TWENTY-FIVE

The road to Terra
Half-heard no more
Okay

Great skeins and shawls and clusters of bright stars winked through the great viewing bay. The light of a galaxy that would soon belong to him.

Horus stood at the farthest prow of the strategium, his hands laced behind his back. He was no longer clad in armour, but a simple training robe of pale cream, belted at the waist with a thick leather belt.

The Sons of Horus fleet was breaking anchor, mustering for the next stage of the march to Terra. Scores of transports still ferried men and machines from Molech’s surface, but Boas Comnenus expected to be ready for system-transit within four hours.

Ezekyle and Kibre wanted to send fast cruisers after the Imperial Cobra-class destroyer, but Horus denied them. His First Captain had railed against that decision, as he had when Horus refused to remove the futharc sigils.

Horus was adamant – Molech’s Enlightenment was to be unharmed.

Let word of this world’s fate fly ahead of the Vengeful Spirit on wings of terror. Despair would be as potent a weapon as tanks and Titans, warriors and warships in the coming years.

Horus turned from the vista of stars and made his way back to the ouslite disc at the heart of the strategium. The Mournival awaited his orders, standing patiently as though the natural order of things would continue as it had before.

He saw them all differently now.

Horus knew them better than they knew themselves, but now he saw the things they kept hidden; the secret doubts, the cancerous thoughts and, deep down, the fear that they had taken a path that could only end badly.

The war on Molech had stoked the fires of Ezekyle’s ambitions. Not for much longer would he be satisfied with a captaincy, even a First Captaincy of the Sons of Horus. Soon he would need something grander to lead. A Legion of his own perhaps? With the power Horus now commanded and the ancient sciences of Terra, the means to create new Legiones Astartes was within his grasp.

Why shouldn’t his greatest warriors become their own masters?

Falkus Kibre... a simple man, one unfettered to grander ambitions. He knew his place and any thoughts of bettering his station were purely in service of the Warmaster. Falkus would be loyal unto death.

After his moment of doubt in the wake of Isstvan V, Aximand had painstakingly rebuilt himself. Even Dwell, with all its painful associations, had served to invigorate Little Horus with the desire to see the war won. The revelation of Garviel Loken’s survival had shaken them all, but it had hit Aximand particularly hard. The melancholy he had so long denied was his ruling characteristic now shrouded him in with the fear that Loken had been right to reject the Warmaster.

Yet it was Grael Noctua who had experienced the most profound change. Horus saw the twin flames burning within him, one darkly gleaming and malevolent, the other bruised and subjugate. The Fenrisian had ruined Gerradon’s flesh, and the daemon that Targost had summoned needed a new body to host its essence.

‘Sire, what are your orders?’ asked Kibre.

Horus smiled at the extra vowel at the end of the honorific. A natural development, given the power that now filled him.

Power that had almost cost him his life to obtain.

Not that to look at him anyone would know that.

The many hurts he had suffered to win Molech had healed years ago it seemed. It was hard to be sure. His sons told him he’d only been gone moments, how could he tell them different?

Molech was a far distant memory to Horus now.

He’d fought wars, slain monsters and defied gods in those moments. He’d wrested the power of those same gods at the heads of vast armies of daemons. He’d fought in battles that would rage unchecked for all eternity.

He’d won a thousand kingdoms within the empyrean, billions of vassals to do with as he pleased, but he’d refused it. Every pleasure and prize was his for the taking, but he’d denied them all. He’d taken the power his father had taken, but he’d done so without deception.

He’d taken it by force of arms and by virtue of his self-belief.

There was no bargain made, no promise to honour.

The power was his and his alone.

Finally, after everything, Horus was a god.

‘Sire, what are your orders?’ said Ezekyle.

Horus stared at the veil of stars, as though he could see all the way from Molech to Terra. He extended a clawed hand, as though already cupping the precious bauble of humanity’s cradle.

‘I am coming for you, father,’ said Horus.

The Tarnhelm had always been a cramped ship, but hidden in the shadow of Molech’s Enlightenment, it now felt obscenely spacious.

Loken sat on his bunk, stripped out of his armour and wearing nothing but a bodyglove, a chest-hugging synth-skin bandage and dermal-regenerative.

Varren was in an induced coma, as were Proximo Tarchon and Ares Voitek. The former Iron Hand’s servo-harness had exercised a hitherto unsuspected level of autonomy to take hold of Proximo Tarchon as Lupercal’s Court vented into space.

Rubio sat alone at the table where they had shared a drink in the company of Rogal Dorn. The empty spaces where their brother pathfinders used to sit weighed heavily on the former Ultramarine.

That any of them were here at all was nothing short of a miracle. Or rather, it was thanks to Rassuah’s preternaturally dextrous hands at Tarnhelm’s electromagnetic tether controls and their armour translocator beacons. She had followed their progress through the Vengeful Spirit and got them back aboard the Tarnhelm within a minute of shooting out the shielded window to Lupercal’s Court.

She’d blasted clear of the Vengeful Spirit, weaving a path back through the gaps in the defensive net she and Tubal Cayne’s device had torn. There’d been no pursuit, which she’d attributed to Tarnhelm’s superior capabilities, but Loken wasn’t so sure.

They’d caught up to the Imperial destroyer as it powered past the system’s fifth planet. Its engines were burning hot, its captain clearly expecting pursuit.

But nothing was coming.

The Warmaster’s fleet was still anchored around Molech.

Loken looked up at a knock on the hatchway.

Severian and Bror Tyrfingr stood at his door, clad in bodygloves and simple knee-length chitons. Loken hadn’t spoken to any of the pathfinders beyond operational or medical necessity since the Vengeful Spirit.

Severian looked as fresh as he had the day they’d set out on their mission, but Bror’s face was bruised and raw from the beating Ezekyle Abaddon had given him.

‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ said Bror.

‘He’s lying,’ said Severian. ‘It’s far worse.’

‘He’s lucky to have walked away from a fight with Ezekyle at all,’ said Loken. ‘Not many people can say that.’

‘I’ll get him next time,’ said Bror. ‘When the Wolf King leads the Rout back to the Vengeful Spirit.’

‘What is it you want?’ asked Loken.

Bror held out a plastic bottle filled with clear liquid. Loken could taste its caustic flavour from the other side of the room.

‘What’s that?’

‘Dzira,’ said Severian, pulling over a stool and producing three cups into which Bror poured them all a measure.

‘I thought we drank it all,’ said Loken. ‘And Voitek can’t possibly be well enough to distil more.’

‘He might be mostly metal, but we’ll be back on Terra before his sedation wears off,’ said Bror, limping over to take a seat. ‘No, I made this. There’s not a lot one of the Vlka Fenryka can’t rustle up after we’ve tasted it.’

Loken took a cup and swallowed a fiery mouthful.

He sucked in a breath as it went down. ‘Tastes just like it. Maybe even stronger.’

‘Aye, well, can’t have folk thinking the Wolves make something weaker than the X Legion,’ said Bror. ‘We’d never hear the end of it.’

‘So what is it you really want?’ said Loken. ‘I’m not much in the mood for company.’

‘Don’t be foolish, man,’ scoffed Bror. ‘Any time you walk away from a fight is just the time to be with your brothers.’

‘Even when I failed?’

Bror leaned forward and aimed his cup at Loken. ‘We didn’t fail,’ he said. ‘We did what we set out to do, we marked the Vengeful Spirit. When the Wolf King comes to fight Horus, he’ll have an easier time of it because of what we did.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Loken not wishing to dwell on broken promises. ‘But Lupercal knows about the futharc sigils.’

Bror sighed. ‘He won’t find them all, and do you think I’d make them all work by being seen. Ah, Loken, you’ve a lot to learn about how clever the Rout really are.’

‘I lost half the men under my command.’

Bror refilled his cup and said, ‘Listen, you didn’t lose them. They died. It happens. But you don’t make sense of deaths in solitude. Mortals might, but we’re not mortals. We’re a brotherhood. A brotherhood of warriors, and that’s what makes us strong. I thought you knew that?’

‘I think maybe I’d forgotten,’ said Loken.

‘Aye, you and this one both,’ said Bror, nodding towards Severian.

‘Alone is where I do my best work,’ said Severian.

‘That’s as maybe, but the rest of us fight best when we fight with our brothers,’ said Bror, knocking back his drink and continuing without pause. ‘It’s fighting for the man next to you. It’s fighting for the man next to him and the one next to him. I heard what you said to Horus, so I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. But what you’re after? You already have it. Right here, right now. With us.’

Loken nodded and held his cup out for a refill.

‘Right, enough with the sermonising,’ said Severian. ‘We want to know what Iacton Qruze gave you. Do you still have it?’

‘I do, but I don’t know what to make of it.’

‘Let’s see it then,’ said Bror.

Loken reached up to a small alcove above his bunk and lifted down a metal box. A box very like the one he’d left aboard the Vengeful Spirit, filled with his few keepsakes of war.

He opened it and lifted out the object Qruze had pressed into his palm. A disc of hardened red wax affixed to a long strip of yellowed seal paper.

‘His Oath of Moment?’ said Severian.

‘The one Mersadie Oliton had me give to Iacton.’

Loken turned it around, so that Bror and Severian could see what was written on the oath paper.

They read the word and looked at Loken.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Bror.

‘I don’t know,’ said Loken, staring down at the word.

Its letters were inked in red that had faded to rust brown.

Scratched by something needle-sharp and precise.

Murder.

The corridors of Molech’s Enlightenment were cold and cramped. Vivyen didn’t like it here, there were too many people, and no one seemed to know anything about what was happening. She’d seen lots of soldiers, and daddy told her that meant they were safe.

Vivyen certainly didn’t feel safe.

She huddled in a widened transit corridor, below a ventilation duct that sometimes blew warm air and sometimes blew cold. Her daddy talked in low voices with Noama and Kjell, and they gave her funny looks when she asked if they’d ever see Alivia again.

Miska had her head on Vivyen’s shoulders.

She was sleeping.

Vivyen needed to pee, but didn’t want to wake her sister.

To take her mind off her filling bladder, she pulled out the dog-eared storybook Alivia had given her in the press of bodies at the starport. She couldn’t read the words, they were in some old language Alivia had called Dansk, but she liked looking at the pictures.

She didn’t need to know the words. She’d heard the stories often enough that she could recite them off by heart. And sometimes when she looked at the words, it was like she did understand them, like the story wanted to be read and was unfolding itself in her mind.

The strangeness of that thought didn’t register at all.

It made sense to her and it just… was.

She flipped through the yellowed pages, looking for a picture to conjure the right words into her head.

A page with a young girl sitting at the edge of the ocean caught her eye and she nodded to herself. The girl was very beautiful, but her legs were fused together and ended in the wide tail of a fish. She liked this story; the tale of a young girl who, for the sake of true love, gives up her existence in one realm to earn a place in another.

Someone moved along the corridor. Vivyen waited for them to pass, but they stopped in front of her, blocking the light.

‘I can’t see the words,’ she said.

‘That’s a good story,’ said the person in front of her. ‘Can I read it to you?’

Vivyen looked up in surprise and nodded happily.

‘Didn’t I tell you it was going to be okay?’ said Alivia Sureka.