But nothing was coming. The pain was too intense, the shock of his imminent death too much.
Loken held him, helpless to do anything more.
Even had Altan Nohai lived, there would be no saving Qruze.
Lupercal’s Court held its breath. None of the gathered enemies moved. A hero was dying and such a moment was worthy of pause, even in the midst of bitter fratricide.
Loken’s pain was inconsequential in the face of what Qruze was enduring. Loken met Qruze’s gaze and saw an urgent need to communicate in them, a desperate imperative that superseded all other concerns.
Qruze took Loken’s wrist in an iron grip.
His gaze was unflinching. His ruined body spasmed as pain signals overwhelmed his brain. Yet even in the throes of the most agonising death, Qruze still put his duty first.
‘Iacton, I’m sorry...’ said Loken. ‘I’m so very sorry.’
Qruze shook his head. Anger lit his face.
He held his free hand out to Loken. He pressed something into his palm and closed his fingers over it. Loken went to lift it, but Qruze shook his head again, eyes wide. A pleading imperative.
Not now, not here.
Loken nodded and felt Qruze’s grip slacken on his wrist.
The light in the Half-heard’s eyes went out, and he was dead.
Loken laid Qruze down on the blood-soaked deck plate and reached down to a pouch at his waist. He pulled out the two Cthonian mirror-coins Severian had given him in the shadow of the Seven Neverborn and placed them on Iacton Qruze’s eyes.
Loken’s grief was gone, burned away by anger.
He pulled himself to his full height and looked up at Horus.
The Warmaster stood before his throne, Iacton Qruze’s blood still weeping from the long talons of his gauntlet.
‘I didn’t want it to come to this, Garviel,’ said Horus.
Loken ignored the ridiculous platitude and stood taller than he had ever stood before. Prouder than he had ever stood before.
All the uncertainty, all the confusion and every shred of the madness that had kept him wrapped in delusions vanished. All compunction to revere the Warmaster was purged in an instant of loathing.
Iacton Qruze was dead, and the last link with what the Legion had once been was broken.
And with it, any last shred of belief that the Warmaster possessed any nobility or trace of the great man he had once been.
Loken felt the words well up from a depthless reservoir of certainty within him. A valediction and threat all in one.
‘I guarantee that before the sun sets on this war, even if you win, even if I die here, you’ll rue the day you ever turned your back on the Emperor. For every planet you take, the Imperium will exact a fearful tally of Cthonian blood. I guarantee that even if you conquer Terra the fruits of victory will taste like dust in your mouth. I guarantee that if you don’t kill me today, you’ll meet me again. I will stand against you at every outpost, every wall and every gate. I will fight you with every sword at my command, with every bolter and every fist. I will fight you with bare hands. I will fight you with the very rocks of the world you seek to conquer. I will never give up until the Sons of Horus are dead and no more than a bad memory.’
Loken took a breath and saw the Warmaster’s acceptance of his threat. Horus understood that Loken meant every word of what he had just said, that nothing could ever sway him from his course.
‘I wanted you back,’ said Horus. ‘Tormaggedon wanted to make you like him, but I told him you would always be a Son of Horus.’
‘I was never a Son of Horus,’ said Loken. ‘I was and remain a Luna Wolf. A proud son of Cthonia, a loyal servant of the Emperor, beloved by all. I am your enemy.’
Loken heard a chirrup of crackling vox.
He heard it again, coming from the helmet mag-locked to Qruze’s belt. He recognised the voice and despite the body at his feet and all they had lost to get this far, Loken smiled.
He bent and lifted the helmet to his lips as a ghost-shadow moved across the silver orb of the moon through the glass of the great cathedral window.
‘How’s that hunter’s eye, Rassuah?’
‘I have him,’ replied the Tarnhelm’s pilot. ‘Say the word.’
‘Just take the damn shot,’ said Loken.
The window blew out in a blizzard of shards. Sheeting lasers blasted into Lupercal’s Court as the Tarnhelm’s guns filled it with killing fire. The loss of atmosphere was sudden and absolute, over in an instant of ruthless annihilation.
Air blasted into space, along with weapons, bodies and anything not mag-locked to the deck. Spent bolter rounds, stone fragments blasted from the walls and chips of broken ceramite. Glass and debris went too.
Loken let the explosive decompression take him, hurling him from the Vengeful Spirit and into the void of space. Qruze’s body spun away from him.
A crushing sensation of awful solidity seized his chest. His internal organs were shock freezing. Life-support systems in his armour registered the sudden change. It fought to equalise the pressure differential and forced his lungs empty to avoid lethal hyperdistension, but without a helmet it was a losing battle.
Silver light bathed Loken.
Fitting that a Luna Wolf should die by the light of a moon.
Loken’s vision fogged. He felt sudden, shocking cold in his throat, as though his windpipe was filling with liquid helium.
He tried to howl a last curse, but hard vacuum kept him silent.
Loken closed his eyes. He let the moon’s light take him.
And the Vengeful Spirit spun away in the darkness.
TWENTY-FIVE
The road to Terra / Half-heard no more / Okay
Great skeins and shawls and clusters of bright stars winked through the great viewing bay. The light of a galaxy that would soon belong to him.
Horus stood at the farthest prow of the strategium, his hands laced behind his back. He was no longer clad in armour, but a simple training robe of pale cream, belted at the waist with a thick leather belt.
The Sons of Horus fleet was breaking anchor, mustering for the next stage of the march to Terra. Scores of transports still ferried men and machines from Molech’s surface, but Boas Comnenus expected to be ready for system-transit within four hours.
Ezekyle and Kibre wanted to send fast cruisers after the Imperial Cobra-class destroyer, but Horus denied them. His First Captain had railed against that decision, as he had when Horus refused to remove the futharc sigils.
Horus was adamant – Molech’s Enlightenment was to be unharmed.
Let word of this world’s fate fly ahead of the Vengeful Spirit on wings of terror. Despair would be as potent a weapon as tanks and Titans, warriors and warships in the coming years.
Horus turned from the vista of stars and made his way back to the ouslite disc at the heart of the strategium. The Mournival awaited his orders, standing patiently as though the natural order of things would continue as it had before.
He saw them all differently now.
Horus knew them better than they knew themselves, but now he saw the things they kept hidden; the secret doubts, the cancerous thoughts and, deep down, the fear that they had taken a path that could only end badly.
The war on Molech had stoked the fires of Ezekyle’s ambitions. Not for much longer would he be satisfied with a captaincy, even a First Captaincy of the Sons of Horus. Soon he would need something grander to lead. A Legion of his own perhaps? With the power Horus now commanded and the ancient sciences of Terra, the means to create new Legiones Astartes was within his grasp.