Horus Rising (12 page)

He looked at the pages again. Here was the truth of it, the crucial mark of difference between his breed of man and the local variety. They were heathens. They continued to embrace the superstitions that the fundamental strand of mankind had set aside. Here was the promise of an afterlife, and an ethereal world. Here was the nonsense of a faith in the intangible.

Karkasy knew that there were some, many perhaps, amongst the population of the compliant Imperium, who longed for a return to those ways. God, in every incarnation and pantheon, was long perished, but still men hankered after the ineffable. Despite prosecution, new credos and budding religions were sprouting up amongst the cultures of Unified Man. Most vigorous of all was the Imperial Creed that insisted humanity adopt the Emperor as a divine being. A God-Emperor of Mankind.

The idea was ludicrous and, officially, heretical. The Emperor had always refused such adoration in the most stringent terms, denying his apotheosis. Some said it would only happen after his death, and as he was functionally immortal, that tended to cap the argument. Whatever his powers, whatever his capacity, whatever his magnificence as the finest and most gloriously total leader of the species, he was still just a man. The Emperor liked to remind mankind of this whenever he could. It was an edict that rattled around the bureaucracies of the expanding Imperium. The Emperor is the Emperor, and he is great and everlasting.

But he is not a god, and he refuses any worship offered to him.

Karkasy took a swig and put his empty thimble-glass down, at an angle on the edge of the lectern shelf. The
Lectio Divinitatus
, that’s what it was called. The missal of the underground wellspring that strove, in secret, to establish the Cult of the Emperor, against his will. It was said that even some of the upstanding members of the Council of Terra supported its aims.

The Emperor as god. Karkasy stifled a laugh. Five thousand years of blood, war and fire to expunge all gods from the culture, and now the man who achieved that goal supplants them as a new deity.

‘How foolish is mankind?’ Karkasy laughed, enjoying the way his words echoed around the empty fane. ‘How desperate and flailing? Is it that we simply need a concept of god to fulfil us? Is that part of our make up?’

He fell silent, considering the point he had raised to himself. A good point, well-reasoned. He wondered where his bottle had gone.

It
was
a good point. Maybe that was mankind’s ultimate weakness. Maybe it was one of humanity’s basic impulses, the need to believe in another, higher order. Perhaps faith was like a vacuum, sucking up credulity in a frantic effort to fill its own void. Perhaps it was a part of mankind’s genetic character to need, to hunger for, a spiritual solace.

‘Perhaps we are cursed,’ Karkasy told the empty fane, ‘to crave something which does not exist. There are no gods, no spirits, no daemons. So we make them up, to comfort ourselves.’

The fane seemed oblivious to his ramblings. He took hold of his empty glass and wandered back to where he had left the bottle. Another drink.

He left the fane and threaded his way out into the blinding sunlight. The heat was so intense that he had to take another swig.

Karkasy wobbled down a few streets, away from the temple, and heard a rushing, roasting noise. He discovered a team of Imperial soldiers, stripped to the waist, using a flamer to erase anti-Imperial slogans from a wall. They had evidently been working their way down the street, for all the walls displayed swathes of heat burns.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said.

The soldiers turned and looked at him, their flamer spitting. From his garments and demeanour, he was unmistakably not a local.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said again.

‘Orders, sir,’ said one of the troopers.

‘What are you doing out here?’ asked another.

Karkasy shook his head and left them alone. He trudged through narrow alleys and open courts, sipping from the spout of the bottle.

He found another vacant lot very similar to the one he had sat down in before, and placed his rump upon a scalene block of basalt. He took out his chapbook and ran through the stanzas he had written.

They were terrible.

He groaned as he read them, then became angry and tore the precious pages out. He balled the thick, cream paper up and tossed it away into the rubble.

Karkasy suddenly became aware that eyes were staring at him from the shadows of doorways and windows. He could barely make out their shapes, but knew full well that locals were watching him.

He got up, and quickly retrieved the balls of crumpled paper he had discarded, feeling that he had no right to add in any way to the mess. He began to hurry down the street, as thin boys emerged from hiding to lob stones and jeers after him.

He found himself, unexpectedly, in the street of the hostelry again. It was uninhabited, but he was pleased to have found it as his bottle had become unaccountably empty.

He went into the gloom. There was no one around. Even the old woman had disappeared. His pile of Imperial currency lay where he had left it on the counter.

Seeing it, he felt authorised to help himself to another bottle from behind the bar. Clutching the bottle in his hand, he very carefully sat down at one of the tables and poured another drink.

He had been sitting there for an indefinite amount of time when a voice asked him if he was all right.

Ignace Karkasy blinked and looked up. The gang of Imperial army troops who had been burning clean the walls of the city had entered the hostelry, and the old woman had reappeared to fetch them drinks and food.

The officer looked down at Karkasy as his men took their seats.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Yes, yes, yes,’ Karkasy slurred.

‘You don’t look all right, pardon me for saying. Should you be out in the city?’

Karkasy nodded furiously, tucking into his pocket for his permit. It wasn’t there. ‘I’m meant to be here,’ he said, instead. ‘Meant to. I was ordered to come. To hear Eater Piton Momus. Shit, no, that’s wrong. To hear Peeter Egon Momus present his plans for the new city. That’s why I’m here. I’m meant to be.’

The officer regarded him cautiously. ‘If you say so, sir. They say Momus has drawn up a wonderful scheme for the reconstruction.’

‘Oh yes, quite wonderful,’ Karkasy replied, reaching for his bottle and missing. ‘Quite bloody wonderful. An eternal memorial to our victory here…’

‘Sir?’

‘It won’t last,’ Karkasy said. ‘No, no. It won’t last. It can’t. Nothing lasts. You look like a wise man to me, friend, what do you think?’

‘I think you should be on your way, sir,’ the officer said gently.

‘No, no, no… about the city! The city! It won’t last, Terra take Peeter Egon Momus. To the dust, all things return. As far as I can see, this city was pretty wonderful before we came and hobbled it.’

‘Sir, I think—’

‘No, you don’t,’ Karkasy said, shaking his head. ‘You don’t, and no one does. This city was supposed to last forever, but we broke it and laid it in tatters. Let Momus rebuild it, it will happen again, and again. The work of man is destined to perish. Momus said he plans a city that will celebrate mankind forever. You know what? I bet that’s what the architects who built this place thought too.’

‘Sir—’

‘What man does comes apart, eventually. You mark my words. This city, Momus’s city. The Imperium—’

‘Sir, you—’

Karkasy rose to his feet, blinking and wagging a finger. ‘Don’t “sir” me! The Imperium will fall asunder as soon as we construct it! You mark my words! It’s as inevitable as—’

Pain abruptly splintered Karkasy’s face, and he fell down, bewildered. He registered a frenzy of shouting and movement, then felt boots and fists slamming into him, over and over again. Enraged by his words, the troopers had fallen upon him. Shouting, the officer tried to pull them off.

Bones snapped. Blood spurted from Karkasy’s nostrils.

‘Mark my words!’ he coughed. ‘Nothing we build will last forever! You ask these bloody locals!’

A bootcap cracked into his sternum. Bloody fluid washed into his mouth.

‘Get off him! Get off him!’ the officer was yelling, trying to rein in his provoked and angry men.

By the time he managed to do so, Ignace Karkasy was no longer pontificating.

Or breathing.

SIX

Counsel

A question well answered

Two gods in one room

T
ORGADDON WAS WAITING
for him in the towering ante-hall behind the strategium.

‘There you are,’ he grinned.

‘Here I am,’ Loken agreed.

‘There will be a question,’ Torgaddon remarked, keeping his voice low. ‘It will seem a minor thing, and will not be obviously directed to you but be ready to catch it.’

‘Me?’

‘No, I was talking to myself. Yes, you, Garviel! Consider it a baptismal test. Come on.’

Loken didn’t like the sound of Torgaddon’s words, but he appreciated the warning. He followed Torgaddon down the length of the ante-hall. It was a perilously tall, narrow place, with embossed columns of wood set into the walls that soared up and branched like carved trees to support a glass roof two hundred metres above them, through which the stars could be seen. Darkwood panels cased the walls between the columns, and they were covered with millions of lines of hand-painted names and numbers, all rendered in exquisite gilt lettering. They were the names of the dead: all those of the Legions, the army, the fleet and the Divisio Militaris who had fallen since the start of the Great Crusade in actions where this flagship vessel had been present. The names of immortal heroes were limned here on the walls, grouped in columns below header legends that proclaimed the world-sites of famous actions and hallowed conquests. From this display, the ante-hall earned its particular name: the Avenue of Glory and Lament.

The walls of fully two-thirds of the ante-hall were filled up with golden names. As the two striding captains in their glossy white plate drew closer to the strategium end, the wall boards became bare, unoccupied. They passed a group of hooded necrologists huddled by the last, half-filled panel, who were carefully stencilling new names onto the dark wood with gold-dipped brushes.

The latest dead. The roll call from the High City battle.

The necrologists stopped work and bowed their heads as the two captains went by. Torgaddon didn’t spare them a second glance, but Loken turned to read the half-writ names. Some of them were brothers from Locasta he would never see again.

He could smell the tangy oil suspension of the gold-leaf the necrologists were using.

‘Keep up,’ Torgaddon grunted.

High doors, lacquered gold and crimson, stood closed at the end of the Avenue Hall. Before them, Aximand and Abaddon were waiting. They were likewise fully armoured, their heads bare, their brush-crested helms held under their left arms. Abaddon’s great white shoulder plates were draped with a black wolf-pelt.

‘Garviel,’ he smiled.

‘It doesn’t do to keep him waiting,’ Aximand grumbled. Loken wasn’t sure if Little Horus meant Abaddon or the commander. ‘What were you two gabbing about? Like fish-wives, the pair of you.’

‘I was just asking him if he’d settled Vipus in,’ Torgaddon said simply.

Aximand glanced at Loken, his wide-set eyes languidly half-hooded by his lids.

‘And I was reassuring Tarik that I had,’ Loken added. Evidently, Torgaddon’s quiet heads-up had been for his ears only.

‘Let’s enter,’ Abaddon said. He raised his gloved hand and pushed the gold and crimson doors wide.

A short processional lay before them, a twenty-metre colonnade of ebon stone chased with a fretwork of silver wire. It was lined by forty Guardsmen of the Imperial army, members of Varvarus’s own Byzant Janizars, twenty against each wall. They were splendidly appointed in full dress uniforms: long cream greatcoats with gold frogging, high-crowned chrome helms with basket visors and scarlet cockades, and matching sashes. As the Mournival came through the doors, the Janizars brandished their ornate power lances, beginning with the pair directly inside the doorway. The polished blades of the weapons whirled up into place in series, like chasing dominoes along the processional, each facing pair of weapons locking into position just before the marching captains caught up with the ripple.

The final pair came to salute, eyes-front, in perfect discipline, and the Mournival stepped past them onto the deck of the strategium.

The strategium was a great, semi-circular platform that projected like a lip out above the tiered theatre of the flagship’s bridge. Far below lay the principal command level, thronging with hundreds of uniformed personnel and burnished aide servitors, tiny as ants. To either side, the bee-hive sub-decks of the secondary platforms, dressed in gold and black ironwork, rose up, past the level of the projecting strategium, up into the roof itself, each storey busy with Navy staff, operators, cogitation officers and astropaths. The front section of the bridge chamber was a great, strutted window, through which the constellations and the ink of space could be witnessed. The standards of the Luna Wolves and the Imperial Fists hung from the arching roof, either side of the staring eye banner of the Warmaster himself. That great banner was marked, in golden thread, with the decree: ‘I am the Emperor’s Vigilance and the Eye of Terra.’

Loken remembered the award of that august symbol with pride during the great triumph after Ullanor was done.

In all his decades of service, Loken had only been on the bridge of the
Vengeful Spirit
twice before: once to formally accept his promotion to captain, and then again to mark his elevation to the captaincy of the Tenth. The scale of the place took his breath away, as it had done both times before.

The strategium deck itself was an ironwork platform which supported, at its centre, a circular dais of plain, unfinished ouslite, one metre deep and ten in diameter. The commander had always eschewed any form of throne or seat. The ironwork walk space around the dais was half-shadowed by the overhang of tiered galleries that climbed the slopes of the chamber behind it. Glancing up, Loken saw huddles of senior iterators, tacticians, ship captains of the expedition fleet and other notables gathering to view the proceedings. He looked for Sindermann, but couldn’t find his face.