The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘Why defend the dead at all?’ said Kibre. ‘Aside from commanding the high ground over an open city, holding the Mausolytica offers no tangible strategic merit. We could have simply shelled it flat, and sent Lithonan’s Army auxiliaries in to kill any survivors.’

‘They knew the Warmaster would want so precious a resource captured intact,’ said Noctua.

‘It’s a house of the dead,’ pressed Kibre. ‘What kind of resource is that?’

‘Now you’re Mournival, why don’t you ask him yourself?’ answered Noctua. Kibre’s head snapped around, unused to being addressed with such informality by a junior officer. Mournival equality was going to take time to bed in with the Widowmaker.

‘Tread lightly, Noctua,’ warned Abaddon. ‘You might be one of us now, but don’t think that exempts you from respect.’

Aximand grinned at Abaddon’s ire. Ezekyle was a warhound on a fraying leash, and Aximand wondered if he knew that was his role.

Of course Ezekyle knew. A warrior did not become First Captain of the Sons of Horus by being too stupid to know his place.

‘Apologies,’ said Noctua, turning to address Kibre directly. ‘No disrespect was intended.’

‘Good,’ said Aximand. ‘Now give Falkus a proper answer.’

‘The Mausolytica occupies the best defensive terrain in the rift valley, but it’s barely fortified,’ said Noctua. ‘Which suggests the Dwellers valued it highly, but didn’t think of it as a military target until Meduson told them it was.’

Aximand nodded and slapped a gauntleted hand on the polished plates of Noctua’s shoulder guard.

‘So why did the Iron Hands think this place was valuable?’ asked Kibre.

‘I have no idea,’ said Aximand.

Only later would he come to understand that the Dwellers would have been far better demolishing the Mausolytic Halls and smashing its machinery to shards than allowing it to fall to the Sons of Horus.

Only much later, when the last violent spasms of galactic war were stilled for a heartbeat, would Aximand learn the colossal mistake they had made in allowing the Mausolytic to endure.

3

They found the primarch in Pilgrim’s Hall, where ancient machinery allowed the Mausolytic’s custodians to access and consult the memories of the dead. The custodians had joined their charges in death, and Horus Lupercal commanded the machines alone.

A colossal cryo-generator throbbed with power in the centre of the echoing chamber, like a templum organ with a multitude of frost-limmed ducts emerging from its misting condensers. Smeared charnel dust patterned its base where the White Scars kill team had thrown off their disguises.

Radiating outward from the generator like the spokes of an illuminated wheel were row upon row of supine bodies in stacked glass cylinders. Aximand had logged twenty-five thousand bodies in this hall alone, and there were fifty similar sized spaces above ground. He hadn’t yet catalogued how many chambers were carved into the plateau’s bedrock.

The Warmaster was easy to see.

His back was to them as he bent over a cylindrical tube hinged out from its gravimetric support field. Twenty Justaerin Terminators stood between them and the Warmaster, armed with photonic-edged falchions and twin-barrelled bolters. Nominally the Warmaster’s bodyguard, the Justaerin were a throwback to a time when war-leaders actually required protection. Horus no more needed their strength of arms to defend him than he needed that of the Mournival, but after Hibou Khan’s ambush, no one was taking any chances.

As ever, the primarch was a lodestone to the eyes, a towering presence to which it was right and proper to offer devotion. An easy smile suggested Horus had only just noticed them, but Aximand didn’t doubt he had been aware of them long before they entered the hall.

Titanic plates of brass-edged jet encased him, the plastron emblazoned with a slitted amber eye flanked by golden wolves. Horus’s right hand was a killing talon, and his left rested upon an enormous mace. Its name was Worldbreaker, and its adamantium haft was featureless save for an eagle pommel-stone, its murder head bronze and black.

The Warmaster had the face of a conquerer, a warrior, a diplomat and a statesman. It could be a kindly face of paternal concern or the last face you ever saw.

Aximand could not yet tell which it was at this moment, but on a day like this such ambiguity was good. To have Lupercal’s humours unknown to those who stood with him would vex those who might yet stand against him.

‘Little Horus,’ said the Warmaster as the Justaerin parted before them like the gates of a ceramite fortress.

The uncanny resemblance Aximand shared with his gene-father had earned him that name, but Hibou Khan had cut that from him with a blade of hard Medusan steel. Legion Apothecaries had done what they could, but the damage was too severe, the edge too sharp and his wounded flesh too melancholic.

Yet for all that his face was raw with disfigurement, the resemblance between Aximand and his primarch had, by some strange physiological alchemy, become even more pronounced.