Twisted

Guy Haley

The Vengeful Spirit had changed. Horus had changed. But the tedious intricacies of running a warfleet had not. Warfare was warfare, whether conducted at the behest of the Council of Terra or the urging of howling gods. It always came down to the numbers.

The fifty-eighth petitioner to the Warmaster that day was a short logistician, principally composed of fat and fear. He blinked and mumbled his way through his request, eyes sliding every second – if not more often – to the pair of Justaerin Terminators flanking the basalt throne at the heart of Lupercal’s Court.

No one sat upon the throne. It was the throne of the primarch, and none but he might occupy it.

Horus was absent. The Warmaster had no time for petty concerns.

Maloghurst, the equerry of the Warmaster, sat in judgment in his stead on a stool by the throne’s dais. Were it not for his own great personal presence, he might have looked ridiculous. The throne was sized for a demigod, the dais tall, the court that surrounded it dizzyingly high and ornate. Battle honours stirred in ventilation draughts. Stars glared mercilessly from the void through armourglass ports. Blue shadows jealously guarded the statues and weapons set into the walls.

Horus was not there, but his presence steeped the court.

Maloghurst was insignificant in comparison – worse, he was far from the most perfect of Horus’s sons. His back was perpetually slanted, a cane forever close to hand – he was a fallen angel whose imperfections were made all the more glaring in his master’s shadow.

His back was broken, but his intellect was not. Twisted in mind as well as body. Maloghurst’s name had become a byword for fear.

The fat man’s lips stumbled to a stop.

‘In three days’ time, we are due to engage in the assault on Lamrys,’ said Maloghurst, ‘and you choose now to bring this trivial matter to my attention?’ His voice growled threateningly from behind his respirator. He wore his armour and his mouthpiece constantly, more or less. His battleplate had become a crutch.

Still, the logistician blanched.

‘I am sorry, my lord, but the correct scheduling of fuel distribution prior to the attack is of great importance. It must be performed before we approach the mid-system line. I cannot fulfil my role if–’

Maloghurst cut him off by rapping his cane hard against the marble floor. The crack echoed and multiplied from the walls.

‘All of us are burdened. Do you choose to consider your burden to be greater than that of the Warmaster?’

‘No, my lord!’

‘This is Lupercal’s Court.’ Maloghurst pointed to a wide arch. ‘Through there the Warmaster has his staterooms. I am the Warmaster’s equerry. Here you are but one step from the ear of our Lord Horus himself. You should be mindful of what you choose to speak into it.’

‘My lord, forgive me. I will make greater efforts. I require only a little aid.’ The fat man gulped. His attention had latched itself fully upon the Justaerin.

Maloghurst grasped the skull atop his cane. ‘Do not look to them. I could kill you myself without difficulty.’

He pushed his weight down upon the slender stick of ebony and heaved himself to his feet, and limped from his seat to the logistician. The fat man threw himself down on his hands and knees, but Maloghurst bent low. Grabbing a loose handful of hair and augmetic interface tendrils, he hauled the adept into the air, transhuman muscles bearing the weight easily, although his bones protested at the load. The logistician gaped, his mouth opening and closing moistly as he desperately tried not to scream. Tears welled from screwed-tight eyes to bead his cheeks.

Maloghurst stared him full in the face. ‘What would the Warmaster do, should he find himself in such a situation?’

The man smelled sour. Rank sweat and desperation mingled unwholesomely. Maloghurst suspected he would not answer for fear that the wrong response would end his life. He was correct in that assumption.

But the logistician was more clever than he seemed.

‘The Warmaster, in any situation, would find a way of achieving his desired result,’ he gasped.

Maloghurst admired the man’s calmness in the face of death. That, more than his answer, saved his life.

‘Yes! Whether that be toppling the lying Emperor or delivering the right amount of supplies to four insignificant cruiser squadrons!’ He released the man. ‘Get out. Do your duty without complaint. If I see you here again, I will tear your heart from your chest.’

Maloghurst turned and went back to the stool by the throne. Sparks of pain tickled his fused spine and pelvis. He gritted his teeth as he retook his seat.

Pain had been one of two constants in Maloghurst’s life for some time. The other was responsibility.

An unwelcome third had recently made itself known to him.

Vulnerability.

He was vulnerable, more so with each passing day. He had always been respected, but he had never been well liked. There was a feral mood upon the Legion of late. Old practices long suppressed now resurfaced – the savage face of Cthonia revealed as the facade of calm imposed by the Emperor was abraded by war. Rivalries had become more pronounced, more violent.

His closeness to Horus provoked jealousy. In a society of warriors, his attention to more cerebral matters marked him out for derision.

And so the distance between himself and his brothers yawned wider on the one hand. No great matter, were it not that on the other the gulf between Horus and himself also grew. No human or transhuman could ever hope to knowingly inveigle themselves with a primarch, but for two hundred years their friendship had at least bridged the fundamental gap between them.

Recently, Horus had grown far beyond mortal concerns. Ever since Molech.

None would challenge Horus’s authority, but they would dare to challenge Maloghurst for the primarch’s favour and the chance to influence the Warmaster. There was a sense of exposure growing in him that he had never felt before. Maloghurst had become a target.

But danger would not keep him from his duty.

‘Next,’ he said, with a heavy breath.

There were no announcements. No pomp. Another mortal was sent in from the antechamber where the petitioners waited without ceremony.

Rakshel, envoy for the Davinites, had taken up residence aboard the Vengeful Spirit. He padded softly along the aisle leading to the throne, bowing deeply ten metres from Maloghurst.

The equerry’s expression stiffened. The Davinites’ star was long fallen.

Before the half-man could begin his usual long, obsequious litany of praise, Maloghurst spoke.

‘I will save us some time. If your request is the same as the last four occasions you have come before me, Rakshel, then the answer is still no.’

Rakshel affected a look of understanding. On his furred, broad face it was comical. Once, Maloghurst had felt disdain for the Davinites’ degenerate forms. But since Horus declared his independence, he had seen far grosser deviations, and had learned that behind the ugly mask was often hidden power.

Now, he despised the Davinites mainly for their weakness. They were craven, scheming, always whispering to those stronger than themselves, and on the lookout for some advantage. In Erebus they had found a kindred soul.

‘That is to be expected,’ Rakshel slurred. ‘I am bound to tell you once again of the priesthood’s sense of sorrowful rejection.’

‘Your people tutored the wretch Erebus,’ said Maloghurst coolly. ‘You are lucky to be alive.’

‘We healed the Warmaster. We guided him to the truth that the false Emperor hid from all of you. Do not dismiss us. You will appreciate the import I attach to this issue, that I come here almost certain to be greeted with rejection. There are powers we are aware of – powers we taught to Erebus. We can share them with the Warmaster. We have great influence with the lords of creation.’

Maloghurst replied tersely. ‘Powers? Influence?’ He scoffed. ‘The Warmaster is far beyond your petty sorceries.’

‘Powers, yes. Influence, yes. Some powers are malignant. Some influences can be bent to ill ends. The warp dances in agitation. Great forces are moving.’

‘None is greater than mighty Lupercal.’

‘No matter how mighty one is, there is always someone mightier,’ countered Rakshel. ‘Let us help guard our master against these powers. Allow us our audience with Horus. Neither you nor he will regret it.’

Maloghurst leaned forward, lacing the fingers of both hands over the head of his cane. ‘Is that a threat, Rakshel? So many groups outside the Legion jockey for the primarch’s attention. Do not become an irritant to the Warmaster. Do not become a problem for me. Go away.’

Rakshel obeyed without demur. He bowed. ‘You do your duty, I do mine. I am sorry that we remain at an impasse.’

‘Leave.’

The Davinite bowed again and departed.

‘Seal the doors,’ said Maloghurst to the Justaerin. ‘That is enough for today. Tell the rest to consider their petitions carefully before they come back tomorrow. Perhaps a few executions will encourage them to keep their pathetic problems to themselves.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ growled the Justaerin. The warrior did nothing to hide his disdain. Maloghurst was powerful, but not in a way that Falkus Kibre’s men appreciated.

The equerry was no longer a fighter, and the newest recruits of the Legion did not even remember the days when he had been. The Sons of Horus had little respect for politics. They had only a little more for commanders who could not take to the field.

Maloghurst headed for the doors that led to the command deck, avoiding the petitioners in the antechamber. Away from his stool, no light but that of the stars illuminated him. Scraped clean of Erebus’s influence, the court appeared a more wholesome place, more fitting to a leader of Horus’s stature.

The impression was a misleading one. The shadows of the Vengeful Spirit harboured hidden things. The animus of the place was anything but clean. The whispers were at their worst in the quiet spaces. Ever since Davin they had been there, hiding, out of the way. Now they plagued the whole ship. Recently, Maloghurst had heard them even in Horus’s sanctum. Despite his growing mastery of the primal mysteries, Maloghurst hurried through the court, impatiently awaiting the opening of doors to the hubbub of the bridge.

Maloghurst… Twisted…

He could not stop himself from looking over his shoulder. There was nothing he could see, of course, but he sensed something. He was quite sure of that. An emotion took his hearts.

Not fear – never that – but unease, certainly.

He muttered a cantrip he had torn from a dying sorcerer. The sense of presence diminished slightly in response.

Light and noise dispelled the whispering entirely. Maloghurst stepped through, and walked gladly among the command crew. The tapping of his skull-topped cane heralded his presence. Officers, thralls and legionaries alike stood to attention as he passed their stations.

He welcomed the vox-chatter, the orders, the endless rounds of reports, the mindless drone of servitors. Human bodies warmed the air. It smelled of people, of sweat and soap and the dusty heat vented by machines. The machine-mind of the Vengeful Spirit belonged still to the mundane realm, even if its soul did not.

Maloghurst…

He gritted his teeth behind his breathing mask. The voice had come to him six weeks ago. Always just behind his left shoulder. He fixed his face into an imperious glare. Let none know of his disquiet. A display of weakness could doom him.

Nevertheless, he walked more quickly.

The next day, Maloghurst took the Avenue of Glory and Lament from his quarters in the command spires. His bodyguard thumped after him, towering over the serfs that swarmed the way. Corridor-trains whirred past, taking personnel from one end of the massive vessel to the other. The avenue exhibited little sign of the changes brought on by the war. All was bustle and hurried efficiency, as it always had been.

The distance between the spires and the door he sought was short, but already the walk troubled him, his mis-set bones grinding against one another. He locked his pain in a grimace hidden behind his respirator, keeping it from his eyes.

Most people got quickly out of his way, whether they were Space Marines or thralls. His disability meant that he passed slowly along the great avenue of the ship, but he did so unimpeded.

Irritation gnawed at him. Dealing with the day to day management of the fleet was tedious. He longed for the next battle. More and more Horus favoured directing the war from the front line, leaving Maloghurst in command of the flagship. But the battles were always disappointingly brief. A week, maybe two, and another world burned.

No. He was honoured, he chided himself. Who else could the Warmaster trust? Imperial sympathisers were still to be found within the ranks of the old 63rd Expedition. There were none so astute as he. Anyone else given his role would fail to spot those who were less than loyal. He appraised those who passed him. Few were bold enough to look him in the eye – most hurried by, intent on their own business. A handful were less afraid. Ranking officers and his legionary brothers saluted him with varying enthusiasm.

Brothers. How little that word meant to him now. Save for Horus, he was alone.

Better that way, perhaps. A lone predator, aware of its surroundings, makes fewer errors.

He heard the whispers underneath the clamour of the avenue. Psychic overspill, the imprints of the dead and betrayed, and increasingly the honeyed words of the denizens of the warp. Their endless temptations terrified the menials and the serfs. The fervour of many for their new creed was wavering. When a menial succumbed to the whispered promises and turned upon his comrades, it was invariably to the sound of wicked laughter.

They were always there. At the edge of hearing, accompanied often by a smell like warm blood and spoiled milk so strong that it coated the back of the throat.

He had a flash of himself raging.

Isn’t it glorious?

He saw himself stripped to the waist, his hands covered in the blood of others.

Isn’t it sublime?

He saw himself pull his bolt pistol and place it against the eye lens of the Justaerin flanking him.

Welcome me in, Twisted One. Be as Tormaggedon. Known true power. You made him. You see the power of the Luperci like none other. Take it for yourself.

Maloghurst pushed the unwelcome image away. He found himself staring a gunnery rating in the face. Over his high, armoured collar, his face was an unhealthy pallor. The whites of his eyes were a watery pink with black rings under them. The holy octed tattooed upon his cheek had become livid, raised like a scar.

Change was all about them, fuelled by the dark majesty of Horus.

Why should you not change too? asked the voice.

Not yet, thought Maloghurst. Not yet.

If he said that he had not considered taking the path of the Luperci himself, it would be a lie. So much power there, in that twining of souls. But the costs were too high for him to contemplate paying.

He was a puppeteer, not a puppet.

They descended a wide spiral stair languishing under a hellish heat and a crushing sense of claustrophobia. A hollow shaft at the centre stretched away to black infinity up and down, the steps wrapped round it as tightly as a coil of steely DNA. Mechanical sighs wheezed from the depths on hot winds, disembodied machine sounds pushed before them. The faint strains of songs of devotion were split by a scream.

And the voices… Every sound here carried a parasitic whisper.

Silence fell.

In the deep, faint and running footsteps pattered. They stopped. A door seal hissed. Then nothing. The whispers died. The sighing of the ship alone remained. Maloghurst was left with the sound of his breath wheezing into his respirator, his own unsteady steps, the whine of power armour grumbling at his unnatural gait, the steady clang of the Justaerin’s feet following behind him.

They reached their destination. A metallic groan fled up the shaft as Maloghurst unlocked the door with his key wand.

A round room, the centre occupied by pipes as profuse as those of a devotional organ. Twenty individual cell-beds were set into the wall. A door to one side led off to crude facilities: a mess and latrine block.

Those who lived there were expecting them. They were gathered before the door, their pale grey uniforms grubby and torn. For some time the Sons of Horus had added fetishes to their armour, and Maloghurst saw them displayed by the thralls more and more in imitation. A medicine pouch, a crude octed scratched into a piece of scrap and worn as a medallion. Symbols painted in dark fluids on dirty cloth. Once the Vengeful Spirit had been a clean ship. They had lost some things in choosing the path that had always been inevitable.

Power always had a cost. Maloghurst was wise to that.

The thralls were couriers. They were among the very lowest, but their function was vital. In the tumult of battle, vox-systems failed. Data squirts might not carry, the cogitator units burned out by electromagnetic surges. A runner with a message was slower, but more reliable. A valuable back-up. A few carried data-sockets so that they might inload their messages to surgically isolated parts of their brains. They knew without knowing.

This issue Maloghurst had chosen to deal with himself. It would be useful edification for others. They were lowly, yes, but the men who carried the Warmaster’s word must know that his eye was always upon them. Maloghurst must remind them how close they were to Lupercal. They would grovel when they remembered the honour it did them.

One of their number was in chains, on his knees and heavily bruised. His fellows and captors knelt beside him as the legionaries entered their cramped world. But there was a man at the fore of the group who did not kneel. His eyes were bright and hard in sockets purpled by lack of sleep.

He must be the ringleader, the accuser. Maloghurst wondered what calculation he had made to call directly upon the ship’s lords. Attracting the attention of the Legion could have gone badly for him. It still might. The hard-eyed man dropped his eyes and pointed to his captive wordlessly.

‘You defy the Warmaster,’ Maloghurst said to the man in chains.

The captive would not look at him, but he did speak. ‘Not defiance, a request. We do not have enough water. We are dying.’ Upon the man’s shoulders were rank stripes. A subordinary indentured officer. This must be his command.

Maloghurst knew the story. The fleet pushed on and on with little pause, Terra firmly in its sights. There was no time for resupply, no time for repair. Many parts of the ship were left without basic requirements. The couriers’ leader intended to alleviate their suffering; perhaps he had been there, waiting outside Lupercal’s Court yesterday when Maloghurst had declared the audiences at an end. His men, panicked, had thrown themselves upon the Legion’s mercy. They would rather risk the slow death of thirst than anger their masters. Too bad for him.

Behind his respirator, Maloghurst smiled. True power was invested by fear. Here it was, as plain as the Emperor’s lies. Had the man come to him, it might have been different. But the couriers had acted, and Maloghurst was in no mood for mercy.

Maloghurst pulled out his sacred dagger and swept it across the man’s throat. Let it feed – it had not been blooded for some while. Bright blood spread a crimson fan across the decking.

‘Your concern is heard. There is one less of you. The rest may drink more deeply.’

A sinuous laugh twisted on the air. Maloghurst turned swiftly to its source. A great shape stood at the farmost left of the couriers, a column composed of dark smoke and a palpable malevolence.

Maloghurst, it said. Become. Open the way.

The shape had no visible sensory organs, but it surely stared back at Maloghurst, for he could feel it scrying his very soul. A hand formed momentarily in the smoke. A long finger traced the jaw of a nearby courier. He shuddered, but the man’s dread of the legionaries stopped him from looking up.

A hand touched his elbow. Maloghurst twitched.

‘My lord?’

His gaze fell to the deck. The blood had gone, as though greedily absorbed by the ship itself.

The subordinary courier’s men kept their eyes fixed upon the decking. Maloghurst searched the limits of the chamber, but the shadow was nowhere to be found.

‘My lord,’ said the Justaerin. Criticism of Maloghurst’s lack of control was implicit in his tone.

‘We are done here,’ he muttered. His blade slid back into its sheath with a click, and he pointed to the hard-eyed man. ‘You. You are now in charge of this group.’

‘Aye, my lord,’ the man whispered.

He left the couriers to dispose of their erstwhile commander. The urge to look over his shoulder as he left was almost impossible to defy, but defy it he did.

A Space Marine was not intended to dream in the manner of mortals. The dreams of normal men were a clumsy way of managing memories and learning. A legionary had no need to manage his memory, for his was as ordered as a well-kept library. His dreams therefore lacked the allegorical nature of mortal dreams, tending to the quotidian: the mastering of new skills, sped up by carefully designed hypnotic shaping.

But that night, Maloghurst dreamed as mortals dream.

He was in the abode of fire, and it burned him. The Warmaster stood in impossible company. A sorcerer in an azure parody of the Crimson King’s garb stood to one side. Fulgrim was behind his brother, unchanged from his original form, while sundry other degenerates and warp-beasts clamoured all around. Erebus had returned to them, though his face was now a mask of grim spite. A holographic orb of Terra hung in the air in front of Horus.

Maloghurst was there, too. He saw himself from outside, as if he viewed the scene through another’s eyes. How old and broken he looked, his ruined face hidden behind his ever-present respirator. The eyes gleamed with a touch of madness. This other Maloghurst wore a patchwork tabard of flayed human skin over his armour.

Everything was wrong. And the fire, burning hot, pressed around on all sides. Only he, the observing Maloghurst, appeared aware of it. His doppelganger – or was it the true Maloghurst, and he was some other? – appeared entirely ignorant of the heat.

The others continued their debate unconcerned. Horus laid out his plans for the conquest of Terra. His subordinates, aides and adjutants gave their opinions. Their words were short and to the point. Their comments were elaborations, details. None would gainsay the Warmaster’s flawless strategy. None could.

Horus looked directly at Maloghurst-the-observer. His face was majestic, alive with fierce intelligence and the grand power of the warp.

‘Maloghurst! You have joined us.’ He addressed him as though it were perfectly normal that there were two embodiments of his equerry in attendance.

‘My lord…’ said Maloghurst. Confusion muddied his thoughts. A dream. He clung to the certainty of that as hard as he could. ‘I am sorry.’

His double chittered an idiot chant in a forgotten language. His bloodshot eyes rolled back into his head. Black liquid ran from the edges of his respirator.

Over Horus’s shoulder, the presence loomed.

This was no pillar of smoke, but Maloghurst knew it for the thing he had seen in the couriers’ barracks. Long, multiple-jointed fingers stroked the fur of Horus’s cloak. It crooned a song fit for the cradles of dead infants. Maloghurst stepped back.

The Warmaster fixed his full attention on him. The weight of it was unbearable.

‘Is there something wrong, Mal?’

‘My lord, I…’

The creature stared at him. The form of it was oily black, a liquid born of congealed smoke. A hundred eyes looked at him unblinkingly from a long, equine face. Arms that hinted at the nightmares of insects slid over each other in countless profusion.

Horus laid his hand upon Maloghurst’s shoulder. ‘This is not befitting of my equerry.’

‘No, lord.’

‘This war taxes us all, Mal.’ Horus’s face was neutral, the blaze of otherworldly power that possessed him burning behind unreadable eyes. He looked at Maloghurst’s cane. ‘Perhaps you should rest.’

‘I am fine, my lord,’ said Maloghurst. He stood taller in defiance of his injuries. His gaze kept sliding from Horus’s face to the warp-horror standing behind him. Why did Lupercal not see it? An image of the fat logistician was projected into his mind, glancing fearfully at the Justaerin. He gasped at the invasion.

‘And I say you are not fine. Stand down, equerry. Go to the Apothecaries, and have yourself examined. Then return to your quarters. Rest.’

‘My lord, I am fit for my duties,’ Maloghurst protested. ‘When have I ever failed you?’

Horus squeezed Maloghurst’s shoulder, the claws of his talon lightly scraping against the equerry’s war-plate.

‘Never, my friend. But then nothing fails, until the time that it does. Your time approaches.’

‘My lord–’

‘Do as I command!’ said Horus. The change in his expression afforded Maloghurst a glimpse of what lurked behind his eyes. He took a faltering step backwards.

The daemon laughed silkily. It ran long, black arms around Horus’s neck in a loving embrace.

Maloghurst looked from face to face around the gathering. Indifference, or hatred in places, greeted him. He retreated before it.

He ran, the only gait his body would allow him was a ridiculous gallop. The whine of his power amour as it attempted to match and amplify this movement sounded like mocking laughter.

He found himself in a corridor that he could not possibly reach from Lupercal’s Court. Screaming faces formed in metal that had become as fluid as boiling water. The corridor convulsed, warping out of shape entirely. Maloghurst’s crippled legs gave way under him and he fell. There was no floor to halt him. He plummeted into a hell of unnatural colours. A swirl of dark threads gathered into an oily scum atop the shifting ocean.

From this, the daemon rose, sucking the blackness into itself. The oil was fed by a thousand dark veins threading the warp, and so reduced only slowly.

By the time the daemon had absorbed all of the darkness, it was as big as a Battle Titan. By some trick it was suddenly below Maloghurst.

Come to me, Maloghurst! Be mine… Let us be one…

Maloghurst plummeted helplessly into its yawning maw.

He sat bolt upright on his pallet, forgetting the ruin of his body for a moment. The motion sent a jag of pain up his nerves that emerged from his mouth as a harsh grunt. Sweat poured off his skin. His muscles and scars were picked out by curves of dim light issued by the door lock lumen. He looked at his arm, and saw it as the daemon’s oily limb. He recoiled, blinked, and then saw only his hand.

Of the thousands of articles blindly collected as war trophies aboard the Vengeful Spirit, few had proven to be artefacts of the true faith. Among them were certain objects of power. Maloghurst reached for one of these now.

Cold, greasy metal met his touch. His hand closed around it, and brought it to his face. A small gargoyle taken from a degenerate human world. The savage inhabitants had not possessed the technology to manufacture even this ugly thing of lead, and so its provenance was unknown. Whatever its true origins, he had found it to be an effective daemon ward. He slid back the hinged lids that covered the coloured glass of its eyes.

They glowed a warning red.

‘Neverborn,’ hissed Maloghurst.

A foul smell filled the room. He choked, saliva spilling from his wry lips.

He gulped air flavoured by nothing more than recycling systems and warm metal.

Rakshel’s lair was deep inside the ship, not far from the grand transit canyon that ran the length of the ship’s keel. These were thrall spaces, and many were long abandoned. Maloghurst passed empty dormitories, refectories full of spilled tin plates caked in decayed organic matter. Spaces where crew serfs no longer lived, their halls emptied by war. The mortal personnel manifest of the Vengeful Spirit ran into the tens of thousands. They swarmed the endless arterial corridors of its interior, as numerous as blood cells. And like blood cells they bled freely into the void whenever the flagship’s hull was breached.

The whispers were stronger this far below the command deck. Things flickered in the corner of one’s eye. It was better to steer clear of the dark places, even for one as strong as Maloghurst.

But today he had no choice.

Strange smells wafted on ventilation draughts – sweet and feculent, too strong to be real and too real to be dismissed. Damage suffered in the Vengeful Spirit’s endless battles was evident all about him. Whole sections were sealed away, bulkhead doors welded shut. Deck plating was buckled. Wrinkled walls spilled congealed waves of sealant foam like lava from volcanic cracks. There were areas where the gravity or lighting was inconstant.

Maloghurst came to a cavity hollowed from the side of the ship by a nova blast. Sheets of plain metal the size of fortress doors sealed the breach. A swaying catwalk hung from wires anchored to the mess of broken pipes and void-ice above. The tug of artificial gravity there was capricious, coming first from one direction, then another. Maloghurst grabbed the walkway’s guide rail for support and dragged himself across. The cavity glimmered with warning lights. Beneath his feet, huge servitors hauled off tons of tangled, fused debris. Arc-lightning from welding torches played, sparks showering down in yellow rains. Without a sojourn in drydock, damage like this could never be repaired, only contained. There were many such wounds along the Vengeful Spirit’s flanks.

He left the ragged chamber, exiting through a door into a corridor that perversely bore little sign of damage. A repair crew passed him on the way to their worksite. They were armed, armoured and in great number. A triad of Mechanicum priests led them, red augmetic eyes winking under black cowls. The rearmost of their number led a Thallax unit by warding chains upon whose links glowed runes of containment. Corposant glittered in the machine’s exhaust. A growl grumbled from the smooth faceplate at Maloghurst as he went past. The thing’s organic components were not of mundane origins.

With this Dark Mechanicum monster in their midst, still the repair team looked about warily. The armsmen that escorted them peered fearfully from behind their glass visors.

Their fear was not for him. They watched the shadows.

Among the broken decks and exhausted magazines dwelt the Davinites. Maloghurst smelled their reek a hundred metres before he came to their domain. A musty, animal scent carried on sighing breezes of the ship’s air. The odour of urine, cooking, smoke and faeces associated with any one of humanity’s rough camps pitched since the dawn of time.

The Davinites cleaved to their roots, moving periodically about the ship. Their current abode was a store emptied of all supplies – one of many. Voided of their original contents by the demands of war, they drew in new occupants, rarely benign.

The broad blast doors were open. Maloghurst went within. Davinites squatted around open fires burning directly on the deck. Their shelters were of cloth or scavenged steel plating. There had been cities on Davin of well-ordered adobe houses, but the Primordial Truth had come from the plains tribes, and Maloghurst found himself amongst a nomad band encamped in a metal cave.

His enhanced eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom. There were thirty-one of them, the remainder of the group that had come aboard at Erebus’s invitation. With their patron banished, there were fewer than there had been, but those that remained appeared unchanged by the slow alteration of the Vengeful Spirit. They showed little sign of the deprivation exhibited by the menials, and they behaved as though the ship were altering itself to suit them.

The Davinites ignored him. They gazed into their fires as silently as stone-age hunters of Old Earth abroad on a monster-haunted night. He made for the largest tent, expecting to find Rakshel inside. He was not disappointed.

The ambassador was sleeping, a flat-dugged Davinite female nestled into him atop a pile of ragged bedding. The ambassador had always looked ill-kempt but in comparison to his abode, his appearances in Lupercal’s Court were princely.

Maloghurst jabbed at the makeshift bed with his cane. Rakshel opened one eye then the other. In the dim light, his pupils were even larger than normal.

‘You came,’ he said.

‘You were expecting me?’ asked Maloghurst. He displayed no surprise. The last few years had inured him to surprises.

‘The least of us here could smell the warp-taint upon you. Yes, I expected you.’

Rakshel sat. The woman awoke and smiled at Rakshel – he nodded to the legionary by the bed. Her drowsiness rapidly left her and she leapt up, wrapping herself in a filthy blanket as she ran.

Maloghurst watched her go. ‘A fine home you have made yourself, here.’

Rakshel shrugged, the gesture turned into an extravagant stretch and yawn. ‘I have known hardship and this is as comfortable a place as any. Conditions here are better than for many of your servants, Twisted One. The gods provide their bounty easily to us true followers.’

Maloghurst laughed. His respirator made it a bark. ‘A fine bounty.’

Rakshel rested his hairy arms on his knees. ‘You are the one hounded by the Neverborn, not I. I am safe. You are not.’

‘I could deny it,’ said Maloghurst. ‘But you are right. I see it in my dreams. I hear its voice when I am awake. A daemon of oil and smoke.’

‘It is close then. Best make your peace with it – your torment in the next life might be less.’

‘That is not satisfactory.’

‘No?’ Rakshel was enjoying himself, and made no attempt to conceal it.

‘You tell me often of your mastery of the warp. Now is the time for your bragging to cease. I need deeds. You will rid me of the Neverborn.’

Rakshel pursed his lips in thought. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You shall have deeds, though not mine.’

Maloghurst leaned on his cane questioningly.

‘You will need someone mightier than myself. I will take you to Tsepha. He was an acolyte of Akshub, and is the greatest of us still alive.’

Rakshel climbed from his bed, unashamed by his nakedness. He held up the flap of his tent and pointed to a fire set some way from the others.

‘You will find him there.’

‘You will not accompany me?’

Rakshel gave Maloghurst a wide smile, shook his head, and let the tent flap drop between them.

Maloghurst picked his way around piles of rubbish and crates repurposed as furniture. The rest of the Davinites ignored him, intent on whatever it was they saw in the dance of the flames.

There was a lone figure by the furthest fire. A filthy, near-naked standard human boy. He was covered from head to foot in arcane marks carved into his flesh. His hair had come away in clumps.

Blood-red eyes and a raspy voice gave away the boy’s true nature. ‘The Twisted One comes looking for help. I am honoured.’

‘Tsepha? Acolyte of Akshub?’

‘I am he,’ said the boy.

‘You are not Davinite.’

‘Davinite, Terran, Cthonian… What does that matter? All souls are the same in the eyes of the gods. I accepted their truth, and I am undying – I went away, now I return. Before I was Davinite, and now I am Cthonian. How do you like my vessel?’ He held up arms covered in sores. When he smiled, bloody gums showed.

‘You were brought back?’

‘If you wish to call it that.’ The possessed boy resumed, looking into the fire. He poked at it with a human thighbone. Blue flame licked around the bulb of the femoral head. Shapes moved under his skin, mimicking the play of the flames. ‘You think of your summonings. I am not the same as your Luperci. I am myself alone.’

Around the other fires silent figures squatted. Maloghurst searched them. ‘Where is your mistress?’

‘Gone.’

‘Bring her back. I want to speak with her.’

‘You cannot. She is no more. She was consumed. Erebus destroyed her. If you want help, you must ask it of me.’

‘I am haunted.’

‘The Neverborn attach themselves to those who show promise. You are talented, but untutored. Your master gives you more power than you can safely wield. By creating the Luperci you have opened yourself to risk. The being that dogs you senses a way in through your mind. It will happen, and it will destroy you.’

‘You will help me,’ said Maloghurst. It was not a question.

The boy looked up sharply, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. ‘I will? And what will the great Maloghurst do for me? You are the servant of the chosen one, but even you do not get to make demands of Tsepha.’

Maloghurst glowered down at the boy. ‘Your life will be forfeit if you do not.’

The boy chuckled wetly. ‘And if it is, so what? Did you not hear my previous words, noble warrior? You cannot kill me.’

Maloghurst’s gauntlet dug into his cane. His other hand hovered over his dagger.

The boy glanced at it. ‘A holy knife. You have learned much, but not enough.’

‘You will help me,’ rasped Maloghurst, ‘or I will put your undying nature to the test.’

‘Then you will have no help, and I will not die. Such a sad way to end a life, so full of promise, with a failed experiment. A waste of everyone’s time.’

‘There is a price, then?’

The boy discarded the thighbone and poked at the fire with his unprotected hand. Fatty smoke curled off blackening flesh. He showed only fascination, and no discomfort.

‘We will have what we have been asking for these last months. Access to the Warmaster.’

‘Why should you have it?’

‘Because you will die if we do not.’

‘I am expendable,’ said Maloghurst. ‘A pawn in the game. I need a more compelling reason than my own fate.’

‘Damnation, then. You know that is what awaits you. Is that compelling enough? You argue disingenuously. Why are you here if you do not care for your own fate?’

‘I did not say that I do not care. Answer me.’

The boy got to his feet and tilted his bloody eyes upwards. Maloghurst had no knack for telling the ages of the unenhanced. Tsepha’s host was pre-adolescent, though probably not by much. Younger than the boys recruited into the Legion, perhaps? His head came as high as Maloghurst’s belt.

‘We are the people of the one true faith,’ said Tsepha. ‘It was we who opened the eyes of the Warmaster to the lies of the Emperor. How foolish you must feel, now that you also see. The lies were obvious, and the truth in plain sight. All around you was the evidence of his falsehood, and you ignored it, clinging to a creed every bit as dogmatic as those you denounced. How many times were you confronted by it? And now you are converts, with the zeal of those whose eyes are uncovered. But we are servants of the gods of old. We could teach you so much more.’

‘I have heard this offer before, not least from the serpent Erebus. You seek influence. You seek power through access to Horus Lupercal. That I cannot allow. This war is not being waged for the advantage of the cults of Davin.’

The boy shrugged. ‘Then you will die and burn forever, and we will have it anyway.’

Tsepha’s blackened hand blurred, and became pallid and unharmed again but for the weeping ritual cuts incised into the skin. Tsepha held it up and gave a bloody grin.

Maloghurst remained silent. The muttering of Davinites was curiously peaceful in the dark. There, in that metal cave, it was easy for a moment to forget exactly where he was. The whispers were absent. The presence of the millions of tonnes of the Vengeful Spirit all around him receded.

‘What must I do?’ he said eventually.

The boy smiled in quiet triumph. ‘Fulfil your promise. There is a ritual that can be performed. It will armour your soul against the Neverborn. Your own power will be increased. A fair bargain, I think.’

‘When?’

‘Soon. Or you will be lost. Today?’

Maloghurst grunted. ‘So be it.’

‘Then at ship’s midnight. There is a place we can use.’

The location entered into Maloghurst’s mind. An embarkation cavity, a docking point for supply lighters a few hundred metres from their current position.

‘I will be there.’

‘I know you will,’ said the boy.

In a circle marked carefully in blood and bone dust, Maloghurst concluded his ritual. He bowed eight times before the holy octed large upon the wall. In his hand he held a bolt shell casing on a chain. It was stoppered with black wax, sealing his own blood inside. He muttered the words that Horus himself had passed to him. The shell emitted a strange radiation not native to the material realm – when he opened his eyes, he could no longer see it. His ruined face essayed as much of a smile as it was able.

In the circle it was completely silent. Neither the noises of the ship or the whispers of the daemon-kin troubled him within its circuit. The faint tremor of the deck plates was the only reminder that he was aboard a starship at all.

The opening of the door broke his concentration. The flames on the black candles wavered.

‘Aximand,’ he said. ‘Who let you in?’

‘I am of the Mournival, Mal. I can go where I wish. Where have you been? Lupercal wants to see you.’

‘I cannot. I have matters to attend to, as you can see.’

Aximand’s eyebrows rose on his face unevenly. His features were lopsided, and somewhat grotesque under certain conditions. Once the living image of his gene-father, his mutilation should have destroyed the likeness. Somehow, it had made him look even more like Horus. He was a caricature of a demigod.

Both of them were twisted now, in their own way.

‘You are refusing a summons from Horus? You are bold,’ Aximand said. ‘Or is there something else going on in that labyrinthine mind of yours?’

Maloghurst rounded on him. ‘What makes you say that?’

Aximand made a face of mild surprise. ‘Perhaps not. I hear you mumbling to the gods. You are becoming as unhinged as Lorgar’s Seventeenth.’

‘You have witnessed the power that is mine to command.’

‘I have. The Luperci are impressive, Mal. But to do so much…’ Aximand looked at the trappings of Maloghurst’s ritual with a complete lack of interest. ‘We are warriors, not priests.’

‘I am no priest, Little Horus. The Luperci are a weapon. This is another.’ He held up the bolt shell on its chain.

Aximand frowned. ‘There is nothing there.’

‘There is. I cannot see it either, but I know that it is there. The power of the warp acts more effectively than any cloaking device. You too could wield such power, if you were not so narrow-minded.’

‘Narrow-minded I may be, Mal, but I’m not stupid enough to disobey a direct summons from Horus.’

Maloghurst gripped his cane. ‘Tell him I will attend him later.’

‘I will not. Tell him yourself.’

‘I am occupied, Aximand. Lupercal will understand.’

‘Isn’t that a little presumptuous, even for you?’

‘Our lord is party to everything that goes on aboard this ship, Little Horus. He will understand.’ Maloghurst took up a message tube and slipped the bolt shell into the tightly rolled parchment secreted within. He twisted on the end cap, activated the gene-seal, and held it out to Aximand. ‘Give these orders to Sergeant Gryben of the 43rd.’

‘I’m not your errand boy.’

‘You will do as I order, captain,’ Maloghurst said. ‘It is not a request. Tell him to open it carefully, to tip out the chain within and wear it around his neck.’

‘I did not see anything,’ said Aximand.

‘That is the point. And he will not be able to see it either. You should urge him not to lose it…’

Aximand held out his hand and took the message. ‘What did you put in here?’ he rolled the tube over. There were no marks upon it.

‘A guarantee of sorts. Do not concern yourself with it. Deliver it, and do it now. Tell no one.’

‘What are you up to, Mal?’ Aximand muttered. His curiosity was piqued.

‘You will see. Or maybe you will not. It is of no consequence. All that matters is that I will succeed.’

Maloghurst stepped out of his circle. The ceaseless growl of the Vengeful Spirit rumbled in his ears, and the whispers began anew.

Down in the lower decks, the whispers were not whispers at all, anymore. There were many wicked voices on the air, their words disconcertingly clear. The one that Maloghurst strained to hear was not among them. Knowing where your enemy is was far better than not knowing. Every voice gave him pause.

A handful of thralls and serf menials went about their business. They looked at him sidelong, wondering why a legionary would be about in such a place so often. It was becoming easier to tell the faithful from potential traitors, for they wore their marks of devotion to the old gods, and there were more than a few whose manner betrayed their fear at the whispers. The truly faithful were perturbed, but also delighted. Only the servitors seemed unaffected, stomping about on careless feet much as they always had done.

Little matter if they were true to the Warmaster’s cause or not. As long as they worked. Menials were materiel. No one cared for the opinions of a round of ammunition.

Maloghurst turned onto an access way that was only lightly used. A number of the lumens set in the ceiling had blown out, others flickered at a frequency that bothered the eye. Here, the voices blended seamlessly with the rumbles and clatters of a living starship. The Vengeful Spirit had found its voice.

A hatch hissed upwards in front of him. Colder air awaited. A sequence of seven small shuttle docks chained together by short lengths of corridor lay ahead. The rear walls of the hangars could be retracted, opening up the way to large loading doors that sealed supply routes heading deeper into the Vengeful Spirit. All were closed. There were galleries around the bays, maintenance runnels for the cranes that ran around the rooms on rails. Otherwise the hangars were featureless and utilitarian.

Maloghurst passed through four bays on the way to his destination. Each was deserted, all but one empty of craft. The long launch tubes on two showed signs of damage. Sheets of plastek, tattered from heavy use and marred with dust, wafted in ventilation breezes.

The door to the fifth bay opened, revealing chanting and rough music. The hangar wall was down and the bay was full of Davinites. Nearly their full complement, Maloghurst thought. Good. The coarse hair that furred their bodies was thick with symbols painted in blood. They stopped mid-motion, freezing whatever dance they had been performing into an eerie tableau vivant. All eyes turned to the Space Marine.

Rakshel came to him. Maloghurst’s enhanced olfactory sense detected the sweet chemical signifiers of narcotics in his breath and sweat.

‘You came, noble warrior.’

‘Why would I not?’

Rakshel shrugged. ‘You are wearing your armour.’

‘I always wear it. I cannot move well without it.’

‘No matter,’ said Rakshel. ‘We shall remove it.’

A rough octed had been set against one wall. Beaten brass, platinum etched with writhing, patterned green copper and dull iron made up the arrows of its wheel. Stout chains and manacles hung from it.

‘Chaining me is not necessary,’ said Maloghurst.

‘Oh, but it is necessary,’ Rakshel replied.

‘I will not allow you to chain me.’

‘Your kind know no fear. Why are you frightened? Either you are chained, or you leave.’

Maloghurst made a noise deep in his chest. ‘Very well.’

Rakshel gestured to his fellows. They came forward with disarming tools, and clumsily stripped Maloghurst of his battleplate. The legionary drew in a ragged, hissing gasp as his respirator was removed. His breathing became laboured without it.

The Davinites supported his enormous bulk and guided him to the octed.

Maloghurst. Come to me.

All in the room heard the words. The Davinites looked up at their speaking.

‘We must work quickly,’ said Rakshel. ‘The Neverborn is here!’

The manacles were snapped shut hurriedly. When the Davinites were satisfied that Maloghurst was restrained, they stepped back and leered at him. Maloghurst tugged at the links uneasily.

Warning klaxons blared. The rotating light above the left-hand loading door spun round and the door opened, its hazard striped plasteel giving way to darkness beyond.

The born-again shaman Tsepha stepped through, the body of the boy he wore gleaming with white lime. The bloody marks of the cuts and his inhuman eyes showed through, bright crimson. He wore only a loincloth. In his hand, he bore a glassy black blade that weeped tendrils of black smoke.

‘You have come. You are a fool,’ gloated Tsepha. ‘Twisted, the Sons of Horus name you. Twisted by their measure, but not by mine. A race of giants, bred for war. You are no subtle blade.’

The boy stepped in front of Maloghurst. With a quick slash, he opened a cut across the Space Marine’s scarred torso. Maloghurst bit back a shout. The wound burned like the cold of the void.

‘Horus has become a god. Every eye of the empyrean is turned upon his progress. The blood of one so valued by the Warmaster is a worthy sacrifice.’

‘He will kill you all!’ snarled Maloghurst. He tugged at his chains with sudden, impotent anger.

From behind Tsepha, Rakshel smiled.

‘He will not. You are a pawn, you said. We all are. For the pawn, all power demands payment. Erebus knew this. But you would not listen. Now you will pay for your petty spells and your Luperci. Your time has come. Horus requires a steady hand to guide him. We will provide it.’

With a bloody grin, Tsepha began a low, guttural chant. The temperature plummeted. Behind him the Davinites began their vile dance again. A slow drumbeat set their rhythm, growing faster by steady increments.

Tsepha passed the knife before Maloghurst, jabbing downwards with it in time to his chant. Maloghurst arched his back and roared with pain at each insult. A network of cold spread across his skin, deep into his bones, a disgusting squirming accompanying it.

‘MALOGHURST! I COME!’ shouted the voice. And it was insubstantial no longer. This voice troubled the air, not only the soul.

A dark shape appeared at Tsepha’s shoulder.

‘Take this worthy sacrifice, oh Qwiltzuk-Ikar! Part the veil of the world and step through. Assume the form and flesh of Maloghurst the Twisted!’

The dark shape solidified, becoming a column of writhing smoke, then a vortex of shining black liquid. Suggestions of limbs appeared within, only to be snatched away by the endless rotation. Long pseudopods reached for Maloghurst’s face.

The chained legionary began to laugh. Rakshel was amazed. Tsepha faltered.

‘My turn now,’ said Maloghurst. ‘I thank you for the daemon’s name.’ He began to chant, under his breath at first, then louder and louder. A fresh incantation that blended with the Davinites’ pounding drums and Tsepha’s own summoning, threatening to undo it from within. The language was hard and old.

‘He knows the speech of the Neverborn!’ hissed Tsepha. The boy fought back, shouting louder, before gritting his teeth. Blood ran from his eyes.

‘Qwiltzuk-Ikar! Qwiltzuk-Ikar! Qwiltzuk-Ikar!’ shouted Maloghurst. Ancient words raced from him, driving back the questing feelers of the manifesting daemon.

Qwiltzuk-Ikar turned its attention upon Tsepha. The shaman waved his knife about threateningly, howling and barking words that should issue from no human throat.

‘Gag him!’ screamed Rakshel, pointing at Maloghurst.

The Davinites rushed forward. Two clamped their hands about Maloghurst’s head, but he bucked and shook them off ferociously. A third carried a spiked muzzle.

Maloghurst paused in his incantation, his jaw worked and he spat full into the cultist’s face. The Davinite shrieked and fell back, hands clapped to his eyes. Vinegary smoke streamed from his burning face as he fell to the floor. Another approached, but Maloghurst stopped him with a glare.

‘No!’ screamed Rakshel.

The last syllables of Maloghurst’s incantation slipped free of his twisted mouth.

Tsepha fell backwards as if struck. He cowered on the deck before the column of oil.

‘Take him,’ ordered Maloghurst.

‘Yes,’ said the daemon.

The liquid flew at Tsepha, forcing its way into his eyes, mouth, ears and nose. The possessed boy convulsed so hard that his head struck the deck and left a bloody print upon it.

Then the stolen body exploded. Wet meat, steaming in the chill of the docking bay, slapped into the walls.

Something took his place. Neverborn.

Qwiltzuk-Ikar unfolded itself, a gangling monstrosity twice the height of a Space Marine. Multiple arms unfolded. Fingers tipped with blade claws flexed. It shook itself free of blood like a dog coming out of a river.

‘Free. I am free,’ it hissed. ‘And you are not my master.’

‘What have you done?’ screamed Rakshel. ‘It is without control!’

‘I did not intend it to be controlled,’ said Maloghurst. He yanked hard on his restraints, parting the links of the chains with contemptuous ease. He stepped free from the octed. The daemon growled, lunging forwards with half a dozen arms. Maloghurst spoke the creature’s name, spat five syllables that pained him to speak, and held up his hands.

Qwilltzuk-Ikar stopped dead, roaring furiously.

The Davinites gibbered with terror, scrabbling at doors that would not open.

Rakshel backed away. Still holding out one hand to restrain the daemon, Maloghurst caught the ambassador about the neck and hauled him off his feet.

‘You were a fool to underestimate me, Davinite,’ he growled. ‘Squad Gryben! Reveal yourselves.’

All around the gallery, reality warped. Fifteen Sons of Horus stood with their bolters trained upon the daemon and the panicking cultists.

‘How could you think this ridiculous scheme would work, Rakshel?’ said Maloghurst. ‘Summoning a daemon to trouble me day and night, then intending to have it claim me on the pretext of your aid? How could a degenerate mortal like you outwit a Son of Horus? Your scheme depends upon fear, Rakshel.’ Maloghurst pulled the ambassador in closer. ‘And we know no fear.’

Rakshel drew in a rattling breath, unable to respond.

‘A cripple I might be among my kind, but I exceed you in every regard,’ said Maloghurst.

Qwiltzuk-Ikar screamed, chattering dire threats in every language ever spoken. Maloghurst clawed his right hand and squeezed the air, and the daemon squealed in agony. He returned his attention to Rakshel.

‘I deny your request for an audience with the Warmaster one final time. With your death.’

Slowly, Maloghurst squeezed Rakshel’s throat shut. The Davinite thrashed madly at the arm holding him, windmilling legs kicking pathetically at his tormentor’s side. Maloghurst grimaced with pleasure as Rakshel’s last breath turned into a death rattle.

‘Gryben, open fire!’ he shouted.

All sound was obliterated beneath the thunder of fifteen bolters firing simultaneously.

Davinites exploded. Their limbs slithered across the frost-coated metal. Gore splashed, drenching Maloghurst and Rakshel. The daemon screeched, furious to be denied its part in the slaughter.

Gryben’s squad turned their weapons upon Qwiltzuk-Ikar. It writhed as round after round disappeared into it. Explosions sent bursts of black ichor slashing out to mix with the red. It whipped back and forth. Its limbs were parted from its body, landing on the floor where they sublimated into noisome vapour.

The barrage was too much, and it fell. Qwiltzuk-Ikar’s warp-formed body snapped and writhed upon deck plating slick with frozen blood. Half of Gryben’s squad had descended from the maintenance gallery and were advancing upon it, pumping it full of mass-reactive rounds, pausing only to change their empty magazines.

It attempted to get up, the unnatural vitality of the warp pulling its broken body back together, but its reforming limbs were shot out from under it again and again. It collapsed and did not rise.

Maloghurst threw down Rakshel’s corpse. ‘Enough!’ he shouted.

The din of bolter fire ceased. The reverberations took an age to die. There was not a living thing left in the room that was not a legionary. He limped over to the daemon, and pinned its neck in place with his foot. Eyes swam beneath the surface of night-black skin, opening at random across its long face. Shadowy tendrils waved out over every wound, seeking their fellows to grasp and pull, knitting the hurts together. They were growing feebler and feebler.

‘I do not account myself a great sorcerer, Neverborn. But I am fortunate to have a master who is willing to share a portion of his knowledge.’ Maloghurst held out his hand. A bolt pistol was pressed into it. ‘In several of the very diverse sources I have read, it is written that whenever a fiend is dispatched from the material realm, it spends one hundred years and a day in torment before it might come forth again.’

Maloghurst racked a bolt into the pistol’s chamber. A cold amusement entered his eyes as he aimed the gun at the creature. Qwiltzuk-Ikar was diminishing, shrinking in size and potency, its body streaming away in smoke. It was once the size of a man, now only a child. Only the head remained undiminished, large and freakish upon the nub of its body.

‘We will bargain!’ hissed the fiend. ‘You shall have powers undreamed. You shall no longer be known as the Twisted, but the Mighty! I can heal you. I can make you whole.’

‘Don’t you see?’ said Maloghurst. ‘I value the sobriquet and the state of my body equally. Why would I wish to enslave you in exchange for more? You would be close to Horus, which was your aim. I am not like these simpletons, to believe the promises of daemonkind. Spend the next one hundred years and a day considering this – you wish to master us, but it is we who shall master you.’

A round from Maloghurst’s gun pulped its head, and black ooze spread around it. The stench of mud dragged from noisome waters enveloped them all, and then it was gone.

The Davinite corpses were stuck with combat blades, and turned over by careless, crushing boots.

‘They are all dead, my lord,’ said Gryben.

Maloghurst nodded his approval. He haltingly retrieved his cane and then, better supported, headed swiftly for the loading gates. He chose the same one through which Tsepha had entered. It was fitting. There was power in even the smallest gesture.

‘Send this thing back to warp,’ he ordered.

A legionary with a flamer stepped forward and the others fell back, carrying the pieces of Maloghurst’s stripped battleplate. The warrior waited for his fellows to leave, then filled the room with fire. He retreated out of the bay and Maloghurst thumbed the door shut.

After letting it burn for a full minute, he opened the launch tube’s doors and vented the hangar into space.

Maloghurst threw a cloth bundle upon the table. It came unwrapped, scattering a score of daggers across the surface. No two were alike: knapped stone, sharpened scrap and finely-forged antiques were all among their number. Each one glistened with forbidden power.

‘The blades of the traitors, sire.’

‘It is done?’

‘It is done.’

Horus stared at them. Always awesome, the power that the Warmaster held surrounded him with an aura of godly might. He was made to be an exemplar of humanity, but he had transcended the state of man completely. He would exceed the ambitions of the Emperor a thousand times over. For one long moment, Maloghurst was gripped by the unshakeable certainty that should the two meet again, father and son, then the Emperor would bend his knee to Horus and beg for forgiveness.

The sensation lasted as long as Maloghurst could endure to look upon the face of his primarch. Since Horus’s following of the Fulgurine Road, that was not long. For decades Maloghurst had been one of the few who could treat with Lupercal on something approaching equal terms. Those days were past.

‘What was its name?’ asked Horus.

‘The Davinite called it Qwiltzuk-Ikar. In all probability this was one of its nomina major, possibly a name of essence. Enough, once I had it, to bend it to my will. It was a petty thing, its plans to influence you far beyond its ability.’

‘Threats from the Neverborn must be dealt with as surely as those posed by mortals, insignificant or not.’ Horus picked up a short knife in his hand and turned it over. ‘You employed a ritual of concealment.’

‘Good against mortal and immortal alike, sire.’

‘You are a swift study.’

‘My ability is nothing compared to yours, sire.’

‘Of course not, Mal,’ said Horus. He smiled. ‘But it is sufficient. Have the name recorded. Let all who truck with the warp in our service know of it, and be forbidden from treating with Qwiltzuk-Ikar.’

‘The denizens of the empyrean will learn to respect you.’

‘The White Scars. The Sigillite. Garviel Loken… and now this. The attempts made upon my life by my father’s lackeys are tiresome enough. I will not have the Neverborn acting against me also. I am my own master.’

‘Yes, sire.’

Horus set the knife down, and picked up another. He made a dismissive noise at its quality. ‘I am sorry for the humiliation you had to endure, Mal.’

Maloghurst’s words stuck in his throat. Two more attempts were required before he could voice them. The resplendence of Horus unmanned him.

‘There is no humiliation. Never in serving you.’

‘That is what I expect you to say, Mal, but it does no harm for me to let you know that your service is valued.’

Maloghurst leaned upon his cane and bowed slightly. The pride at his master’s words was almost enough to overcome his sorrow at the distance growing between them.

But not quite.

‘Thank you, sire.’

Horus’s attention drifted from the blade in his hand. ‘Is there something wrong, Mal?’

‘No, my lord. With your permission, I will return to my duties.’

‘You have it, as always.’

Maloghurst turned painfully and departed the stateroom, the rap of his cane on the stone echoing away down the corridor.

About the Author

Guy Haley is the author of Space Marine Battles: Death of Integrity, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Valedor and Baneblade, and the novellas The Eternal Crusader, The Last Days of Ector and ‘Broken Sword’, for Damocles. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

Chagrined by his defeat at the hands of Jaghatai Khan, Mortarion abandons the pursuit of the White Scars and instead leads the Death Guard in a spiteful, punitive rampage across the systems of the Prosperine empire.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Blades of the Traitor in 2015.
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o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.