If Loken’s return to the Vengeful Spirit had been hard before, moving stealthily through its hidden corridors and secret niches, being within Lupercal’s Court was an exquisite torture. Loken had stood at the Warmaster’s side when they had planned the Isstvan campaign.
He’d been proud then, prouder even than the day he’d been chosen to be one of the XVI Legion. All he felt now was confusion.
Gerradon and Noctua had dragged them through the ship, marching them onto a pneu-train bound for the prow. At first, he’d thought they were heading to the strategium, but after debarking at the Museum of Conquest, he’d realised exactly where they were going.
The high ceiling was still hung with uncommon banners, some fresh, some mouldering and dusty. Shadows clung to the thick pillars, making it impossible to tell if they were alone. The twenty-three Luperci – he’d counted them as they passed through the Museum of Conquest – spread out and marched them towards the towering basalt throne at the far end of the chamber.
‘Kneel,’ said Gerradon, and there was little to do but obey.
Iacton, Bror and Severian were to Loken’s left, Varren, Tarchon, Rubio and Voitek to his right. The Luperci surrounded them like executioners. They knelt facing the throne, looking out into the vastness of space through the one addition to the chamber, a cathedral-like window of stained glass.
Pinpricks of light from distant stars glittered at unimaginable distances, and Molech’s moons painted the floor in lozenges of milky radiance.
‘Nice throne,’ said Varren. ‘The traitor still thinks he’s a king, then. Should have seen this coming long before.’
Ger Gerradon kicked the former World Eater in the back. Varren sprawled, and bared his teeth, reaching for an axe that wasn’t there. Four Luperci kept their bolters trained on him as others hauled him back to his knees.
‘A king?’ said Gerradon with a grin Loken wanted to split wide open. ‘You World Eaters always did think small. Horus Lupercal doesn’t think he’s a king. Haven’t you felt it? He’s a god now.’
Severian laughed and Grael Noctua backhanded a bolter across his face. Still laughing, Severian rolled onto his side and picked himself up. Loken wanted to mock Gerradon’s theatrics, but he could barely take a breath. That he would soon be face to face with the Warmaster was sending his sense memory into overdrive.
The corners of Lupercal’s Court were shadowed ruins where the dead of Isstvan gathered, hungry for flesh. The moonlight painting the floor was the flash of atomic firestorms, and the breath at his ear was that of his killer.
‘Loken,’ said Qruze.
He didn’t answer, keeping his gaze fixed on the black throne.
‘Garviel!’
Loken blinked and lifted his head.
The great iron doors to Lupercal’s Court were opening.
And there he was, looking right at Loken with paternal pride.
His gene-father, his Warmaster.
Horus Lupercal.
The Warmaster had always been the mightiest of the primarchs, a fact acknowledged by all Sons of Horus, though hotly debated by legionaries from most other Legions.
To see him now would surely end that debate.
Horus was possessed of a powerful dynamism, a charge that passed from him to those he beheld. To be in his presence was to know that gods walked among men. A hyperbolic sentiment, but one borne out by those fortunate enough to have met him. That power, that essence was magnified now.
It was magnified a hundredfold, and it all but emptied Loken’s reservoir of hate to keep from throwing himself at the Warmaster’s feet and begging for forgiveness.
His feet, look at his feet.
A piece of advice he’d been given when Lupercal still served the Emperor. As true now as it was then. Loken kept his eyes down. He took a breath and held it. His heart thundered, a hammer beating on the fused bone shield of his ribcage.
His mouth was dry, like the eve of his first battle.
‘Look at me, Garviel,’ said Horus, and every pain Loken had suffered since the first bombs had fallen on Isstvan was washed away in that moment of recognition.
He couldn’t help but obey.
The Warmaster was an all-conquering hero, clad in armour as black as wilderness space. The volcanic eye on his chest was slitted and veined with black, his claws unsheathed like a jungle predator closing on a kill.
His face was as heroically self-aware as Loken remembered.
Loken knew other warriors accompanied Horus, but they were as ghosts in the obscuring corona of the Warmaster’s presence. He heard their shocked voices and understood that he knew them, and they him, but he could not tear his gaze from his former commander-in-chief.
The urge to remain kneeling through fealty rather than captivity was overwhelming.
Horus said, ‘Stand. All of you.’
Loken did so, and told himself it was because he chose to.
None of the other pathfinders followed his example. He faced the Warmaster alone. Just as he’d always known he would. However this ended, now or in years to come, it would come down to just two warriors locked in a fight to the death.
The figures surrounding the Warmaster emerged from his shadow, and Loken felt his choler flare at the sight of his former Mournival brothers.
Ezekyle, scarred and bellicose, hatred etched on his eyes.
Horus Aximand, pale and wide-eyed, his face pressed onto his skull like badly set clay. He looked at Loken, not with hatred, but with... fear?
Was it possible for Little Horus to fear anything?
Falkus Kibre, hulking and unsubtle. Following Abaddon’s lead.
Nothing new there.
Grael Noctua took his place with them, and Loken immediately understood the skewed dynamic between them. A reborn Mournival, but one with its humours grotesquely out of balance.
‘I never thought to see you again, Garviel,’ said Horus.
‘Why would you?’ said Loken, mustering his reserves of defiance to speak with clarity and strength. ‘I died when you betrayed everything the Luna Wolves ever stood for. When you murdered Isstvan Three and the loyal sons of four Legions.’
Horus nodded slowly. ‘And despite all that, you come back to the Vengeful Spirit. Why is that?’
‘To stop you.’
‘Is that what you told Malcador?’ said Horus, before turning to regard the rest of the pathfinders. ‘Is it what he told you?’
‘It’s the truth,’ said Loken. ‘You have to be stopped.’
‘With what, a squad?’ said Horus, cocking an eyebrow. ‘I don’t think so. The galaxy isn’t a sterile place without a love of melodrama, Garviel. You know as well as I that this doesn’t end with kill teams or assassins or a pre-emptive strike thousands of light years from Terra. It ends with me looking into my father’s eyes, my hands around His neck, and showing Him everything he loves burned to ash by His lies.’
‘You’re insane,’ said Bror Tyrfingr. ‘The Wolf King will stop you, he’ll carve his name on your heart and give your bones to the wyrd to tell the future for eternity.’
Horus snapped his fingers and said, ‘Russ? Ah, so that’s what this is.’
Loken willed Bror to shut up, but the damage was already done.
‘Leman didn’t slake his thirst for blood on Prospero?’ continued Horus with a rueful shake of his head. ‘I wonder, does the Emperor even know you’re here or did the Wolf King set this up himself? He always was eager to spill his brothers’ blood. Did he convince Malcador that sending you here was the only way to end the war before it got to Terra?’
‘Russ stands on Terra’s walls a loyal son,’ said Qruze. ‘Walls the Master of Stone has strengthened beyond your power to breach.’