False Gods (25 page)

Horus’s very existence promised an end to the suffering and death that had plagued humanity for centuries.

Old Night was drawing to a close and, thanks to heroes like the Warmaster, the first rays of a new dawn were breaking on the horizon.

All that was under threat now, and Aximand knew he had made the right choice in allowing the others to take Horus to Davin. The Lodge of the Serpent would heal the Warmaster, and if that involved powers he might once have condemned, then so be it.

The die was cast and all he had left to cling to was his faith that the Warmaster would be restored to them. He smiled as he remembered something the Warmaster had said to him on the subject of faith. The Warmaster had typically delivered his words of wisdom at a wholly inappropriate time – right before they had leapt from the belly of a screaming Stormbird into the greenskin city on Ullanor.

‘When you have come to the edge of all that you know and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen,’ the Warmaster had told him.

‘And what are they?’ he had asked.

‘That there will be something solid to stand on or you’ll be taught to fly,’ laughed Horus as he jumped.

The memory made the tears come all the harder as the huge iron gate of the embarkation deck rumbled closed behind them and the Astartes marched towards the Warmaster’s waiting Stormbird.

TWELVE

Agitprop

Brothers in suspicion

Serpent and moon

S
LIPPING
ACROSS
THE
page like a snake, the nib of Ignace Karkasy’s pen moved as though it had a mind of its own. For all the conscious thought he was putting into the words, it might as well have. The muse was well and truly upon him, his stream of consciousness flowing into a river of blood as he retold the diabolical events on the embarkation deck. The meter played in his head like a symphony, every stanza of every canto slipping into place as if there could be no other possible arrangement of verse.

Even in his heyday of
Ocean Poems
or
Reflections and Odes
he had not felt this inspired. In fact, now that he looked back on them, he hated them for their frippery, their unconscionable navel gazing and irrelevance to the galaxy at large. These words, these thoughts that now poured from him, this was what mattered, and he cursed that it had taken him this long to discover it.

The truth was what mattered. Captain Loken had told him as much, but he hadn’t heard him, not really. The verses he’d written since Loken had begun his sponsorship of him were paltry things, unworthy of the man who had won the Ethiopic Laureate, but that was changing now.

After the bloodbath on the embarkation deck, he’d returned to his quarters, grabbed a bottle of Terran wine and made his way to the observation deck. Finding it thronged with wailing lunatics, he’d repaired to the Retreat, knowing that it would be empty.

The words had poured out of him in a flood of righteous indignation, his metaphors bold and his lyric unflinching from the awful brutality he’d witnessed. He’d already used up three pages of the Bondsman, his fingers blotted with ink and his poet’s soul on fire.

‘Everything I’ve done before this was prologue,’ he whispered as he wrote.

Karkasy paused in his work as he pondered the dilemma: the truth was useless if no one could hear it. The facilities set aside for the remembrancers included a presswork where they could submit their work for large-scale circulation. It was common knowledge that much of what that passed through it was vetted and censored, and so few made use of it. Karkasy certainly couldn’t, considering the content of his new poetry.

A slow smile spread across his jowly features and he reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper – one of Euphrati Keeler’s
Lectitio Divinitatus
pamphlets – and spread it out flat on the table before him with the heel of his palm.

The ink was smeared and the paper reeked of ammonia, clearly the work of a cheap mechanical bulk-printer of some kind. If Euphrati could get the use of one, then so could he.

L
OKEN
PERMITTED
T
YBALT
Marr to torch the body of Eugan Temba before they left the bridge. His fellow captain, streaked with gore and filth, played the burning breath of a flame unit over the monstrous corpse until nothing but ashen bone remained. It was small satisfaction for the death of a brother, not nearly enough, but it would have to do. Leaving behind the smouldering remains, they retraced their footsteps back through the
Glory of Terra
.

The light was fading on Davin’s moon by the time they reached the outside, the planet above a pale yellow orb hanging low in the dusky sky. Loken carried the anathame in its gleaming wooden casket, and his warriors followed him from the wreck without any words spoken.

A great rumbling vibration gripped the moon as a trio of towering columns of light and smoke climbed towards the heavens from the Imperial deployment zone where this whole misadventure had started. Loken watched the incredible spectacle of the war machines of the Legio Mortis returning to their armoured berths in orbit, and silently thanked their crews for their aid in the fight against the dead things.

Soon all that was visible of the Titans’ carriers was a diffuse glow on the horizon, and only the lap of water and the low growling of the waiting Thunderhawk’s engines disturbed the silence. The desolate mudflats were empty for kilometres around, and as Loken made his way down the slope of rubble, he felt like the loneliest man in the galaxy.

Some kilometres away, he could see specks of blue light following the Titan carriers as Army transports ferried the last remaining soldiers back to their bulk transporters.

‘We’ll soon be done here, eh?’ said Torgaddon.

‘I suppose,’ agreed Loken. ‘The sooner the better.’

‘How do you suppose that thing got here?’

Loken didn’t have to ask what his brother meant, and shook his head, unwilling to share his suspicions with Torgaddon yet. As much as he loved him, Tarik had a big mouth, and Loken didn’t want to put his quarry to flight.

‘I don’t know, Tarik,’ said Loken as they reached the ground and made their way towards the Thunderhawk’s lowered assault ramp. ‘I don’t think we’ll ever know.’

‘Come on, Garvi, it’s me!’ laughed Torgaddon. ‘You’re so straight up and down, and that makes you a really terrible liar. I know you’ve got some idea of what happened. So come on, spill it.’

‘I can’t, Tarik, I’m sorry,’ said Loken. ‘Not yet anyway. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Do you really?’

‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Loken. ‘I think so. Throne, I wish the Warmaster were here to ask.’

‘Well he’s not,’ stated Torgaddon, ‘so you’re stuck with me.’

Loken stepped onto the ramp, grateful to be off the marshy surface of the moon, and turned to face Torgaddon. ‘You’re right, I should tell you, and I will, soon. I just need to figure some things out first.’

‘Look, I’m not stupid, Garvi,’ said Torgaddon, leaning in close so that none of the others could hear. ‘I know the only way this thing could have got here is if someone in the expedition brought it. It had to have been here before we arrived. That means there was only one person who was with us on Xenobia and could have got here before we did. You know who I’m talking about.’

‘I know who you’re talking about,’ agreed Loken, pulling Torgaddon aside as the rest of the warriors embarked upon the Thunderhawk. ‘What I can’t figure out is why? Why go to all the trouble of stealing this thing and then bringing it here?’

‘I’m going to break that son of a bitch in two if he had something to do with what’s happened to the Warmaster,’ snarled Torgaddon. ‘The Legion will have his hide,’

‘No,’ hissed Loken, ‘not yet. Not until we find out what this is all about and if anyone else is involved. I just can’t believe that someone would dare try and move against the Warmaster.’

‘Is that what you think is happening, a coup? You think that one of the other primarchs is making a play for the role of Warmaster?’

‘I don’t know, it all sounds too far fetched. It sounds like something from one of Sindermann’s books.’

Neither man said anything. The idea that one of the eternal brotherhood of primarchs might be attempting to usurp Horus was incredible, outrageous and unthinkable, wasn’t it?

‘Hey,’ called Vipus from inside the Thunderhawk. ‘What are you two conspirators plotting?’

‘Nothing,’ said Loken guiltily. ‘We were just talking.’

‘Well finish up. We need to go, now!’

‘Why, what is it?’ asked Loken as he climbed aboard.

‘The Warmaster,’ said Vipus. ‘They’re taking him to Davin.’

The Thunderhawk was in the air moments later, lifting off in a spray of muddy water and a flare of blue-hot jet fire. The gunship circled the massive wreck, gaining altitude and speed as it turned towards the sky.

The pilot firewalled the engines and the gunship roared up into the darkness.

T
HE
GREAT
RED
orb of the sun was dipping below the horizon and hot, dry winds rising from the plains below made it a bumpy ride as they re-entered Davin’s atmosphere. The continental mass swelled through the armoured glass of the cockpit, dusty and brown and dry. Loken sat up front in the cockpit with the pilots and watched the avionics panel as the red blip that represented the location of the Warmaster’s Stormbird drew ever closer.

Far below them, he could see the glittering lights of the Imperial deployment zone where they had first made planetfall on Davin, a wide circle of arc lights, makeshift landing platforms and defensive positions. The pilot brought them in at a steep angle, speed more important to Loken than any notion of safe flight, and they streaked past scores of other landing craft on their way to the surface.

‘Why so many?’ wondered Loken as their flight leveled out and they shot past the wide circle of light, seeing soldiers and servitors toiling to expedite the approach of so many landing craft.

‘No idea,’ said the pilot, ‘but there’s hundreds of them coming down from the fleet. Looks like a lot of people want to see Davin.’

Loken didn’t reply, but the sight of so many landing craft en route to Davin was yet another piece of the puzzle that he didn’t understand. The vox networks were jammed with insane chatter, weeping voices and groups claiming that the end was coming, while yet others gave thanks to the divine Emperor that his chosen champion would soon rise from his deathbed.

None of it made any sense. He’d tried to make contact with the Mournival, but no one was answering, and a terrible foreboding filled him when he couldn’t even reach Maloghurst on the
Vengeful Spirit
.

Their flight soon carried them beyond the Imperial position, and Loken saw a ribbon of light stretching north from the landing zone. A host of pinpricks of light pierced the darkness, and Loken ordered the pilot to fly lower and reduce speed.

A long column of vehicles: tanks, supply trucks, transporter flatbeds and even some civilian traffic, drove along the dusty hardpan, each one swamped with people, and all heading to the mountains as fast as their engines could carry them. The Thunderhawk powered on through the fading light of day, soon losing sight of the column of vehicles that was heading in the same direction.

‘How long until we reach the Warmaster’s position?’ he asked.

‘At current speed, maybe ten minutes or so,’ answered the pilot.

Loken tried to collect his thoughts, but they had long since derailed in the midst of all this madness. Ever since leaving the interex, his mind had been a whirlpool, sucking in every random thought and spitting it out with barbs of suspicion. Could it be that he was still suffering the after-effects of what had happened to Jubal? Might the power unlocked beneath the Whisperheads be tainting him so that he jumped at shadows where none existed?

He might have been able to believe that, but for the presence of the anathame and his certainty that First Chaplain Erebus had lied to him on the voyage to Davin.

Karkasy had said that Erebus wanted Horus to come to Davin’s moon, and his undoubted complicity in the theft of the anathame could lead to only one conclusion. Erebus had wanted Horus to be killed here.

That didn’t make any sense either. Why go to such convoluted lengths just to kill the Warmaster, surely there had to be more to it than that…

Facts were slowly accumulating, but none of them fit, and still he had no idea why any of this was happening, only that it was, and that it was by the artifice of human design. Whatever was going on, he would uncover the conspiracy and make those involved pay with their lives.

‘We’re coming up on the Warmaster’s Stormbird,’ called the pilot.

Loken shook himself from his venomous reverie. He hadn’t been aware of time passing, but immediately turned his attention to what lay beyond the armoured glass of the cockpit.

Tall mountain peaks surrounded them, jagged cliffs of red stone, veined with gleaming strata of gold and quartz. They followed the course of an ancient causeway along the valley, its flagstones split and cracked with the passing of the centuries. Statues of long-dead kings lined the processional way, and toppled columns littered this forgotten highway like fallen guardians. Shadows plumbed the depths of the valley along which they flew and in a gap ahead, he could see a reflected glow in the brazen sky.

The pilot dropped their speed and the gunship flew through the gap into a colossal crater gouged from the landscape like an enormous, flat-bottomed basin. The sheer sides of the crater soared above them, its diameter thousands of metres across.

A huge stone building stood at its centre, carved from the same rock as the mountains and bathed in the light of a thousand flaming torches. The Thunderhawk circled the structure and Loken saw that it was a giant octagonal building, each corner shaped like the bastion of a fortress. Eight towers surrounded a wide dome at its centre and flames burned from their tops.