The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Over Tyana Kourion and Castor Alcade’s misgivings, Raeven had immediately mustered his household and marched north to Avadon with ten of his Knights. Two of his sons came with him, Egelic and Banan, while his middle son, Osgar, remained in Lupercalia to retain a ruling presence.

And after a full night’s gruelling march around the spur of the Untar Mesas, and over unending vistas of agricultural land…

Nothing.

Their honourable machines waited like common footsoldiers, awaiting word from Edoraki Hakon on when they might deploy. Denied a place in the order of battle by that humourless Army sow sent spasms of disgust along his spine.

Banelash reacted to his anger by pawing the ground with its clawed feet. Its threat auspex bathed his sensorium in red, and its weapons powered up with a whine of servos. Nearby Army reserve forces backed away from the Knights as their warhorns blared.

‘We should be over that ridge, father,’ said Egelic, Raeven’s oldest son. ‘Why are we not fighting?’

‘Because outsiders have taken Molech,’ hissed Banan, Raeven’s youngest. ‘When the Imperium came, they cut our House’s balls off.’

‘Enough,’ snapped Raeven. Banan was almost thirty and should know better, but his mother doted on him and denied him nothing. His manners were boorish, his arrogance as monstrous as his sense of entitlement.

He reminded Raeven a lot of his younger self, except Banan had none of the charm and charisma he’d had to carry off arrogance and make it look like confidence.

But in this case, Banan was also right.

‘Come with me,’ he said, marching from the area they’d been apportioned and striding through the trenchlines and redoubts. Approaching the forward edge of battle, Raeven linked to the battle cogitators in Edoraki Hakon’s command bunker. Inloading data swarmed the sensorium, and Banelash growled in anticipation.

It could smell the blood and hear the crash of gunfire. This was war, real war, a chance to test itself against a foe more interesting than a rogue mallahgra or a pack of xenosmilus. Raeven felt the echoes of all the warriors who’d piloted Banelash before him, heard the mingled whispers of their battle hunger pump through his body like a shot of ‘slaught.

Raeven doubted he could have turned back even if he wanted to.

He strode through the jumble of ammo depots, Trojans, artillery pits and rear echelon troops. His Knights followed behind, boasting of the enemies they would kill. The ground rose sharply towards the front and the sky raged as though a phantasmagorical storm blazed like gods in battle in the heavens.

Insistent warnings sounded in the sensorium, tagged with Marshal Hakon’s personal signifier. He ignored them and pushed on, striding on to the edge of the cliff.

The end of the causeway was half a kilometre distant, and the space between it and the cliffs was a shattered graveyard of twisted metal and fire. A hellscape of blazing craters, scores of wrecked tanks and hundreds of dismembered bodies.

Thousands of giant warriors pushed forward behind heavy breacher shields. Against small-arms fire and even medium gauge weapons they offered effective protection, but against the kinds of guns Hakon had trained on them, they just weren’t up to the job. Each advance left a trail of bodies, limbless corpses and tributaries of blood to fill craters with red lakes.

Raeven had never seen so many Space Marines, hadn’t even conceived there could be so many at all. Banelash tugged at his mind, urging him to commit, to ride out in glory and smash one of those advancing shield-wedges apart.

‘Come on, father,’ urged Banan. ‘Let’s break them! Smash each one apart in turn until we roll the entire line up.’

He wanted to give the order. Oh, how he wanted to give that order.

‘Yes, we could break one, probably two, maybe even three of the shieldwalls, but that will be all,’ he said, feeling Banelash’s ire at his refusal to ride. ‘Then we would be overwhelmed by the artillery and dragged down by infantry. An ignoble death. Hardly knightly.’

His Knight sent a spasm of neural feedback through his spine at his resistance, and Raeven winced at the severity of it. When he opened his eyes, they were immediately drawn to an up-armoured Land Raider as it smashed through a rockcrete tidal wall, slamming down on bollard tank traps and crushing them beneath its weight.

A banner streamed from the rear of both track guards, each bearing a rearing wolf insignia. Gunfire sparked from the Land Raider’s armour and Raeven saw the direct hit of a lascannon strike its flank where the right-side sponson had been sheared off. It should have blown a hole right into the vehicle.