THIRTEEN

Beacon
Cornered wolf
I made this

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.

The dying woman. The officer. Her pistol had been something more than just a laspistol. Something considerably more than just a laspistol. He looked down and saw the neat, cauterised hole burned through his plastron and into his chest. He knew if he picked up the rebar that had been jammed in his leg, he’d be able to thread it through the hole in his chest and out through his back without effort.

‘She shot me,’ he said. ‘The bitch shot me.’

‘From what I hear, you let her,’ said the First Captain, shaking his head. ‘Stupid. I’m behind schedule. And now Kibre will likely roll up his flank first.’

Noctua sought the dying woman, but she was already dead. Her head lay at an unnatural angle to her shoulder because that was about all that was left of her after the impact of mass-reactives to the chest.

‘You got away lightly,’ he said.

Abaddon took hold of Noctua’s shoulder guard and spun him around. The First Captain’s Terminator armour gave him a head of height advantage. Noctua looked up into eyes that were like those of a wolf on the hunt, and whose prey was in danger of slipping away.

‘Get your men back in the fight,’ said Abaddon, ‘or I’ll finish what she started.’

‘Yes, First Captain,’ said Noctua.

The Knights bore down on the Warmaster, and Raeven had never felt so sure, so righteous in the anticipation of a kill. His arms burned hot with the readiness of his stubber cannons and the crackling energy arcs of his whip.

The warriors who’d ridden to glory before Banelash was his screamed at him, crowding his senses with their echoing war shouts. He heard their voices, a chorus of wordless fury. None of them had ever claimed so grand a kill, and they all wanted to feel what Raeven felt.

He channelled their skill and power, used it.

Banelash was the tip of the wedge, the lance thrust aimed at the Warmaster’s heart. Egelic and Banan held tight to his flanks. Heads lowered, ion shields held out over their hearts.

Reaper chainblades pulled back to strike.

He loosed a wild laugh. He was Imperial commander. The first kill was his to make, and what a kill it would be.

Warriors whose armour looked to be on fire surrounded Horus, but the strangeness of the sight gave Raeven no pause. His sensorium told him more warriors were en route to rescue their leader. They would be too late.

He clenched his fist and a blazing stream of high-energy lasers pumped from his shoulder mount. Four of the black warriors were all but incinerated. The Land Raider was sawn in half.

Horus rose to his feet, and even though he went helmed, Raeven could imagine the fear in his eyes. Banelash cracked its whip and the Warmaster was catapulted into the wrecked Land Raider. Purple arcs of lightning flared from his shoulder and chest as he struggled to rise.

The floating cross hairs of Raeven’s gunsight centred on the amber eye at the Warmaster’s chest.

‘Got you,’ said Raeven as he unleashed the furious power of the weapon he’d saved just for this moment, his thermal lance.

Blitzing spears of sun-hot light enveloped Lupercal, but when Aximand blinked away the pinwheeling after-images, he saw only darkness around his lord and master. The Luperci clung to the Warmaster like devotees beseeching an ascending god to stay.

They howled and Aximand felt the day’s heat snatched away.

Time slowed. Not the way it sometimes did in the heat of battle. Not like that at all. In fact, it didn’t slow so much as stop.

The world possessed the quality of timelessness, as though time never had, never would and never could exist here. Galaxies might swirl into being and spin themselves to extinction and it would be the blink of an eye. A blowfly could beat its wings and it would take an eternity to complete the motion.

It bled from the black warriors surrounding the Warmaster, as though they drew from some unfathomable well within them. Or maybe some dreadful power reached through them and allowed a measure of its world to seep into this one.

The bolts of killing power from the Knight’s armaments passed into the Luperci. And vanished. Swallowed whole as though the Twin Flames had become dark windows to another realm of existence.

And then it was over, and Aximand stumbled as the flow of time caught up to him and the world snapped back into focus. He steadied himself on his shield, his heart straining as though pinned in a suit of skin too small for him.

‘What…’

It was all he managed before the Luperci broke their embrace with the Warmaster. Rivulets of black fire clung to Lupercal’s armour, but he was alive.

The Knight leading the charge paused, stupefied that its target wasn’t dead. Its weapons lifted to rectify that upset, but the fractional pause had already cost it its one advantage.

And a fraction was all that Horus needed.

I should be dead.

Nerve endings on fire. Pain. Pain like he’d never known.

Even the attack on the Dome of Revivification hadn’t been as bad. Burns and physical trauma he could endure, but the barbed fires of the Knight’s whip sawed at his nerves like gleeful torturers.

I should be dead.

No time to reflect that he wasn’t. Deal with the pain. Force it down into the pit. Endure it later.

Mal and Targost’s Luperci had saved him. No time to wonder how. Retreat was not an option. He had been hurt and needed to hurt back. Aximand and the Fifth Company were en route. This would be over before they reached him.

Horus looked up at the charging Knights.

I am alive, and that was your only chance.

The Luperci streamed from him, a flock of raptors loosed from the rookeries of his armour. Far faster than anything living ought to move. Where they had clung to him was marked by burns. Frost burns. Horus followed them, swinging Worldbreaker around his head.

The first Knight took a backward step, and Horus laughed.

‘Afraid now?’ he bellowed.

Screaming vox chatter filled his helmet. He tore it off and threw it away.

Luperci swarmed the legs of the Knight, climbing and vaulting. Hand over hand, gripping the lips of segmented plates. They tore as they climbed, snapping connector cables, ripping out servos and coupling rods. Ger Gerradon climbed fastest and punched a clawed fist into the pilot’s compartment. The Knight’s whip snapped, flagellating itself to shake him loose. More Knights advanced, flanking the leader.

Get close. Get inside their reach.

Chugging cannons thundered, muzzle flare churning the ground to powder. Solid rounds chased Horus, but he put the first Knight between him and its fire. Stubber shells ripped across the lead Knight’s carapace and thermal lance mount. The weapon exploded.

Another Knight body slammed the first, crushing two more of the Luperci who howled as they died. It rammed its ion shield into its leader’s carapace, sending the last of them hurtling through the air. Glass and lubricant drizzled like tears.

The revealed pilot was a darkly handsome man with a cruel smile.

Horus laughed. You still think you can kill me.

He dived as the Knight’s foot stomped down. Horus rolled to his feet and ripped his taloned gauntlet through a knot of pneumatics at the Knight’s ankle joint. It staggered, gyroscopic servos screaming as they fought to keep the war machine upright.

A third and a fourth Knight were moving into firing positions. More jostled for position behind them.

Keep moving. Don’t let them pin you in place.

Horus was the lone wolf among the fold, weaving between the legs of his attackers. But the creatures of this fold could crush him, burn him and gut him. Stamping feet pounded the ground flat. Roaring chainblades wider than a Javelin speeder stabbed around him. The energy whip of the lead Knight cracked and fused a three metre trench of glass in the sand.

Horus scrambled onto the claw mechanism of a Knight’s splayed foot. He gripped the ribbed cabling at its ankle and bent his legs. From a crouch, he leapt as high as he could. Worldbreaker swung and a knee joint exploded. The Knight’s leg buckled and it took a drunken step, every stabilisation system powerless to keep it upright.

The Knight crashed down, its armour crumpling, the carapace split open. Flames engulfed the downed machine as the power cells of its weapon mount exploded. Horus saw the pilot screaming inside the canopy as he burned to death.

Another Knight went down, its upper torso detonating in a cherry red fireball. Horus felt a wash of heat that had nothing to do with its destruction. A squadron of three Glaives roared over the black beach, their insanely powerful volkite carronades rippling in a haze of recent discharge.

The huge tanks were Fellblade variants, ruinously demanding of resources and expertise to produce. Only with great reluctance had Mars approved the implementation of a Legion tank bearing such a weapon. The Luna Wolves had been among the first Legions to receive the Glaives, a further sign of the Emperor’s favour.

More tanks appeared behind them, superheavies all. Two squadrons of Shadowswords and the cousins of the Glaive, the Fellblades themselves. Searing beams stabbed from volcano cannons and accelerator turrets crashed back with armour-piercing shells. The noise was deafening. Echoing booms were thrown back from the cliffs.

Three Knights were all but obliterated, a pair of molten legs and a pair of weapon mounts all that remained. A fourth threw its ion shield up just quick enough to deflect the full force of a high-density shell that nevertheless ripped its entire arm and most of its shoulder away.

The Knights were monstrously outgunned and they knew it. The hunting horn of the lead Knight loosed an ululating blast and they fled back the way they had come. Humbled and broken, they left half their number dead and ruined.

Horus drew in a breath of fyceline-scented air, letting the exertion and stress of the fight drain from him. Oily sweat ran down his ruddy face and pooled in blood-caked grooves in his armour. His body was running hot to re-knit his flesh. Keeping a body at such a high pitch was exhausting. Even for a primarch.

He heard the clatter of armour as warriors formed up around him, shields rammed into the sand in a makeshift defensive work. He already knew there was no need.

The battle was already won.

A trailing vox-bead dangling from his gorget after he’d thrown away his helmet told him as much. Noctua’s decapitation strike had broken the centre and most likely killed the senior enemy officer. Teleporting Justaerin and the Catulan Reavers were clearing the trenches with Ezekyle and Kibre showing no mercy.

With the defence line’s abandonment, thousands of armoured vehicles moved up the bloody beach; Land Raiders, Fellblades, Rhinos, Sicarans and finally the Chimeras of Lithonan’s auxiliaries. Predators of all types followed them, together with recovery tractors, scout tanks, and Trojan resupply vehicles.

Apothecarion troops swarmed the battlefield, gathering the wounded as the smoke of bombardment was blown out to sea. Fires burned from the multitude of wrecks littering the coastline.

‘A heavy cost,’ said Horus as Aximand approached and drove his shield into the sand. He coughed and there was blood in his mouth.

‘Sir!’ said Aximand. ‘Sir, are you hurt?’

Horus shook his head before realising that, yes, he was hurt. Badly hurt. He reached out and steadied himself on Aximand. The last time he had been surrounded by his warriors and almost fallen it had ended badly for everyone.

‘I’m fine, Little Horus.’

They both knew it was a lie, but agreed upon it anyway.

‘Taking on ten Knights?’ said Aximand. ‘Really?’

‘I killed one and the rest fled at the sight of me.’

‘More like the sight of the Glaives and Shadowswords,’ said Aximand.

‘Careful,’ said Horus, increasing the pressure on Aximand’s arm a fraction. ‘If I was being ungenerous, I might think you were belittling this victory.’

Aximand nodded, heeding Lupercal’s warning and said, ‘You’re sure you’re fine?’

‘I’m better than fine,’ said Horus. ‘I won.’

The black sand of Avadon’s coastline had reminded Grael Noctua of Isstvan V, but the promethium fires lining the roadway from the beach and the reviewing stand built at its edge was pure Ullanor. Night had fallen, but the sky was still cut by phosphor-bright trails of wreckage coming down from orbit.

Storm Eagles and Fire Raptors circled overhead, like hunting birds eager to be loosed once more.

Perched on a narrow peninsula, Avadon was swathed in darkness, with only the moon’s reflected radiance in the ocean to limn its hard edges. The lights of the city’s hab-towers, Legion monuments and commercia were all extinguished, its thousands of inhabitants clinging to the dark and hoping the Legion would pass them by.

An army of conquest had landed on Damesek, and it was forming up around Avadon, preparing to advance south across the continent’s agricultural heartland towards Lupercalia. Seeker and reconnaissance squads were already in the wind, and intelligence on the disposition of Molech’s hundreds of thousands of soldiers was flooding back to Legion command.

The Mournival accompanied the Warmaster as he marched between ranked up companies of the Legion. Hasty repairs made him magnificent again, though none were battle-worthy. He walked with a slight limp, imperceptible to most eyes, but to Noctua’s calculating gaze it was blindingly obvious.

The reviewing stand was just ahead, built from the ruins of the defensive line’s demolished strongholds. Six Deathbringer Warlords towered behind it, four in the graphite and gold of Legio Vulcanum, two in Vulpa’s rust and bone. Moonlight reflected from the heavy plates of their armour. Weapon mounts vented exhaust gases like hot, animal breath.

Twenty-six Titanicus engines had landed at Damasek – eleven from Vulcanum, six from Interfector, four from Vulpa and five from Mortis, the largest concentration of Titans that Noctua had seen since Isstvan III. The ten Reavers stood like vast monuments in Avadon’s outer manufactorum districts, while six Warhounds stalked the edges of the muster fields like wary guard dogs.

‘Reminds me of the Triumph,’ said Ezekyle, approvingly.

‘That’s the idea,’ replied Lupercal.

‘Aren’t triumphs usually held after a campaign?’ asked Noctua, and the First Captain shot him an angry look. The delay his wounding at the hands of a mortal had caused Ezekyle was something the First Captain wasn’t going to forget in a hurry.

‘Unless you’re one of the Phoenician’s rabble,’ said Kibre.

‘It’s symbolic, Grael,’ said Horus. ‘When we left Ullanor it was as the Emperor’s servants. When we leave Molech we will be our own masters.’

Something in the Warmaster’s tone told Noctua that wasn’t the whole truth, but a warning glance from Aximand advised against pursuing the matter. He nodded and hid a grimace of pain as it felt like someone was plunging an ice cold blade into his chest.

‘Grael?’ said Horus, pausing and giving him a sidelong glance.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘My own fault.’

‘No argument there,’ grunted Ezekyle.

Horus nodded and they resumed their march.

The Apothecary who’d treated Noctua at battle’s end had all but demanded he remove himself from the order of battle and submit to heart-implantation surgery. Noctua had refused all but the most basic attention.

He forced himself to keep up, feeling the cold blade of pain twist deeper into the empty cavity within his chest. Feeling another’s eyes upon him, Noctua turned his gaze from the Warmaster to the warriors lining his path.

Ger Gerradon grinned at Noctua in a way that made him want to put a fist through his face. Fully-helmed Luperci with static-filled eyes surrounded Gerradon, many more than Noctua had seen during the assault on Var Crixia.

How far had Maloghurst and Targost gone in seeking volunteers to become hosts for these flesh-eating warp killers?

Gerradon looked over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows.

You will be one with us soon, the look said.

Neverborn.

Unburdened…

‘Did you know you and this city share a name, Ezekyle?’ said the Warmaster, as they approached the reviewing stand. Noctua turned from Ger Gerradon and tried to shake the thought that he was looking at his future.

‘We do?’ asked the First Captain.

‘Abaddon, I mean. Ezekyle was said to be an ancient prophet, though it seems he might simply have been a witness to Old Earth’s first encounters with xenoforms. I’ve found several mentions of an Abaddon,’ he said. ‘Or Apollyon or Avadon, depending on whether you’re reading the Septuagint or the Hexapla. Or was it the Vulgate? So many versions, and none of them can agree.’

‘So who was Abaddon?’ asked Kibre. ‘Or don’t we want to know?’

Horus paused at the foot of the steps to the reviewing stand.

‘He was an angel, Falkus,’ said Horus. ‘But don’t let the term mislead you. Back then, angels were soaked in blood, the right hand of a vengeful god who sent them into the world of men to lay waste and kill in his name.’

‘Sounds just like you,’ said Aximand, and they all laughed.

Horus ascended to the stand, but the Mournival didn’t follow. This was their place, invisible in the wings while Lupercal basked in adulation. Noctua took a moment to look out over the assembled legionaries.

The Warmaster’s sons stretched as far as the eye could see. At least sixty thousand Space Marines. By conventional reckonings of numbers, it was a paltry force with which to conquer a world.

But this was the XVI Legion, the Sons of Horus, and this was more than enough. It was practically overkill.

The Warmaster took centre stage, Worldbreaker and his talon raised high. The Deathbringer Warlord Titans loosed deafening blasts from their warhorns and the thousands of legionaries pumped their fists in the air at the sight of Lupercal.

‘From a world of darkness, I did bind daemons and death-doers in the form of wolves.’

Horus swept his maul down and night became day as the Reaver Titans surrounding Avadon opened fire with every one of their weapon systems. They rained down a continuous barrage of lasers, rockets and plasma until the city and all living things within were consumed in a fiery holocaust.

Vox-links broadcast the Warmaster’s voice through the horns of the Titans, and his pronouncement shook Noctua’s bones.

‘So perish all who stand against me.’

‘Iacton,’ said Loken, standing at the door to Tarnhelm’s crew compartment. Since entering the warp, the Knights Errant spent most of their days gathered around the long table, swapping exploits and expertise. Ares Voitek was repeating a story of his Legion’s assault on a nomadic fleet of xenos and humans. His servo-arms described the manoeuvres of several starships.

The story petered out as they saw Loken.

‘Garviel,’ replied Qruze. ‘If you’ve come to finish the job, I’ll not stop you, lad.’

‘I might,’ said Bror Tyrfingr.

‘I’m sorry I missed it the first time,’ sniggered Severian.

Loken shook his head. ‘I’m not here to fight you.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘To live up to the words I said to Callion Zaven.’

The former Emperor’s Children legionary looked up at the sound of his name, his attention momentarily diverted from the polishing of his hewclaw blade.

‘What did you say to him?’ asked Qruze.

‘I told him that we had enough enemies before us without looking for them in our own ranks.’

‘Then why did you almost kill Iacton?’ asked Cayne.

‘Shut up, Tubal,’ said Varren, replacing bladed teeth on his axe that hadn’t lost a fraction of their lethal sharpness.

‘What?’ said the former Iron Warrior. ‘It’s a valid question.’

‘Not the point,’ replied Ares Voitek.

Qruze nodded and swung his legs out from beneath the table to face Loken. Aboard ship, the legionaries went without armour, and Loken saw the corded strength within the Half-heard’s frame like tempered steel or seasoned heartwood. He wore a sleeveless bodyglove and tan fatigues tucked into knee-high black boots.

His face bore little trace of Loken’s assault, just a slight discolouration of the skin around his right eye.

‘Good words,’ said Qruze. ‘Hard to live up to when trust is in such short supply, eh?’

‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,’ said Loken, taking a seat at the table.

Qruze waved away his apology and poured himself a beaker of water. He poured Loken a drink, which he accepted. ‘I’ve been waiting for that beating ever since I found out you were alive, lad.’

‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand,’ said Loken.

‘Just one?’ grunted Qruze. ‘Then you’ve a better grasp of things than me. What is it you don’t understand?’

‘If Lord Dorn told you to keep Mersadie’s existence secret, why did you tell me about her on the prison fortress?’ asked Loken. ‘You could have just boarded Tarnhelm, and I’d have been none the wiser.’

‘Secrets have a way of coming out,’ said Altan Nohai. ‘In that place, in that time, it was right that Iacton spoke.’

Qruze nodded. ‘I’d gone to Titan with Lord Dorn to kill a man.’

‘Who?’

‘Solomon Voss, you remember him?’

Loken nodded. ‘I never met him, but I had heard the name around the Vengeful Spirit.’

‘A good man. Too good. I think that’s why Lupercal kept him around for so long before sending him back to us. Voss had done nothing wrong, but we couldn’t let him live. Horus knew that, knew it would weigh heavily on whoever swung the blade. And like Altan says, secrets have a habit of coming out. The bigger they are the more likely they’ll come out just when you don’t want them to.’

‘What does Solomon Voss have to do with Mersadie?’

Qruze leaned over the table and rested his arms on the table.

‘I’m going to be very clear so there’s no misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘We few are heading back to face the Warmaster. The chances of us making it back alive are virtually irrelevant. I thought you deserved to know she was still alive before we left.’

Loken sat back, his face stony. ‘Will Lord Dorn kill her too?’

‘I think he considered it.’

‘What stopped him?’ asked Rubio.

‘You’re the maleficarum,’ said Bror Tyrfingr. ‘You tell us.’

Rubio shot Bror an irritated glance, but Ultramarian virtue kept him from trading insults with the Fenrisian.

‘Compassion,’ said Zaven, setting down his sword. ‘Not a virtue I’d expected from the Lord of the Fists, but perhaps he’s not as hewn from stone as we all thought.’

Qruze said, ‘It pained the primarch to execute Solomon Voss, more than you know. Another tally to add to Lupercal’s butcher’s bill. More blood on his hands.’

They lapsed into silence until Loken withdrew the presentation case Mersadie had given him. He placed it on the table and slid it across to Qruze.

The Half-heard recognised it and eyed the case warily.

‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t know. Mersadie said I had to give it to you.’

‘Well open it for Throne’s sake,’ said Varren, when Qruze made no move to touch the box. ‘Don’t keep us all in bloody suspense.’

Qruze flipped open the case and frowned in puzzlement. He lifted out a pressed disc of hardened red wax affixed to a long strip of yellowed seal paper.

‘An Oath of Moment,’ said Tubal.

‘It’s mine,’ said Qruze.

‘Of course it’s yours,’ said Bror. ‘Loken just gave you it.’

‘No, I mean it’s mine,’ said Qruze. ‘I made this, back in the day. I know my own seal work when I see it.’

‘To what action does it oath you?’ asked Tubal Cayne.

Qruze shook his head. ‘No action. It’s blank. I made this in the days leading up to the Isstvan campaign, but I was never oathed for that fight.’

‘Did you give it to Mersadie?’ asked Loken.

‘No, it was in my arming chamber,’ said Qruze, turning the seal over in his gnarled hands. ‘Did Mistress Oliton say anything about why I was to have this?’

‘She said to remind you that you were the Half-heard no longer, that your voice would be heard louder than any other of the Legion.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Ares Voitek.

‘Damned if I know,’ said Qruze. ‘Garviel? What else did she say?’

Loken didn’t answer, staring at the suggestion of a hooded shape in the shadows he knew none of the others would see. The figure shook his head slowly.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘She didn’t say anything else.’