‘No,’ Sindermann replied more firmly. ‘There are no spirits, no daemons, no ghosts in the dark edges of the cosmos. Truth has shown us this.’
‘I’ve studied the archive, Kyril,’ Loken replied. ‘Samus was the name the people of this world gave to their archfiend. He was imprisoned in these mountains, so their legends say.’
‘Legends, Garviel. Only legends. Myths. We have learned much during our time amongst the stars, and the most pertinent of those things is that there is always a rational explanation, even for the most mysterious events.’
‘An Astartes draws his weapon and kills his own, whilst claiming to be a daemon from hell? Rationalise that, sir.’
Sindermann rose. ‘Calm yourself, Garviel, and I will.’
Loken didn’t reply. Sindermann walked over to Jubal’s body and stared at it. Jubal’s open, staring eyes were rolled back in his skull and utterly bloodshot. The flesh of his face was drawn and shrivelled, as if he had aged ten thousand years. Strange patterns, like clusters of blemishes or moles, were visible on the painfully stretched skin.
‘These marks,’ said Sindermann. ‘These vile signs of wasting. Could they be the traces of disease or infection?’
‘What?’ Loken asked.
‘A virus, perhaps? A reaction to toxicity? A plague?’
‘Astartes are resistant,’ Loken said.
‘To most things, but not to everything. I think this could be some contagion. Something so virulent that it destroyed Jubal’s mind along with his body. Plagues can drive men insane, and corrupt their flesh.’
‘Then why only him?’ asked Loken.
Sindermann shrugged. ‘Perhaps some tiny flaw in his gene-code?’
‘But he behaved as if possessed,’ Loken said, repeating the word with brutal emphasis.
‘We’ve all been exposed to the enemy’s propaganda. If Jubal’s mind was deranged by fever, he might simply have been repeating the words he’d heard.’
Loken thought for a moment. ‘You speak a lot of sense, Kyril,’ he said.
‘Always.’
‘A plague,’ Loken nodded. ‘It’s a sound explanation.’
‘You’ve suffered a tragedy today, Garviel, but spirits and daemons played no part in it. Now get to work. You need to lock down this area in quarantine and get a medicae taskforce here. There may yet be further outbreaks. Non-Astartes, such as myself, might be less resistant, and poor Jubal’s corpse may yet be a vector for disease.’
Sindermann looked back down at the body. ‘Great Terra,’ he said. ‘He has been so ravaged. I weep to see this waste.’
With a creak of dried sinew, Jubal raised his head and stared up at Sindermann with blood-red eyes.
‘Look out,’ he wheezed.
EUPHRATI KEELER HAD stopped taking picts. She stowed away her picter. The things they were seeing in the narrow tunnels of the fortress went beyond all decency to record. She had never imagined that human forms could be dismantled so grievously, so totally. The stench of blood in the close, cold air made her gag, despite her rebreather.
‘I want to go back now,’ Van Krasten said. He was shaking and upset. ‘There is no music here. I am sick to my stomach.’
Euphrati was inclined to agree.
‘No,’ said Borodin Flora in a muffled, steely voice. ‘We must see it all. We are chosen remembrancers. This is our duty.’
Euphrati was quite sure Flora was making an effort not to throw up, but she warmed to the sentiment. This was their duty. This was the very reason they had been summoned. To record and commemorate the Crusade of Man. Whatever it looked like.
She tugged her picter back out of its carry-bag and took a few, tentative shots. Not of the dead, for that would be indecent, but of the blood on the walls, the smoke fuming in the wind along the narrow tunnels, the piles of scattered, spent shell cases littering the black-flecked ground.
Teams of army troopers moved past them, lugging bodies away for disposal. Some looked at the three of them curiously.
‘Are you lost?’ one asked.
‘Not at all. We’re allowed to be here,’ Flora said.
‘Why would you want to be?’ the man wondered.
Euphrati took a series of long shots of troopers, almost in silhouette, gathering up body parts at a tunnel junction. It chilled her to see it, and she hoped her picts would have the same effect on her audience.
‘I want to go back,’ Van Krasten said again.
‘Don’t stray, or you’ll get lost,’ Euphrati warned.
‘I think I might be sick,’ Van Krasten admitted.
He was about to retch when a shrill, harrowing scream echoed down the tunnels.
‘What the hell was that?’ Euphrati whispered.
JUBAL ROSE. THE ropes binding him sheared and split, releasing his arms. He screamed, and then screamed again. His frantic wails soared and echoed around the chamber.
Sindermann stumbled backwards in total panic. Loken ran forward and tried to restrain the reanimating madman.
Jubal struck out with one thrashing fist and caught Loken in the chest. Loken flew backwards into the pool with a crash of water.
Jubal turned, hunched. Saliva dangled from his slack mouth, and his bloodshot eyes spun like compasses at true north.
‘Please, oh please…’ Sindermann gabbled, backing away.
‘Look. Out.’ The words crawled sluggishly out of Jubal’s drooling mouth. He lumbered forward. Something was happening to him, something malign and catastrophic. He was bulging, expanding so furiously that his armour began to crack and shatter. Sections of broken plate split and fell away from him, exposing thick arms swollen with gangrene and fibrous growths. His taut flesh was pallid and blue. His face was distorted, puffy and livid, and his tongue flopped out of his rotting mouth, long and serpentine.
He raised his meaty, distended hands triumphantly, exposing fingernails grown into dark hooks and psoriatic claws.
‘Samus is here,’ he drawled.
Sindermann fell on his knees before the misshapen brute. Jubal reeked of corruption and sore wounds. He shambled forward. His form flickered and danced with blurry yellow light, as if he was not quite in phase with the present.
A bolter round struck him in the right shoulder and detonated against the rindy integument his skin had become. Shreds of meat and gobbets of pus sprayed in all directions. In the chamber doorway, Nero Vipus took aim again.
The thing that had once been Xavyer Jubal grabbed Sindermann and threw him at Vipus. The pair of them crashed backwards against the wall, Vipus dropping his weapon in an effort to catch and cushion Sindermann and spare the frail bones of the elderly iterator.
The Jubal-thing shuffled past them into the tunnel, leaving a noxious trail of dripped blood and wretched, discoloured fluid in its wake.
EUPHRATI SAW THE thing coming for them and tried to decide whether to scream or raise her picter. In the end, she did both. Van Krasten lost control of his bodily functions, and fell to the floor in a puddle of his own manufacture. Borodin Flora just backed away, his mouth moving silently.
The Jubal-thing advanced down the tunnel towards them. It was gross and distorted, its skin stretched by humps and swellings. It had become so gigantic that what little remained of its pearl-white armour dragged behind it like metal rags. Strange puncta and moles marked its flesh. Jubal’s face had contorted into a dog snout, wherein his human teeth stuck out like stray ivory markers, displaced by the thin, transparent crop of needle fangs that now invested his mouth. There were so many fangs that his mouth could no longer close. His eyes were blood pools. Jerky, spasmodic flashes of yellow light surrounded him, making vague shapes and patterns. They caused Jubal’s movements to seem wrong, as if he was a pict feed image, badly cut and running slightly too fast.
He snatched up Tolemew Van Krasten and dashed him like a toy against the walls of the tunnel, back and forth, with huge, slamming, splattering effect, so that when he let go, little of Tolemew still existed above the sternum.
‘Oh Terra!’ Keeler cried, retching violently. Borodin Flora stepped past her to confront the monster, and made the defiant sign of the aquila.
‘Begone!’ he cried out. ‘Begone!’
The Jubal-thing leaned forward, opened its mouth to a hitherto unimaginable width, revealing an unguessable number of needle teeth, and bit off Borodin Flora’s head and upper body. The remainder of his form crumpled to the floor, ejecting blood like a pressure hose.
Euphrati Keeler sank to her knees. Terror had rendered her powerless to run. She accepted her fate, largely because she had no idea what it was to be. In the final moments of her life, she reassured herself that at least she hadn’t added to brutal death the indignity of wetting herself in the face of such incomprehensible horror.
TEN
The Warmaster and his son
No matter the ferocity or ingenuity of the foe
Official denial
‘YOU KILLED IT?’
‘Yes,’ said Loken, gazing at the dirt floor, his mind somewhere else. ‘You’re sure?’
Loken looked up out of his reverie. ‘What?’ ‘I need you to be sure,’ Abaddon said. You killed it?’ ‘Yes.’ Loken was sitting on a crude hardwood stool in one of the longhouses in Kasheri. Night had fallen outside, bringing with it a keening, malevolent wind that shrieked around the gorge and the Whisperhead peaks. A dozen oil lamps lit the place with a feeble ochre glow. ‘We killed it. Nero and I together, with our bolters. It took ninety rounds at full auto. It burst and burned, and we used a flamer to cremate all that remained.’ Abaddon nodded. ‘How many people know?’ ‘About that last act? Myself, Nero, Sindermann and the remembrancer, Keeler. We cut the thing down just before it bit her in half. Everyone else who saw it is dead.’
‘What have you said?’
‘Nothing, Ezekyle.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I’ve said nothing because I don’t know what to say.’
Abaddon scooped up another stool and brought it over to sit down facing Loken. Both were in full plate, their helms removed. Abaddon hunched his head low to catch Loken’s eyes.
‘I’m proud of you, Garviel. You hear me? You dealt with this well.’
‘What did I deal with?’ Loken asked sombrely.
‘The situation. Tell me, before Jubal rose again, who knew of the murders?’
‘More. Those of Brakespur that survived. All of my officers. I wanted their advice.’
‘I’ll speak to them,’ Abaddon muttered. ‘This mustn’t get out. Our line will be as you set it. Victory, splendid but unexceptional. The Tenth crashed the insurgents, though losses were taken in two squads. But that is war. We expect casualties. The insurgents fought bitterly and formidably to the last. Hellebore and Brakespur bore the brunt of their rage, but Sixty-Three Nineteen is advanced to full compliance. Glory the Tenth, and the Luna Wolves, glory the Warmaster. The rest will remain a matter of confidence within the inner circle. Can Sindermann be trusted to keep this close?’
‘Of course, though he is very shaken.’
‘And the remembrancer? Keener, was it?’
‘Keeler. Euphrati Keeler. She’s in shock. I don’t know her. I don’t know what she’ll do, but she has no idea what it was that attacked her. I told her it was a wild beast. She didn’t see Jubal… change. She doesn’t know it was him.’
‘Well, that’s something. I’ll place an injunction on her, if necessary. Perhaps a word will be sufficient. I’ll repeat the wild beast story, and tell her we’re keeping the matter confidential for morale’s sake. The remembrancers must be kept away from this.’
‘Two of them died.’
Abaddon got up. ‘A tragic mishap during deployment. A landing accident. They knew the risks they were taking. It will be just a footnote blemish to an otherwise exemplary undertaking.’
Loken looked up at the first captain. ‘Are we trying to forget this even happened, Ezekyle? For I cannot. And I will not.’
‘I’m saying this is a military incident and will remain restricted. It’s a matter of security and morale, Garviel. You are disturbed, I can see that plainly. Think what needless trauma this would cause if it got out. It would ruin confidence, break the spirit of the expedition, tarnish the entire crusade, not to mention the unimpeachable reputation of the Legion.’
The longhouse door banged open and the gale squealed in for a moment before the door closed again. Loken didn’t look up. He was expecting Vipus back at any time with the muster reports.
‘Leave us, Ezekyle,’ a voice said.
It wasn’t Vipus.
Horus was not wearing his armour. He was dressed in simple foul-weather clothes, a mail shirt and a cloak of furs. Abaddon bowed his head and quickly left the longhouse.
Loken had risen to his feet.
‘Sit, Garviel,’ Horus said softly. ‘Sit down. Make no ceremony to me.’
Loken slowly sat back down and the Warmaster knelt beside him. He was so immensely made that kneeling, his head was on a level with Loken’s. He plucked off his black leather gloves and placed his bare left hand on Loken’s shoulder.
‘I want you to let go of your troubles, my son,’ he said.
‘I try, sir, but they will not leave me alone.’
Horus nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘I have made a failure of this undertaking, sir,’ Loken said. ‘Ezekyle says we will put a brave face on it for appearance sake, but even if these events remain secret, I will bear the shame of failing you.’
‘And how did you do that?’
‘Men died. A brother turned upon his own. Such a manifest sin. Such a crime. You charged me to take this seat of resistance, and I have made such a mess of it that you have been forced to come here in person to—’
‘Hush,’ Horus whispered. He reached out and unfixed Loken’s tattered oath of moment from his shoulder plate.
‘Do you, Garviel Loken, accept your role in this?’ The Warmaster read out. ‘Do you promise to lead your men into the zone of war, and conduct them to glory, no matter the ferocity or ingenuity of the foe? Do you swear to crush the insurgents of Sixty-Three Nineteen, despite all they might throw at you? Do you pledge to do honour to the XVI Legion and the Emperor?’
‘Fine words,’ Loken said.
‘They are indeed. I wrote them. Well, did you, Garviel?’
‘Did I what, sir?’
‘Did you crush the insurgents of Sixty-Three Nineteen, despite all they threw at you?’
‘Well, yes—’
‘And did you lead your men into the zone of war, and conduct them to glory, no matter the ferocity or ingenuity of the foe?’
‘Yes…’
‘Then I can’t see how you’ve failed in any way, my son. Consider that last phrase particularly. “No matter the ferocity or ingenuity of the foe”. When poor Jubal turned, did you give up? Did you flee? Did you cast away your courage? Or did you fight against his insanity and his crime, despite your wonder at it?’
‘I fought, sir,’ Loken said.
‘Throne of Earth, yes, you did. Yes, you did, Loken! You fought. Cast shame out. I will not have it. You served me well today, my son, and I am only sorry that the extent of your service cannot be more widely proclaimed.’
Loken started to reply, but fell silent instead. Horus rose to his feet and began to pace about the room. He found a bottle of wine amongst the clutter on a wall dresser and poured himself a glass.
‘I spoke to Kyril Sindermann,’ he said, and took a sip of the wine. He nodded to himself before continuing, as if surprised at its quality. ‘Poor Kyril. Such a terrible thing to endure. He’s even speaking of spirits, you know? Sindermann, the arch prophet of secular truth, speaking of spirits. I put him right, naturally. He mentioned spirits were a concern of yours too.’
‘Kyril convinced me it was a plague, at first, but I saw a spirit… a daemon… take hold of Xavyer Jubal and remake his flesh into the form of a monster. I saw a daemon take hold of Jubal’s soul and turn him against his own kind.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Horus said.
‘Sir?’
Horus smiled. ‘Allow me to illuminate you. I’ll tell you what you saw, Garviel. It is a secret thing, known to a very few, though the Emperor, beloved of all, knows more than any of us. A secret, Garviel, more than any other secret we are keeping today. Can you keep it? I’ll share it, for it will soothe your mind, but I need you to keep it solemnly.’
‘I will,’ Loken said.
The Warmaster took another sip. ‘It was the warp, Garviel.’
‘The… warp?’
‘Of course it was. We know the power of the warp and the chaos it contains. We’ve seen it change men. We’ve seen the wretched things that infest its dark dimensions. I know you have. On Erridas. On Syrinx. On the bloody coast of Tassilon. There are entities in the warp that we might easily mistake for daemons.’
‘Sir, I…’ Loken began. ‘I have been trained in the study of the warp. I am well-prepared to face its horrors. I have fought the foul things that pour forth from the gates of the Empyrean, and yes, the warp can seep into a man and transmute him. I have seen this happen, but only in psykers. It is the risk they take. Not in Astartes.’
‘Do you understand the full mechanism of the warp, Garviel?’ Horus asked. He raised the glass to the nearest light to examine the colour of the wine.
‘No, sir. I don’t pretend to.’
‘Neither do I, my son. Neither does the Emperor, beloved by all. Not entirely. It pains me to admit that, but it is the truth, and we deal in truths above all else. The warp is a vital tool to us, a means of communication and transport. Without it, there would be no Imperium of Man, for there would be no quick bridges between the stars. We use it, and we harness it, but we have no absolute control over it. It is a wild thing that tolerates our presence, but brooks no mastery. There is power in the warp, fundamental power, not good, nor evil, but elemental and anathema to us. It is a tool we use at our own risk.’
The Warmaster finished his glass and set it down. ‘Spirits. Daemons. Those words imply a greater power, a fiendish intellect and a purpose. An evil archetype with cosmic schemes and stratagems. They imply a god, or gods, at work behind the scenes. They imply the very supernatural state that we have taken great pains, through the light of science, to shake off. They imply sorcery and a palpable evil.’