Aximand’s ocular filters dimmed as a stablight swept through the buckled struts of the dome. Stark shadows bowed and twisted.
Everyone looked up.
The dark outline of an aircraft rose up beyond the dome, its engines bellowing with downdraft. A blizzard of broken glass took to the air. Glittering reflections dazzled like snow.
‘Who the hell’s flying so close?’ said Abaddon, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare. More noise, fresh stablights from the other side of the dome.
Another two aircraft.
Fire Raptors. Horde killers that had made their name at Ullanor. Coated in non-reflective black. Hovering, circling the dome. Icons on their glacis shone proudly after months of being obscured.
Silver gauntlets on a black field.
‘It’s Meduson!’ shouted Aximand. ‘It’s Shadrak bloody Meduson!’
Three centreline Avenger cannons roared in unison. Braying quad guns on waist turrets followed an instant later.
And the Dome of Revivification vanished in a sheeting inferno of orange flame.
The game was called hnefatafl, and Loken found himself in the presence of a Titan he’d never expected to see again, much less be sat opposite. He’d met primarchs before, had even talked to some of them without making a fool of himself, but the Wolf King was another entity altogether. Primal force bound to immortal form, elemental fury woven around a frame of invincible meat and bone.
And yet, of all the post-human demigods he had met, Russ gave the impression of being the most human.
Until ten hours ago, Loken been ensconced within a lunar biodome on the edge of the Mare Tranquillitatis. Since returning from the mission to Caliban, he’d spent most of his time tending to the gardens within the dome, seeking a peace that remained forever out of reach.
Iacton Qruze had brought Malcador’s summons, together with his bare, steeldust grey armour, but his fellow Knight Errant had not joined him on the Stormbird to Terra, claiming he had heavy duty elsewhere. The Half-heard had changed markedly since their time together aboard the Vengeful Spirit, becoming a sadder, but wiser man. Loken was not sure if that was a good thing or not.
The Stormbird set down by a villa in the mountains beyond the palace, and a young girl with skin like burnished coal who had introduced herself as Ekata had offered him refreshments. He’d declined, finding her appearance unsettling, like a reminder of someone he’d once known. She led him to a black-armoured skimmer emblazoned with a serpentine dragon. It flew into the heart of the Palace Precincts, beneath the shadow of one of the great orbital plates moored to a mountainside, until coming to land within sight of the vast dome of the Hegemon. He’d climbed the valley alone, pausing only as he reached the Sigillite’s bridge as he saw the two figures at the side of the lake.
Malcador sat on a stool at the side of the board and Loken favoured him with a puzzled look.
‘You summoned me to Terra just to play a game?’
‘No,’ answered Russ, ‘but play it anyway.’
‘A good game is like a mirror that allows you to look into yourself,’ said Malcador. ‘And you can learn a lot about a man by watching how he plays a game.’
Loken looked down at the board, with its movable segments, rotating rods and one outnumbered force.
‘I don’t know how to play,’ he said.
‘It’s simple,’ said Russ, moving a piece forward and rotating a slot. ‘It’s like war. You learn the rules fast and then you have to play better than everyone else.’
Loken nodded and moved a piece forward in the centre. His was the larger army, but he had no doubt that would be of little advantage against the man he suspected had devised the game. He spent the opening moves in what he hoped was an all-out assault, provoking responses from the Wolf King, who didn’t even deign to look at the board or appear to give his strategy any consideration whatsoever.
Within six moves, it was clear that Loken had lost, but he had a better idea of how the game was played. In ten moves, his army had been split and its cardinal piece eliminated.
‘Again,’ said Russ, and Malcador reset the pieces.
They played another two games, with Loken defeated both times, but like any warrior of the Legiones Astartes, Loken was a quick study. With every move, his appreciation of the game was growing until, by the midpoint of the third game, he felt he had a good grasp of its rules and their applications.
This latest game ended as the three before it, with Loken’s army scattered and lost. He sat back and grinned.
‘Another game, my lord?’ he said. ‘I almost had you until you changed the board.’
‘It’s a favourite endgame of Leman’s to finish with a bold reshaping of the landscape,’ said Malcador. ‘But I think we’ve played enough, don’t you?’
Russ leaned over the board and said, ‘You don’t learn quick enough. He doesn’t learn quick enough.’
This last part was addressed to Malcador.
‘He already plays better than I,’ said the Sigillite.
‘Even the Balt play better than you,’ said Russ. ‘And they have minds like clubbed vatnkýr. He didn’t listen to what I told him, he didn’t learn the rules fast and didn’t play better than everyone else.’
‘Another game then,’ snapped Loken. ‘I’ll show you how quick I learn. Or are you afraid I’ll beat you at your own game?’
Russ stared at him from beneath hooded brows and Loken saw death in those eyes, the sure and certain knowledge of his own doom. He’d goaded a primarch of notorious unpredictability and saw his earlier impression of Russ being the most human of primarchs had been so very wide of the mark.
He was now about to pay for that mistake.
And he didn’t care.
Russ nodded and his killing mood lifted with a wide grin that exposed teeth that looked too large for his mouth to contain.
‘He’s a lousy player, but I like him,’ said the Wolf King. ‘Maybe you were right about him, Sigillite. There’s solid roots to him after all. He’ll do.’
Loken said nothing, wondering what manner of test he had just passed and what had been said of him before his arrival.
‘I’ll do for what?’ he asked.
‘You’ll do to find me a way to kill Horus,’ said the Wolf King.
Horus knew the capabilities of the Fire Raptor intimately. Its range, weapon mounts, rate of fire. Ullanor had shown just how savage a gunship it was. It had been integral to the victory.
I should be dead.
He breathed in sulphur-hot fumes. Fyceline, scorched metal, burning flesh. Horus rolled onto his side. Hearing damaged. A deadening numbness filled his head with dull echoes. The rasping of a saw. Thudding detonations.
He didn’t need his visor display to know how badly he’d been hurt. His armour was battered, but unbreached, though his skin was burned to the bone, his scalp scorched bare. Temperature warnings, oxygen deficiencies, organ damage. He shut them out with a thought.
Clarity. He needed clarity.
Shadrak Meduson!
Autonomic reactions took over. Time and motion became gel-like as Horus pushed himself to his feet. He swayed, concussive shock waves making him dizzy. How bad did it have to get for a primarch to feel dizzy?
Flames surrounded him. The Dome of Revivification was gone, its structure torn away in scything arcs of explosive mass-reactive bolts. Cryo-cylinders lay in shattered ruin. Wet-leather bodies smoked like trail rations.
Horus saw Noctua and Aximand pinned beneath a fallen structural member. The plates of their armour were buckled and split, their helms splintered into pieces. No sign of the Widowmaker or Ezekyle.