Horus Rising (38 page)

Indeed the war as a whole produced many extraordinary feats that posterity ought to have celebrated, especially now the remembrancers were amongst them.

Like all her kind, Mersadie Oliton was not permitted to descend to the surface with the fighting echelons, but she absorbed every detail transmitted back from the surface, the daily ebb and flow of the brutal warfare, the losses and the gains. When, periodically, Loken returned with his company to the flagship to rest, repair and re-arm, she quizzed him furiously, and made him describe all he had seen. Horus and Sanguinius, side by side, was what interested her the most, but she was captivated by all his accounts.

Many battles had been vast, pitched affairs, where thousands of Astartes led tens of thousands of army troopers against endless files of the megarachnid. Loken struggled to find the language to describe it, and sometimes felt himself, foolishly, borrowing lurid turns of phrase he had picked up from
The Chronicles of Ursh
. He told her of the great things he had witnessed, the particular moments. How Luc Sedirae had led his company against a formation of megarachnid twenty-five deep and one hundred across, and splintered it in under half an hour. How Sacrus Carminus, Captain of the Blood Angels Third Company, had held the line against a buzzing host of winged clades through one long, hideous afternoon. How Iacton Qruze, despite his stubborn, tiresome ways, had broken the back of a surprise megarachnid assault, and proved there was mettle in him still. How Tybalt Marr, ‘the Either’, had taken the low mountains in two days and elevated himself at last into the ranks of the exceptional. How the megarachnid had revealed more, and yet more nightmarish biological variations, including massive clades that strode forwards like armoured war machines, and how the Titans of the Mechanicum, led at the van by the
Dies Irae
of the Legio Mortis, smote them apart and trampled their blackened wing cases underfoot. How Saul Tarvitz, fighting at Torgaddon’s side rather than in the cohort of his arrogant lord Eidolon, renewed the Luna Wolves’ respect for the Emperor’s Children through several feats of arms.

Tarvitz and Torgaddon had achieved a brotherhood during the war and eased the discontent between the two Legions. Loken had heard rumours that Eidolon was initially displeased with Tarvitz’s deportment, until he recognised how simple brotherhood and effort was redeeming his mistake. Eidolon, though he would never admit it, realised full well he was out of favour with the Warmaster, but as time passed, he found he was at least tolerated within the bounds of the commander’s war-tent, and consulted along with the other officers.

Sanguinius had also smoothed the way. He knew his brother Horus was keen to rebuke Fulgrim for the high-handed qualities his Astartes had lately displayed. Horus and Fulgrim were close, almost as close as Sanguinius and the Warmaster. It dismayed the Lord of Angels to see a potential rift in the making.

‘You cannot afford dissent,’ Sanguinius had said. ‘As Warmaster, you must have the undivided respect of the primarchs, just as the Emperor had. Moreover, you and Fulgrim are too long bound as brothers for you to fall to bickering.’

The conversation had taken place during a brief hiatus in the fighting, during the sixth week, when Raldoron and Sedirae were leading the main force west into a series of valleys and narrow defiles along the foothills of a great bank of mountains. The two primarchs had rested for a day in a command camp some leagues behind the advance. Loken remembered it well. He and the others of the Mournival had been present in the main wartent when Sanguinius brought the matter up.

‘I don’t bicker,’ Horus said, as his armourers removed his heavy, mud-flecked wargear and bathed his limbs. ‘The Emperor’s Children have always been proud, but that pride is becoming insolence. Brother or not, Fulgrim must know his place. I have trouble enough with Angron’s bloody rages and Perturabo’s damn petulance. I’ll not brook disrespect from such a close ally.’

‘Was it Fulgrim’s error, or his man Eidolon’s?’ Sanguinius asked.

‘Fulgrim made Eidolon lord commander. He favours his merits, and evidently trusts him, and approves of his manner. If Eidolon embodies the character of the III Legion, then I have issue with it. Not just here. I need to know I can rely upon the Emperor’s Children.’

‘And why do you think you can’t?’

Horus paused while an attendant washed his face, then spat sidelong into a bowl held ready by another. ‘Because they’re too damn proud of themselves.’

‘Are not all Astartes proud of their own cohort?’ Sanguinius took a sip of wine. He looked over at the Mournival. ‘Are you not proud, Ezekyle?’

‘To the ends of creation, my lord,’ Abaddon replied.

‘If I may, sir,’ said Torgaddon, ‘there is a difference. There is a man’s natural pride and loyalty to his own Legion. That may be a boastful pride, and the source of rivalry between Astartes. But the Emperor’s Children seem particularly haughty, as if above the likes of us. Not all of them, I hasten to add.’

Listening, Loken knew Torgaddon was referring to Tarvitz and the other friends he had made amongst Tarvitz’s unit.

Sanguinius nodded. ‘It is their mindset. It has always been so. They seek perfection, to be the best they can, to echo the perfection of the Emperor himself. It is not superiority. Fulgrim has explained this to me himself.’

‘And Fulgrim may believe so,’ Horus said, ‘but superiority is how it manifests amongst some of his men. There was once mutual respect, but now they sneer and condescend. I fear it is my new rank that they resent. I’ll not have it.’

‘They don’t resent you,’ Sanguinius said.

‘Maybe, but they resent the role my rank invests upon my Legion. The Luna Wolves have always been seen as rude barbarians. The flint of Cthonia is in their hearts, and the smudge of its dirt upon their skins. The Children regard the Luna Wolves as peers only by dint of my Legion’s record in war. The Wolves sport no finery or elegant manners. We are cheerfully raw where they are regal.’

‘Then maybe it is time to consider doing what the Emperor suggested,’ Sanguinius said.

Horus shook his head emphatically. ‘I refused that on Ullanor, honour though it was. I’ll not contemplate it again.’

‘Things change. You are Warmaster now. All the Legions Astartes must recognise the pre-eminence of the XVI Legion. Perhaps some need to be reminded.’

Horus snorted. ‘I don’t see Russ trying to clean up his berserk horde and rebrand them to court respect.’

‘Leman Russ is not Warmaster,’ said Sanguinius. ‘Your title changed, brother, at the Emperor’s command, so that all the rest of us would be in no mistake as to the power you wield and the trust the Emperor placed in you. Perhaps the same thing must happen to your Legion.’

Later, as they trudged west through the drizzle, following the plodding Titans across red mudflats and skeins of surface water, Loken asked Abaddon what the Lord of Angels had meant.

‘At Ullanor,’ the first captain answered, ‘the beloved Emperor advised our commander to rename the XVI Legion, so there might be no mistake as to the power of our authority.’

‘What name did he wish us to take?’ Loken asked.

‘The Sons of Horus,’ Abaddon replied.

T
HE SIXTH MONTH
of the campaign was drawing to a close when the strangers arrived.

Over the period of a few days, the vessels of the expedition, high in orbit, became aware of curious signals and etheric displacements that suggested the activity of starships nearby, and various attempts were made to locate the source. Advised of the situation, the Warmaster presumed that other reinforcements were on the verge of arrival, perhaps even additional units from the Emperor’s Children. Patrolling scout ships, sent out by Master Comnenus, and cruisers on picket control, could find no concrete trace of any vessels, but many reported spectral readings, like the precursor field elevations that announced an imminent translation. The expedition fleet left high anchor and took station on a battle-ready grid, with the
Vengeful Spirit
and the
Proudheart
in the vanguard, and the
Misericord
and the
Red Tear
, Sanguinius’s flagship, on the trailing flank.

When the strangers finally appeared, they came in rapidly and confidently, gunning in from a translation point at the system edges: three massive capital ships, of a build pattern and drive signature unknown to Imperial records.

As they came closer, they began to broadcast what seemed to be challenge signals. The nature of these signals was remarkably similar to the repeat of the outstation beacons, untranslatable and, according to the Warmaster, akin to music.

The ships were big. Visual relay showed them to be bright, sleek and silver-white, shaped like royal sceptres, with heavy prows, long, lean hulls and splayed drive sections. The largest of them was twice the keel length of the
Vengeful Spirit
.

General alert was sounded throughout the fleet, shields raised and weapons unshrouded. The Warmaster made immediate preparations to quit the surface and return to his flagship. Engagements with the megarachnid were hastily broken off, and the ground forces recalled into a single host. Horus ordered Comnenus to make hail, and hold fire unless fired upon. There seemed a high probability that these vessels belonged to the megarachnid, come from other worlds in support of the nests on Murder.

The ships did not respond directly to the hails, but continued to broadcast their own, curious signals. They prowled in close, and halted within firing distance of the expedition formation.

Then they spoke. Not with one voice, but with a chorus of voices, uttering the same words, overlaid with more of the curious musical transmissions. The message was received cleanly by the Imperial vox, and also by the astrotelepaths, conveyed with such force and authority, Ing Mae Sing and her adepts winced.

They spoke in the language of mankind. ‘Did you not see the warnings we left?’ they said. ‘What have you done here?’

PART THREE

THE DREADFUL SAGITTARY

ONE

Make no mistakes

Cousins far removed

Other ways

A
S AN UNEXPECTED
sequel to the war on Murder, they became the guests of the interex, and right from the start of their sojourn, voices had begun to call for war.

Eidolon was one, and a vociferous one at that, but Eidolon was out of favour and easy to dismiss. Maloghurst was another, and so too were Sedirae and Targost, and Goshen, and Raldoron of the Blood Angels. Such men were not so easy to ignore.

Sanguinius kept his counsel, waiting for the Warmaster’s decision, understanding that Horus needed his brother primarch’s unequivocal support.

The argument, best summarised by Maloghurst, ran as follows: the people of the interex are of our blood and we descend from common ancestry, so they are lost kin. But they differ from us in fundamental ways, and these are so profound, so inescapable, that they are cause for legitimate war. They contradict absolutely the essential tenets of Imperial culture as expressed by the Emperor, and such contradictions cannot be tolerated.

For the while, Horus tolerated them well enough. Loken could understand why. The warriors of the interex were easy to admire, easy to like. They were gracious and noble, and once the misunderstanding had been explained, utterly without hostility.

It took a strange incident for Loken to learn the truth behind the Warmaster’s thinking. It took place during the voyage, the nine-week voyage from Murder to the nearest outpost world of the interex, the mingled ships of the expedition and its hangers-on trailing the sleek vessels of the interex flotilla.

The Mournival had come to Horus’s private staterooms, and a bitter row had erupted. Abaddon had been swayed by the arguments for war. Both Maloghurst and Sedirae had been whispering in his ear. He was convinced enough to face the Warmaster and not back down. Voices had been raised. Loken had watched in growing amazement as Abaddon and the Warmaster bellowed at each other. Loken had seen Abaddon wrathful before, in the heat of combat, but he had never seen the commander so ill-tempered. Horus’s fury startled him a little, almost scared him.

As ever, Torgaddon was trying to diffuse the confrontation with levity. Loken could see that even Tarik was dismayed by the anger on show.

‘You have no choice!’ Abaddon snarled. ‘We have seen enough already to know that their ways are in opposition to ours! You must—’

‘Must?’ Horus roared. ‘Must I? You are Mournival, Abaddon! You advise and you counsel, and that is your place! Do not imagine you can tell me what to do!’

‘I don’t have to! There is no choice, and you know what must be done!’

‘Get out!’

‘You know it in your heart!’

‘Get out!’ Horus yelled, and cast aside his drinking cup with such force it shattered on the steel deck. He glared at Abaddon, teeth clenched. ‘Get out, Ezekyle, before I look to find another first captain!’

Abaddon glowered back for a moment, spat on the floor and stormed from the chamber. The others stood in stunned silence.

Horus turned, his head bowed. ‘Torgaddon?’ he said quietly.

‘Lord, yes?’

‘Go after him, please. Calm him down. Tell him if he craves my forgiveness in an hour or two, I might soften enough to hear him, but he’d better be on his knees when he does it, and his voice had better not rise above a whisper.’

Torgaddon bowed and left the chamber immediately. Loken and Aximand glanced at one another, made an awkward salute, and turned to follow him out.

‘You two stay,’ Horus growled.

They stopped in their tracks. When they turned back, they saw the Warmaster was shaking his head, wiping a hand across his mouth. A kind of smile informed his wide-set eyes. ‘Throne, my sons. How the molten core of Cthonia burns in us sometimes.’

Horus sat down on one of the long, cushioned couches, and waved to them with a casual flick of his hand. ‘Hard as a rock, Cthonia, hot as hell in the heart. Volcanic. We’ve all known the heat of the deep mines. We all know how the lava spurts up sometimes, without warning. It’s in us all, and it wrought us all. Hard as rock with a burning heart. Sit, sit. Take wine. Forgive my outburst. I’d have you close. Half a Mournival is better than nothing.’