It hasn’t been called that since Isstvan.’

‘The necrologists may be gone,’ sighed Aximand, ‘but it is as it has always been, a place to remember the dead.’

They climbed a wide set of marbled steps, crunching over the powdered remains of toppled statues and emerging into a transverse hallway Aximand had fought the length and breadth of; shield raised, Mourn-it-all’s blade high, shoulders squared. Soaked in blood to the elbow.

‘Dreaming again?’ asked Abaddon, noting his fractional pause.

‘I don’t dream,’ snapped Aximand. ‘I’m just thinking how ridiculous it was that an army of men were able to trouble us here. When have we ever faced mortals and found them bothersome?’

Abaddon nodded. ‘The Chainveil fought in the City of Elders. They delayed me.’

No more needed to be said. That any army, mortal or transhuman, could delay Ezekyle Abaddon spoke volumes to their competency and courage.

‘But they all died in the end,’ said Kibre as they passed beneath a great, funerary arch and moved deeper into the tomb complex. ‘Chainveil or ordinary soldiers, they stood against us in the line and we killed them all.’

‘That they stood at all should have told us there were was something else waiting for us,’ said Grael Noctua.

‘How so?’ said Aximand, knowing the answer, but wanting to hear it articulated.

‘The men who fought us here, they believed they could win.’

‘Their defence was orchestrated by Meduson of the Iron Tenth,’ said Aximand. ‘It’s understandable they believed him.’

‘Only Legion presence gives mortals that kind of backbone,’ continued Noctua. ‘With the Tenth Legion’s war-leader and the kill teams of the Fifth Legion in place, they thought they had a chance. They thought they could kill the Warmaster.’

Kibre shook his head. ‘Even if Lupercal had fallen for their transparent ploy and come himself, he would have easily slain them.’

More than likely Kibre was right. It was inconceivable that a mere five legionaries could have ended the Warmaster. Even with surprise in their corner, the idea that Horus could be brought low by a rush team of blade killers seemed ludicrous.

‘He outwitted a sniper’s bullet on Dagonet, and he evaded the assassins’ swords on Dwell,’ said Abaddon, kicking over an engraved urn emblazoned with a splintered Ultima. ‘Meduson must have been desperate to think the Scars stood a chance.’

‘Desperate is exactly what he was,’ said Aximand, feeling the itch where his face had been reattached. ‘Just imagine if they had succeeded.’

No one answered, no one could conceive of the Legion without Lupercal at its head. Without one, the other did not exist.

But Shadrak Meduson had failed to lure the Warmaster into his trap, and Dwell had fallen hard.

Against Horus Lupercal’s armies, everything fell eventually.