Oltrentz fell onto his face. He was dead, and there was no time, and no apothecary, to make his death fruitful.
Further shafts flashed by. Loken felt an impact. Kairus staggered as a sagittar’s dart punched entirely through his torso and embedded itself in the wall behind him.
‘Kairus!’
‘Keep on, captain!’ Kairus drawled, in pain. ‘Too clean a shot. I’ll heal!’
Kairus rose and opened up with his storm bolter, firing on auto. He hosed the colonnade ahead of them, and Loken saw three sagittars crumble and explode under the thunderous pummel of the weapon. Now their armour broke. Under six of seven consecutive explosive penetrators, now their armour broke.
How we have underestimated them, Loken thought. He moved on, with Kairus limping behind him. Already Kairus had stopped bleeding. His genhanced body had self-healed the entry and exit wounds, and whatever the sagittar dart had skewered between those two points was undoubtedly being compensated for by the built-in redundancies of the Astartes’s anatomy.
Together, they kicked their way into the main dining hall. The room was chaotic. Torgaddon and the rest of his detail were covering the Warmaster as they led him towards the south exit. There was no sign of Naud, but interex soldiers were firing at Torgaddon’s group from a doorway on the far side of the chamber. Bolter fire lit up the air. Several bodies, including that of a Luna Wolf, lay twisted amongst the overturned chairs and banquet tables. Loken and Kairus trained their fire on the far doorway.
‘Tarik!’
‘Good to see you, Garvi!’
‘What the hell is this?’
‘A mistake,’ Horus roared, his voice cracking with despair. ‘This is wrong! Wrong!’
Brilliant shafts of light stung into the wall alongside them. Sagittar darts sliced through the smoky air. One of Torgaddon’s men buckled and fell, a dart speared through his helm.
‘Mistake or not, we have to get clear. Now!’ Loken yelled.
‘Zakes! Cyclos! Regold!’ Torgaddon yelled, firing. ‘Close with Captain Loken and see us out!’
‘With me!’ Loken shouted.
‘No!’ bellowed the Warmaster. ‘Not like this! We can’t—’
‘Go!’ Loken screamed at his commander.
The fight to extricate themselves from Naud’s house lasted ten furious minutes. Loken and Kairus led the rearguard with the brothers Torgaddon had appointed to them, while Torgaddon himself ferried the Warmaster out through the basement loading docks onto the street. Twice, Horus insisted on going back in, not wanting to leave anyone, especially not Loken, behind. Somehow, using words Torgaddon never shared with Loken, Torgaddon persuaded him otherwise.
By the time they had come out into the street, the remainder of Loken’s outer guard had formed up with them, adding to the armour wall around the Warmaster, all except Jaeldon, whose fate they never learned.
The rearguard was a savage action. Backing metre by metre through the exit hall and the loading dock, Loken’s group came under immense fire, most of it dart-shot from sagittars, but also some energised beams from heavy weapons. Bells and sirens were ringing everywhere. Zakes fell in the loading dock, his head shorn away by a blue-white beam of destruction that scorched the walls. Cyclos, his body a pincushion of darts, dropped at the doors of the exit hall. Prone, bleeding furiously, he tried to fire again, but two more shafts impaled his skull and nailed him to the door. Kairus took another dart through the left thigh as he gave Loken cover. Regold was felled by an arrow that pierced his right eyeslit, and got up in time to be finished by another through the neck.
Firing behind him, Loken dragged Kairus out through the dock area onto the street.
They were out into the city evening, the dark canopy hissing in the breeze over their heads. Lamps twinkled. In the distance, a ruddy glow backlit the clouds, spilling up from a building in the lower depths of the tiered city. Sirens wailed around them.
‘I’m all right,’ Kairus said, though it was clear he was having trouble standing. ‘Close, that one, captain.’
He reached up and plucked out a sagittar shaft that had stuck through Loken’s right shoulder plate. In the colonnade, the impact he’d felt. ‘Not close enough, brother,’ Loken said.
‘Come on, if you’re coming!’ Torgaddon yelled, approaching them and spraying bolter fire back down the dock. ‘This is a mess,’ Loken said.
‘As if I hadn’t noticed!’ Torgaddon spat. He uncoupled a charge pack from his belt and hurled it down the dockway. The blast sent smoke and debris tumbling out at them.
‘We have to get the Warmaster to safety,’ Torgaddon said. ‘To the Extranus.’
Loken nodded. ‘We have to—’
‘No,’ said a voice.
They looked round. Horus stood beside them. His face was sidelit by the burning dock. His wide-set eyes were fierce. He had dressed for dinner that night, not for war. He was wearing a robe and a wolf-pelt. It was clear from his manner that he itched for armour plate and a good sword.
‘With respect, sir,’ Torgaddon said. ‘We are drawn bodyguard. You are our responsibility.’
‘No,’ Horus said again. ‘Protect me by all means, but I will not go quietly. Some terrible mistake has been made tonight. All we have worked for is overthrown.’
‘And so, we must get you out alive,’ Torgaddon said.
‘Tarik’s right, lord,’ Loken added. ‘This is not a situation that—’
‘Enough, enough, my son,’ Horus said. He looked up at the sighing black branches above them. ‘What has gone so wrong? Naud took such great and sudden offence. He said we had transgressed.’
‘I spoke with a man,’ Loken said. ‘Just when things turned sour. He was telling me of Chaos.’
‘What?’
‘Of Chaos, and how it is our greatest common foe. He feared it was in us. He said that is why they had been so careful with us, because they feared we had brought Chaos with us. Lord, what did he mean?’
Horus looked at Loken. ‘He meant Jubal. He meant the Whisperheads. He meant the warp. Have you brought the warp here, Garviel Loken?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then the fault is within them. The great, great fault that the Emperor himself, beloved by all, told me to watch for, foremost of all things. Oh gods, I wished this place to be free of it. To be clean. To be cousins we could hug to our chests. Now we know the truth.’
Loken shook his head. ‘Sir, no. I don’t think that’s what was meant. I think these people despise Chaos… the warp… as much as we do. I think they only fear it in us, and tonight, something has proved that fear right.’ ‘Like what?’ Torgaddon snapped. ‘Tull said the Hall of Devices was on fire.’ Horus nodded. ‘This is what they accused us of. Robbery. Deceit. Murder. Apparently someone raided the Hall of Devices tonight and slew the curator. Weapons were stolen.’
‘What weapons, sir?’ Loken asked. Horus shook his head. ‘Naud didn’t say. He was too busy accusing me over the dinner table. That’s where we should go now.’
Torgaddon laughed derisively. ‘Not at all. We have to get you to safety, sir. That is our priority.’
The Warmaster looked at Loken. ‘Do you think this also?’ ‘Yes, lord.’
‘Then I am troubled that I will have to countermand you both. I respect your efforts to safeguard me. Your strenuous loyalty is noted. Now take me to the Hall of Devices.’
The hall was on fire. Bursting fields exploded through the lower depths of the placer and cascaded flames up into the higher galleries. A meturge player, blackened by smoke, limped out to greet them.
‘Have you not sinned enough?’ he asked, venomously.
‘What is it you think we have done?’ Horus asked.
‘Petty murder. Asherot is dead. The hall is burning. You could have asked to know of our weapons. You had no need to kill to win them.’
Horus shook his head. ‘We have done nothing.’
The meturge player laughed, then fell.
‘Help him,’ Horus said.
&
nbsp; Scads of ash were falling on them, drizzling from a choking black sky. The blaze had spread to the oversweeping forest, and the street was flame lit. There was a rank smell of burning vegetation. On lower street tiers, hundreds of figures gathered, looking up at the fire. A great panic, a horror was spreading through Xenobia Principis.
‘They feared us from the start,’ the Warmaster said. ‘Suspected us. Now this. They will believe they were right to do so.’
‘Enemy warriors are gathering on the approach steps,’ Kairus called out.
‘Enemy?’ Horus laughed. ‘When did they become the enemy? They are men like us.’ He glared up at the night sky, threw back his head and screamed a curse at the stars. Then his voice fell to a whisper. Loken was close enough to hear his words.
‘Why have you tasked me with this, father? Why have you forsaken me? Why? It is too hard. It is too much. Why did you leave me to do this on my own?’
Interex formations were approaching. Loken heard hooves clattering on the flagstones, and saw the shapes of mounted sagittars bobbing black against the fires. Darts, like bright tears, began to drizzle through the night. They struck the ground and the walls nearby.
‘My lord, no more delays,’ Torgaddon urged. Gleves were massing too, their moving spears black stalks against the orange glow. Sparks flew up like lost prayers into the sky.
‘Hold!’ Horus bellowed at the advancing soldiers. ‘In the name of the Emperor of Mankind! I demand to speak to Naud. Fetch him now!’
The only reply was another flurry of shafts. The Luna Wolf beside Torgaddon fell dead, and another staggered back, wounded. An arrow had embedded itself in the Warmaster’s left arm. Without wincing, he dragged it out, and watched his blood spatter the flagstones at his feet. He walked to the fallen Astartes, bent down, and gathered up the man’s bolter and sword.
‘Their mistake,’ he said to Loken and Torgaddon. ‘Their damn mistake. Not ours. If they’re going to fear us, let us give them good reason.’ He raised the sword in his fist. ‘For the Emperor!’ he yelled in Cthonic. ‘Illuminate them!’
‘Lupercal! Lupercal!’ answered the handful of warriors around him.
They met the charging sagittars head on, bolter fire strobing the narrow street. Robot steeds shattered and tumbled, men falling from them, arms spread wide. Horus was already moving to meet them, ripping his sword into steel flanks and armoured chests. His first blow knocked a man-horse clear into the air, hooves kicking, crashing it back over onto the ranks behind it. ‘Lupercal!’ Loken yelled, coming to the Warmaster’s right side, and swinging his sword double-handed. Torgaddon covered the left, striking down a trio of gleves, then using a lance taken from one of them to smite the pack that followed. Interex soldiers, some screaming, were forced back down the steps, or toppled over the stone railing of the street to plunge onto the tier beneath.
Of all the battles Loken had fought at his commander’s side, that was the fiercest, the saddest, the most vicious. Teeth bared in the firelight, swinging his blade at the foe on all sides, Horus seemed more noble than Loken had ever known. He would remember that moment, years later, when fate had played its cruel trick and sense had turned upside down. He would remember Horus, Warmaster, in that narrow firelit street, defining the honour and unyielding courage of the Imperium of Man.
There should have been frescoes painted, poems written, symphonies composed, all to celebrate that instant when Horus made his most absolute statement of devotion to the Throne.
And to his father.
There would be none. The hateful future swallowed up such possibilities, swallowed the memories too, until the very fact of that nobility became impossible to believe.
The enemy warriors, and they were enemy warriors now, choked the street, driving the Warmaster and his few remaining bodyguards into a tight ring. A last stand. It was oddly as he had imagined it, that night in the garden, making his oath. Some great, last stand against an unknown foe, fighting at Horus’s side.
He was covered in blood, his suit gouged and dented in a hundred places. He did not falter. Through the smoke above, Loken glimpsed a moon, a small moon glowing in the corner of the alien sky.
Appropriately, it was reflected in the glimmering mirror of ocean out in the bay.
‘Lupercal!’ screamed Loken.
FOUR
Parting shots
The Sons of Horus
Anathame
‘WHAT WAS TAKEN?’ Mersadie Oliton asked.
‘An anathame, so they claim.’
‘One weapon?’
‘We didn’t take it,’ Loken said, stripping off the last of his battered armour. ‘We took nothing. The killing was for nothing.’
She shrugged. She took a sheaf of papers from her gown. They were Karkasy’s latest offerings, and she had come to the arming chamber on the pretence of delivering them. In truth, she was hoping to learn what had befallen on Xenobia.
‘Will you tell me?’ she asked. He looked up. There was dried blood on his face and hands.
‘Yes,’ he said.
THE BATTLE OF Xenobia Principis lasted until dawn, and engulfed much of the city. At the first sign of commotion, unable to establish contact with either the Warmaster or the fleet, Abaddon and Aximand had mobilised the two companies of Luna Wolves garrisoned at the Extranus. In the streets surrounding the compound area, the people of the interex got their first taste of the power of the Imperial Astartes. In the years to come, they would experience a good deal more. Abaddon was in wrathful mood, so much so that Aximand had to rein him back on several occasions.
It was Aximand’s units that first reached the embattled Warmaster on the upper tier near the Hall of Devices, and fought a route to him through the cream of Naud’s army. Abaddon’s forces had struck at several of the city’s control stations, and restored communications. The fleet was already moving in, in response to the apparent threat to the Warmaster and the Imperial parties on the ground. As interex warships moved to engage, landing assaults began, led by Sedirae and Targost.
With communications restored, a full-scale extraction was coordinated, drawing all Imperial personnel from the Extranus, and from fighting zones in the streets.
Horus sent one final communiqué to the interex. He expected no response, and received none. Far too much blood had been spilled and destruction wrought for relations to be soothed by diplomacy. Nevertheless, Horus expressed his bitter regret at the turn of events, lamented the interex for acting with such a heavy hand, and repeated once again his unequivocal denial that the Imperium had committed any of the crimes of which it stood accused.
WHEN THE SHIPS of the expedition returned to Imperial space, some weeks later, the Warmaster had a decree proclaimed. He told the Mournival that, upon reflection, he had reconsidered the importance of defining his role, and the relationship of the XVI Legion to that role. Henceforth, the Luna Wolves would be known as the Sons of Horus.
The news was well-received. In the quiet corners of the flagship archives, Kyril Sindermann was told by some of his iterators, and approved the decision, before turning back to books that he was the first person to read in a thousand years. In the bustle of the Retreat, the remembrancers – many of whom had been extracted from the Extranus by the Astartes efforts – cheered and drank to the new name. Ignace Karkasy sank a drink to the honour of the Legion, and Captain Loken in particular, and then had another one just to be sure.
In her private room, Euphrati Keeler knelt by her secret shrine and thanked her god, the Emperor of Mankind, in the simple terms of the lectio divinitatus, praising him for giving strong and honourable men to protect them. Sons of Horus, all.
AIR HUMMED DOWN rusting ducts and flues. Darkness pooled in the belly vaults of the Vengeful Spirit, in the bilges where even the lowliest ratings and proto-servitors seldom strayed. Only vermin lived here, insect lice and rats, gnawing a putrid existence in the corroded bowels of the ancient ship.
By the light of a single candle, he held the strange blade up and wa
tched how the glow coruscated off its edge. The blade was rippled along its length, grey like napped flint, and caught the light with a glitter like diamond. A fine thing. A beautiful thing. A cosmos-changing thing.
He could feel the promise within it breathing. The promise and the curse.
Slowly, Erebus lowered the anathame, placed it in its casket, and closed the lid.
‘AND THAT IS ALL?’
‘We tried,’ said Loken. ‘We tried to bond with them. It was a brave thing, a noble thing to attempt. War would have been easier. But it failed.’
‘Yes,’ he said. Loken had taken up the lapping powder and a cloth, and was working at the scratches and gouges on his breastplate, knowing full well the scars were too deep this time. He’d have to fetch the armourers.
‘So it was a tragedy?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘but not of our making. I’ve never… I’ve never felt so sure.’
‘Of what?’ she asked.
‘Horus, as Warmaster. As the Emperor’s proxy. I’ve never questioned it. But seeing him there, seeing what he was trying to do. I’ve never felt so sure the Emperor made the right choice.’
‘What happens now?’
‘With the interex? I imagine attempts will be made to broker peace. The priority will be low, for the interex are marginal and show no inclination to get involved in our affairs. If peace fails, then, in time, a military expedition will be drawn up.’
‘And for us? Are you allowed to tell me the expedition’s orders?’
Loken smiled and shrugged. ‘We’re due to rendezvous with the 203rd Fleet in a month, at Sardis, prior to a campaign of compliance in the Caiades Cluster, but on the way, a brief detour. We’re to settle a minor dispute. An old tally, if you will. First Chaplain Erebus has asked the Warmaster to intercede. We’ll be there and gone again in a week or so.’
‘Intercede where?’ she asked.
‘A little moon,’ Loken said, ‘in the Davin System.’
TIMELINE
Millennia - Age - Notes