The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Another gunship crashed. A Thunderhawk this time. It went in hard, nose first. A fan of hard, wet shale sprayed out before it like bullets. A dozen legionaries dropped, killed as cleanly as if by sniper fire. A sharp-edged shard smashed Aximand’s visor. The left lens cracked. His vision blurred.

The gunship’s wing dipped and ploughed the shale, flipping the aircraft over onto its back. The other wing snapped like tinder as it careened along the sand, coming apart with every bouncing impact. The spinning, burning wreckage crashed into a knot of Sons of Horus and they vanished in a sheeting fireball as its engines exploded. Turbine blades flew like swords.

‘Lupercal’s oath!’ swore Aximand.

‘Never thought I’d be glad to be a footslogger in an assault,’ said Durso, lifting the golden icon tied to his shield grip.

Aximand shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Look.’

The three Land Raiders before them looked like they had been struck by the fists of a Titan’s demolition hammer. One was entirely gutted, a blackened skeleton that held only molten corpses. A handful of warriors staggered from the second. Their armour was black – originally so, not scorched by the fires.

‘Aren’t the Justaerin with the First Captain?’ said Durso, recognising the heavy plates of the Terminators.

‘Not all of them,’ said Aximand.

The third Land Raider’s lupine pennants were ablaze, and it had been split open by a ferocious impact.

Horus was down on one knee, his taloned hand pressed to the side of his Land Raider, as though mourning its passing. Blood slicked one side of his dark battleplate and a length of pipework pierced his side like a spear.

‘Lupercal,’ said Durso, awed by a single warrior in the midst of such industrial-scale slaughter. But what a warrior.

‘Sons of Horus!’ shouted Aximand, pushing onward. ‘Rally to me!’

Smoke billowed from the Land Raider’s interior. Twisted warriors stepped through it, their bodies on fire. The lenses of their helms shone the bleached white of bone left in dusty tombs.

Not Justaerin, something far worse.

What had Maloghurst called them?

Luperci, the Brothers of the Wolf.

Serghar Targost had called them something else as the narthecium servitors finally removed the sutures holding his throat together.

Twin Flames.

Now Aximand knew why. Their armour was utterly black. Not painted black like the Justaerin and not from the vehicle’s destruction, but from the infernal warpfires burning within them.

Ger Gerradon was first out. Aximand could still picture the two swords plunging into his chest, the lake of blood that formed around him as he bled out on the floor of the Mausolytic. Gerradon cared nothing for the fires lapping his armour. Nor did the seven other figures clambering from the wreckage.

Sons of Horus formed up on Aximand, a hundred warriors at least. He couldn’t be sure because of the smoke. Each legionary saw what he saw. The Warmaster threatened.

The Mechanicum had proofed Lupercal’s vehicle against all but a Titan’s fury, and every piece of intelligence suggested that none of the Imperial Legios had any gross-displacement engines yet in the field. So what had done this?

The answer wasn’t long in coming.

They rode out of the smoke, articulated giants in crimson and gold, banners streaming gloriously from their segmented carapaces. The ground shook with the pounding beat of their clawed feet and the ululating skirl of their hunting horns.

Crackling lances and screaming swords held before them, the Knights of Molech charged the Warmaster.

THIRTEEN Beacon / Cornered wolf / I made this

1

He drew in a lungful of hot, metallic air. It burned to breathe, but the alternative was worse. His head pounded and it felt like someone was pressing a steel needle through his left eyeball. His chest hurt, and felt like someone was pressing something considerably larger than a needle through it.

‘Get up,’ said a voice.

Grael Noctua nodded, though the gesture sent the needle deeper into his brain.

‘Get up,’ repeated Ezekyle Abaddon.

Noctua opened his eyes. Imperial strongpoint. Interior burned and ruined. I did this. There was a drop assault and I killed some Thallax. He didn’t think there had been a squad of gloss-black Terminators filling the shattered command centre.

Corposant danced over the titanic plates of their dark armour and Noctua tasted the ice metal flavour of teleport flare.

‘The beacon did its job then?’ he said.

‘About the only thing you managed to get right,’ said Abaddon, directing his warriors with sub-vocal Cthonic argot. ‘The Imperial line’s already rolling up now the Justaerin are here.’

Noctua rolled onto his side, the effort of drawing air into his lungs making him sweat. He pushed himself upright, almost retching with the effort. Upright at last, but unsteady on his feet, Noctua immediately understood the problem. His heart had been destroyed.