Horus Rising (19 page)

‘How many?’ Loken asked Rassek.

‘They’re still counting bodies, captain,’ Rassek replied. ‘As it stands, nine hundred and seventy-two.’

In the course of the assault, something in the region of thirty meltwater fanes had been discovered in the labyrinthine fortress, pools surrounded by offerings. Loken ordered them all expunged.

‘They were guarding the last outpost of their faith,’ Nero Vipus remarked.

‘I suppose so,’ Loken replied.

‘You don’t like it, do you, Garvi?’ Vipus asked.

‘I hate to see men die for no reason. I hate to see men give their lives like this, for nothing. For a belief in nothing. It sickens me. This is what we were once, Nero. Zealots, spiritualists, believers in lies we’d made up ourselves. The Emperor showed us the path out of that madness.’

‘So be of good humour that we’ve taken it,’ Vipus said. ‘And, though we spill their blood, be phlegmatic that we’re at last bringing truth to our lost brothers here.’

Loken nodded. ‘I feel sorry for them,’ he said. ‘They must be so scared.’

‘Of us?’

‘Yes, of course, but that’s not what I mean. Scared of the truth we bring. We’re trying to teach them that there are no greater forces at work in the galaxy than light, gravity and human will. No wonder they cling to their gods and spirits. We’re removing every last crutch of their ignorance. They felt safe until we came. Safe in the custody of the spirits that they believed watched over them. Safe in the ideal that there was an afterlife, an otherworld. They thought they would be immortal, beyond flesh.’

‘Now they have met real immortals,’ Vipus quipped. ‘It’s a hard lesson, but they’ll be better for it in the long run.’

Loken shrugged. ‘I just empathise, I suppose. Their lives were comforted by mysteries, and we’ve taken that comfort away. All we can show them is a hard and unforgiving reality in which their lives are brief and without higher purpose.’

‘Speaking of higher purpose,’ Vipus said, ‘you should signal the fleet and tell them we’re done. The iterators have voxed us. They request permission to bring the observers up to the site here.’

‘Grant it. I’ll signal the fleet and give them the good news.’

Vipus turned away, then halted. ‘At least that voice shut up,’ he said.

Loken nodded. ‘Samus’ had quit his maudlin ramblings half an hour since, though the assault had failed to identify any vox system or broadcast device.

Loken’s intervox crackled.

‘Captain?’

‘Jubal? Go ahead.’

‘Captain, I’m…’

‘What? You’re what? Say again, Jubal.’

‘Sorry, captain. I need you to see this. I’m… I mean, I need you to see this. It’s Samus.’

‘What? Jubal, where are you?’

‘Follow my locator. I’ve found something. I’m… I’ve found something. Samus. It means the end and the death.’

‘What have you found, Jubal?’

‘I’m… I’ve found… Captain, Samus is here.’

L
OKEN LEFT
V
IPUS
to orchestrate the clean-up, and descended into the bowels of the fastness with Seventh Squad, following the pip of Jubal’s locator. Seventh Squad, Brakespur tactical squad, was commanded by Sergeant Udon, one of Loken’s most reliable warriors.

The locator led them down to a massive stone well in the very basement of the fortress, deep in the heart of the mountain. They gained access to it via a corroded iron gate built into a niche in the dark stone. The dank chamber beyond the gate was a natural, vertical split in the mountain rock, a slanting cavern that overlooked a deep fault where only blackness could be detected. A pier of old stone steps arced out over the abyss, which dropped away into the very bottom of the mountain. Meltwater sprinkled down the glistening walls of the cavern well.

The wind whined through invisible fissures and vents.

Xavyer Jubal was alone at the edge of the drop. As Loken and Seventh Squad approached, Loken wondered where the rest of Hellebore had gone.

‘Xavyer?’ Loken called.

Jubal looked around. ‘Captain,’ he said. ‘I’ve found something wonderful.

‘What?’

‘See?’ Jubal said. ‘See the words?’

Loken stared where Jubal was pointing. All he saw was water streaming down a calcified buttress of rock.

‘No. What words?’

‘There! There!’

‘I see only water,’ Loken said. ‘Falling water.’

‘Yes, yes! It’s written in the water! In the falling water! There and gone, there and gone, You see? It makes words and they stream away, but the words come back.’

‘Xavyer? Are you well? I’m concerned that—’

‘Look, Garviel! Look at the words! Can’t you hear the water speaking?’

‘Speaking?’

‘Drip drip drop. One name. Samus. That’s the only name you’ll hear.’

‘Samus?’

‘Samus. It means the end and the death. I’m…’

Loken looked at Udon and the men. ‘Restrain him,’ he said quietly.

Udon nodded. He and four of his men slung their bolters and stepped forward.

‘What are you doing?’ Jubal laughed. ‘Are you threatening me? For Terra’s sake, Garviel, can’t you see? Samus is all around you!’

‘Where’s Hellebore, Jubal?’ Loken snapped. ‘Where’s the rest of your squad?’

Jubal shrugged. ‘They didn’t see it either,’ he said, and glanced towards the edge of the precipice. ‘They couldn’t see, I suppose. It’s so clear to me. Samus is the man beside you.’

‘Udon,’ Loken nodded. Udon moved towards Jubal. ‘Let’s go, brother,’ he said, kindly.

Jubal’s bolter came up very suddenly. There was no warning. He shot Udon in the face, blowing gore and pulverised skull fragments out through the back of Udon’s exploded helm. Udon fell on his face. Two of his men lunged forward, and the bolter roared again, punching holes in their chest plates and throwing them over onto their backs.

Jubal’s visor swung to look at Loken. ‘I’m Samus,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Look out! Samus is here.’

NINE

The unthinkable

Spirits of the Whisperheads

Compatible minds

T
WO DAYS BEFORE
the Legion’s assault on the Whisperheads, Loken had consented to another private interview with the remembrancer Mersadie Oliton. It was the third such interview he had granted since his election to the Mournival, at which time his attitude towards her seemed to have substantially altered. Though the subject had not been mentioned formally, Mersadie had begun to feel that Loken had chosen her to be his particular memorialist. He had told her on the night of his election that he might choose to share his recollections with her, but she was now secretly astonished at the extent of his eagerness to do so. She had already recorded almost six hours of reminiscence – accounts of battles and tactics, descriptions of especially demanding military operations, reflections on the qualities of certain types of weapon, celebrations of notable deeds and triumphs accomplished by his comrades. In the time between interviews, she took herself to her room and processed the material, composing it into the skeleton of a long, fluid account. She hoped eventually to have a complete history of the expedition, and a more general record of the Great Crusade as witnessed by Loken during the other expeditions that had preceded the 63rd.

Indeed, the weight of anecdotal fact she was gathering was huge, but one thing was lacking, and that was Loken himself. In the latest interview, she tried once again to draw out some spark of the man.

‘As I understand it,’ she said, ‘you have nothing in you that we ordinary mortals might know as fear?’

Loken paused and frowned. He had been lapping a plate section of his armour. This seemed to be his favourite diversion when in her company. He would call her to his private arming chamber and sit there, scrupulously polishing his war harness while he spoke and she listened. To Mersadie, the particular smell of the lapping powder had become synonymous with the sound of his voice and the matter of his tales. He had well over a century of stories to tell.

‘A curious question,’ he said.

‘And how curious is the answer?’

Loken shrugged lightly. ‘The Astartes have no fear. It is unthinkable to us.’

‘Because you have trained yourself to master it?’ Mersadie asked.

‘No, we are trained for discipline, but the capacity for fear is bred out of us. We are immune to its touch.’

Mersadie made a mental note to edit this last comment later. To her, it seemed to leach away some of the heroic mystique of the Astartes. To deny fear was the very character of a hero, but there was nothing courageous about being insensible to the emotion. She wondered too if it was possible to simply remove an entire emotion from what was essentially a human mind. Did that not leave a void? Were other emotions compromised by its lack? Could fear even be removed cleanly, or did its excision tear out shreds of other qualities along with it? It certainly might explain why the Astartes seemed larger than life in almost every aspect except their own personalities.

‘Well, let us continue,’ she said. ‘At our last meeting, you were going to tell me about the war against the overseers. That was twenty years ago, wasn’t it?’

He was still looking at her, eyes slightly narrowed. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What is it? You didn’t like my answer just then.’

Mersadie cleared her throat. ‘No, not at all. It wasn’t that. I had just been…’

‘What?’

‘May I be candid?’

‘Of course,’ he said, patiently rubbing a nub of polishing fibre around the edges of a pot.

‘I had been hoping to get something a little more personal. You have given me a great deal, sir, authentic details and points of fact that would make any history text authoritative. Posterity will know with precision, for instance, which hand Iacton Qruze carried his sword in, the colour of the sky over the Monastery Cities of Nabatae, the methodology of the White Scars’ favoured pincer assault, the number of studs on the shoulder plate of a Luna Wolf, the number of axe blows, and from which angles, it took to fell the last of the Omakkad Princes…’ She looked at him squarely, ‘but nothing about you, sir. I know what you saw, but not what you felt.’

‘What I felt? Why would anyone be interested in that?’

‘Humanity is a sensible race, sir. Future generations, those that our remembrances are intended for, will learn more from any factual record if those facts are couched in an emotional context. They will care less for the details of the battles at Ullanor, for instance, than they will for a sense of what it felt like to be there.’

‘Are you saying that I’m boring?’ Loken asked.

‘No, not at all,’ she began, and then realised he was smiling. ‘Some of the things you have told me sound like wonders, yet you do not yourself seem to wonder at them. If you know no fear, do you also not know awe? Surprise? Majesty? Have you not seen things so bizarre they left you speechless? Shocked you? Unnerved you even?’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘Many times the sheer oddity of the cosmos has left me bemused or startled.’

‘So tell me of those things.’

He pursed his lips and thought about it. ‘Giant hats,’ he began.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘On Sarosel, after compliance, the citizens held a great carnival of celebration. Compliance had been bloodless and willing. The carnival ran for eight weeks. The dancers in the streets wore giant hats of ribbon and cane and paper, each one fashioned into some gaudy form: a ship, a sword and fist, a dragon, a sun. They were as broad across as my span.’ Loken spread his arms wide. ‘I do not know how they balanced them, or suffered their weight, but day and night they danced along the inner streets of the main city, these garish forms weaving and bobbing and circling, as if carried along on a slow flood, quite obscuring the human figures beneath. It was an odd sight.’

‘I believe you.’

‘It made us laugh. It made Horus laugh to see it.’

‘Was that the strangest thing you ever knew?’

‘No, no. Let’s see… the method of war on Keylek gave us all pause. This was eighty years ago. The keylekid were a grotesque alien kind, of a manner you might describe as reptilian. They were greatly skilled in the arts of combat, and rose against us angrily the moment we made contact. Their world was a harsh place. I remember crimson rock and indigo water. The commander – this was long before he was made Warmaster – expected a prolonged and brutal struggle, for the keylekid were large and strong creatures. Even the least of their warriors took three or four bolt rounds to bring down. We drew forth upon their world to make war, but they would not fight us.’

‘How so?’

‘We did not comprehend the rules they fought by. As we learned later, the keylekid considered war to be the most abhorrent activity a sentient race could indulge in, so they set upon it tight controls and restrictions. There were large structures upon the surface of their world, rectangular fields many kilometres in dimension, covered with high, flat roofs and open at the sides. We named them “slaughterhouses”, and there was one every few hundred kilometres. The keylekid would only fight at these prescribed places. The sites were reserved for combat. War was forbidden on any other part of their world’s surface. They were waiting for us to meet them at a slaughterhouse and decide the matter.’

‘How bizarre! What was done about it?’

‘We destroyed the keylekid,’ he said, matter-of-factly.

‘Oh,’ she replied, with a tilt of her abnormally long head.

‘It was suggested that we might meet them and fight them by the terms of their rules,’ Loken said. ‘There may have been some honour in that, but Maloghurst, I think it was, reasoned that we had rules of our own which the enemy chose not to recognise. Besides, they were formidable. Had we not acted decisively, they would have remained a threat, and how long would it have taken them to learn new rules or abandon old ones?’

‘Is an image of them recorded?’ Mersadie asked.

‘Many, I believe. The preserved cadaver of one of their warriors is displayed in this ship’s Museum of Conquest, and since you ask what I feel, sometimes it is sadness. You mentioned the overseers, a story I was going to tell. That was a long campaign, and one which filled me with misery.’