'I know, sir. I was there, but I was just a file trooper back then.’ @BRK#Then you'll know the esteem with which the Luna Wolves regarded your Legion. I was a junior officer back then too, but I remember distincdy that Horns said... what was it? That the Emperor's Children were the living @BRK#embodiment of the Adeptus Astartes. Horus enjoys a special bond with your primarch. The Luna Wolves have cooperated militarily with just about every other Legion during this great war. We still regard yours as about the best we've ever had the honour of serving with.’ @BRK#'It pleases me to hear you say so, sir.’ Tarvitz replied. @BRK#Then... how have you changed so?' Torgaddon asked. 'Is Eidolon typical of the command echelon that rules you now? His arrogance astounds me. So damned superior...' @BRK#'Our ethos is not about superiority captain.’ Tarvitz answered. 'It is about purity. But one is often mistaken for the other. We model ourselves on the Emperor, beloved by all, and in seeking to be like him, we can seem aloof and haughty.’ @BRK#'Did you ever think.’ asked Torgaddon, 'that while it's laudable to emulate the Emperor as much as possible, the one thing that you cannot and should not aspire to is his supremacy? He is the Emperor. He is singular. Strive to be like him in all ways, by all means, but do not presume to be on his level. No one belongs there. No one is alike to him.’ @BRK#'My Legion understands that.’ Tarvitz said. 'Sometimes, though, it doesn't translate well to others.’ @BRK#There's no purity in pride.’ Torgaddon said. 'Nothing pure or admirable in arrogance or over-confidence.’ @BRK#'My lord Eidolon knows this.’ @BRK#'He should show he knows it. He led you into a disaster, and he won't even apologise for it.’ @BRK#Tm sure, in due course, my lord will formally acknowledge your efforts in relieving us and-' @BRK#'I don't want any credit.’ Torgaddon said. You were brothers in trouble, and we came to help. That's the start and finish of it. But I had to face down the War-master to get permission to drop, because he believed it was insanity to send any more men to their deaths in an @BRK#unknowable place against an unknowable foe. That's what Eidolon did. In the name, I imagine, of honour and pride.’ @BRK#'How did you convince the Warmaster?' Tarvitz wondered. @BRK#'I didn't.’ said Torgaddon. You did. The storm had gone out over this area, and we detected your vox scatter. You proved you were still alive down here, and the Warmaster immediately sanctioned the speartip to come and pull you out.’ @BRK#Torgaddon looked up at the misty stars. The storms are their best weapon.’ he mused. 'If we're going to wrestle this world to compliance, we'll have to find a way to beat them. Eidolon suggested the trees might be key. That they might act as generators or amplifiers for the storm. He said that once he'd destroyed the trees, the storm in this locality collapsed.’ @BRK#Tarvitz paused. 'My Lord Eidolon said that?' @BRK#'Only piece of sense I've heard out of him. He said that as soon as he set charges to the trees and demolished them, the storm went out. It's an interesting theory. The Warmaster wants me to use the storm-break to pull everyone here out, but Eidolon is dead set on finding more trees and levelling them, in the hope that we can break a hole in the enemy's cover. What do you think?' @BRK#'I think... my Lord Eidolon is wise.’ said Tarvitz. @BRK#Bulk had been stationed nearby, and had overheard the exchange. He could not contain himself any longer. @BRK#'Permission to speak, captain.’ he said. @BRK#'Not now, Bulk.’ Tarvitz said. @BRK#'Sir, I-' @BRK#'You heard him, Bulk.’ Lucius cut in, walking up to them. @BRK#4Vhat's your name, brother?' Torgaddon asked. @BRK#'Bulk, sir.’ @BRK#'What did you want to say?' @BRK#'It's not important.’ Lucius snorted. 'Brother Bulk speaks out of turn.’ @BRK#You are Lucius, right?' Torgaddon asked. @BRK#'Captain Lucius.’ @BRK#'And Bulk was one of the men who stood over you and fought to keep you alive?' @BRK#'He did. I am honoured by his service.’ @BRK#'Maybe you could let him talk, then?' Torgaddon suggested. @BRK#'It would be inappropriate.’ said Lucius. @BRK#Tell you what.’ Torgaddon said. 'As commander of the speartip, I believe I have authority here. I'll decide who talks and who doesn't. Bulk? Let's hear you, brother.’ @BRK#Bulk looked awkwardly at Lucius and Tarvitz. @BRK#That was an order.’ said Torgaddon. @BRK#'My Lord Eidolon did not destroy the trees, sir. Captain Tarvitz did it. He insisted. My Lord Eidolon then chastised him for the act, claiming it was a waste of charges.’ @BRK#'Is this true?' Torgaddon asked. @BRK#Yes.’ said Tarvitz. @BRK#'Why did you do it?' @BRK#'Because it didn't seem right for the bodies of our dead to hang in such ignominy.’ Tarvitz said. @BRK#'And you'd let Eidolon take the credit and not say anything?' @BRK#'He is my lord.’ @BRK#Thank you, brother.’ Torgaddon said to Bulk. He glanced at Lucius. 'Reprimand him or punish him in any way for speaking out and I'll have the Warmaster himself personally deprive you of your rank.’ @BRK#Torgaddon turned to Tarvitz. 'It's a funny thing. It shouldn't matter, but it does. Now I know you felled the trees, I feel better about pursuing that line of action. Eidolon clearly knows a good idea when someone else @BRK#has it. Let's go cut down a few more trees, Tarvitz. You can show me how it's done.’ @BRK#Torgaddon walked away, shouting out orders for muster and movement. Tarvitz and Lucius exchanged long looks, and then Lucius turned and walked away. @BRK#The armed force moved away from the clearing and back into the thickets of the stalk forest. They passed back into the embrace of the storm cover. Torgaddon had his Terminator squads lead the way. The man-tanks, under the command of Trice Rokus, ignited their heavy blades, and cut a path, felling the stalks to clear a wide avenue into the forest swathe. @BRK#They pressed on beneath the wild storms for twenty kilometres. Twice, megarachnid skirmish parties assaulted their lines, but the speartip drew its phalanxes close and, with the advantage of range created by the cleared avenue, slaughtered the attackers with their bolters. @BRK#The landscape began to change. They were apparently reaching the edge of a vast plateau, and the ground began to slope away steeply before them. The stalk growth became more patchy and sparse, clinging to the rocky, ferrous soil of the descent. A wide basin spread out below them, a rift valley. Here, the spongy, marshy ground was covered with thousands of small, coned trees, rising some ten metres high, which dotted the terrain like fungal growths. The trees, hard and stony and composed of the same milky cement from which the murder trees had been built, peppered the depression like armour studs. @BRK#As they descended onto it, the Astartes found the land at the base of the rift swampy and slick, decorated with long, thin lakes of water stained orange by the iron content of the soil. The flash of the overhead storms scintillated in reflection from the long, slender pools. They looked like claw wounds in the earth. @BRK#The air was busy with fibrous grey bugs that milled and swirled interminably in the stagnant atmosphere. Larger flying things, flitting like bats, hunted the bugs in quick, sharp swoops. @BRK#At the mouth of the rift, they discovered six more thorn trees arranged in a silent grove. Reduced cadavers and residual meat and armour adorned their barbs. Blood Angels, and Imperial army. There was no sign of the winged clades, though fifty kilometres away, over the stalk forests, black shapes could be seen, circling madly in the lightning-washed sky. @BRK#'Lay them low.’ Torgaddon ordered. Moy nodded and began to gather munitions. 'Find Captain Tarvitz.’ Torgaddon called. 'He'll show you how to do it.’ @BRK#Loken remained on the strategium for the first three hours after the drop, long enough to celebrate Torgad-don's signal from the surface. The speartip had secured the drop-site, and formed up with the residue of Lord Eidolon's company. After that, the atmosphere had become, strangely, more tense. They were waiting to hear Torgaddon's field decision. Abaddon, cautious and closed, had already ordered stormbirds prepped for extraction flights. Aximand paced, silently. The Warmaster had withdrawn into his sanctum with Mal-oghurst. @BRK#Loken leant at the strategium rail for a while, overlooking the bustle of the vast bridge below, and discussed tactics with Tybalt Marr. Marr and Moy were both sons of Horns, cast in his image so firmly that they looked like identical twins. At some point in the Legion's history, they had earned the nicknames 'the Either' and the 'the Or', referring to the fact that they were almost interchangeable. It was often hard to distinguish between them, they were so alike. One might do as well as the other. @BRK#Both were competent field officers, with a rack of victories each that would make any captain proud, though neither had attained the glories of Sedirae or Abaddon. They were precise, efficient and workmanlike in their leadership, but they were Luna Wolves, and what was workmanlike to that fratery was exemplary to any other regiment. @BRK#As Marr spoke, it became clear to Loken mat he was envious of his 'twin's' selection to the undertaking. It was Horus's habit to send both or neither. They worked well together, complementing one another, as if somehow anticipating one another's decisions, but the ballot for the speartip had been democratic and fair. Moy had won a place. Marr had not. @BRK#Marr rattled on to Loken, evidently sublimating his worries about his brother's fate. After a while, Qruze came over to join them at the rail. @BRK#Iacton Qruze was an anachronism. Ancient and rather tiresome, he had been a captain in the Legion since its inception, his prominence entirely eclipsed once Horns had been repatriated and given command by the Emperor. He was the product of another era, a throwback to the years of the Unification Wars and the bad old times, stubborn and slighdy cantankerous, a vestigial trace of the way the Legion had gone about things in antiquity. @BRK#'Brothers.’ he greeted them as he came up. Qruze still had a habit, perhaps unconscious, of making the salute of the single clenched fist against his breast, the old pro-Unity symbol, rather than the double-handed eagle. He had a long, tanned face, deeply lined with creases and folds, and his hair was white. He spoke softly, expecting others to make the effort to listen, and believed that it was his quiet tone that had, over the years, earned him the nickname 'the Half-Heard'. @BRK#Loken knew this wasn't so. Qruze's wits were not as sharp as they'd once been, and he often appeared tired or inappropriate in his commentary or advice. He was known as 'the Half-Heard' because his pronouncements were best not listened to too closely. @BRK#Qruze believed he stood as a wise father-figure to the Legion, and no one had the spite to inform him otherwise. There had been several quiet attempts to deprive him of company command, just as Qruze had made several attempts to become elected to the first captaincy. @BRK#By duration of service, he should have been so long since. Loken believed that the Warmaster regarded Qruze with some pity and couldn't abide the idea of retiring him. Qruze was an irksome relic, regarded by the rest of them with equal measures of affection and frustration, who could not accept that the Legion had matured and advanced without him. @BRK#"We will be out of this in a day.’ he announced categorically to Loken and Marr. 'You mark my words, young men. A day, and the commander will order extraction.’ @BRK#'Tarik is doing well.’ Loken began. @BRK#'The boy Torgaddon has been lucky, but he cannot press this to a conclusion. You mark my words. In and out, in a day.’ @BRK#'I wish I was down there.’ Marr said. @BRK#'Foolish thoughts.’ Qruze decided. 'It's only a rescue run. I cannot for the life of me imagine what the Emperor's Children thought they were doing, going into this hell. I served with them, in the early days, you know? Fine fellows. Very proper. They taught the Wolves a thing or two about decorum, thank you very much! Model soldiers. Put us to shame on the Eastern Fringe, so they did, but that was back then.’ @BRK#'It certainly was.’ said Loken. @BRK#'It most certainly was.’ agreed Qruze, missing the irony entirely. 'I can't imagine what they thought they were doing here.' @BRK#'Prosecuting a war?' Loken suggested. @BRK#Qruze looked at him diffidently. 'Are you mocking me, Garviel?' @BRK#'Never, sir. I would never do that.' @BRK#'I hope we're deployed.’ Marr grumbled, 'and soon.’ @BRK#"We won't be.’ Qruze declared. He rubbed the patchy grey goatee that decorated his long, lined face. He was most certainly not a son of Horus. @BRK#'I've business to attend to.’ Loken said, excusing himself. 'I'll take my leave, brothers.’ @BRK#Marr glared at Loken, annoyed to be left alone with the Half-Heard. Loken winked and wandered off, hearing Qruze embark on one of his long and tortuous 'stories' to Marr. @BRK#Loken went downship to the barrack decks of Tenth Company. His men were waiting, half-armoured, weapons and kit spread out for fitting. Apprenta and servitors manned portable lathes and forge carts, making final, precise adjustments to plate segments. This was just displacement activity: the men had been battle-ready for weeks. @BRK#Loken took the time to appraise Vipus and the other squad leaders of the situation, and then spoke briefly to some of the new blood warriors they'd raised to company service during the voyage. These men were especially tense. One Forty Twenty might see their baptism as full Astartes. @BRK#In the solitude of his arming chamber, Loken sat for a while, running through certain mental exercises designed to promote clarity and concentration. When he grew bored of them, he took up the book Sindermann had loaned him. @BRK#He'd read a good deal less of @BRK#The Chronicles of Ursh @BRK#during the voyage than he'd intended. The commander @BRK#had kept him busy. He folded the heavy, yellowed pages open with ungloved hands and found his place. @BRK#The @BRK#Chronicles @BRK#were as raw and brutal as Sindermann had promised. Long-forgotten cities were routinely sacked, or burned, or simply evaporated in nuclear storms. Seas were regularly stained with blood, skies with ash, and landscapes were often carpeted with the bleached and numberless bones of the conquered. When armies marched, they marched a billion strong, the ragged banners of a million standards swaying above their heads in the atomic winds. The battles were stupendous maelstroms of blades and spiked black helms and baying horns, lit by the fires of cannons and burners. Page after page celebrated the cruel practices and equally cruel character of the despot Kalagann. @BRK#It amused Loken, for the most part. Fanciful logic abounded, as did an air of strained realism. Feats of arms were described that no pre-Unity warriors could have accomplished. These, after all, were the feral hosts of techno-barbarians that the proto-Astartes, in their crude thunder armour, had been created to bring to heel. Kalagann's great generals, Lurtois and Sheng Khal and, later, Quallodon, were described in language more appropriate to primarchs. They carved, for Kalagann, an impossibly vast domain during the latter part of the Age of Strife. @BRK#Loken had skipped ahead once or twice, and saw that later parts of the work recounted the fall of Kalagann, and described the apocalyptic conquest of Ursh by the forces of Unity. He saw passages referring to enemy warriors bearing the thunderbolt and lightning emblem, which had been the personal device of the Emperor before the eagle of the Imperium was formalised. These men saluted with the fist of unity, as Qruze still did, and were clearly arrayed in thunder armour. Loken wondered if the Emperor himself would be mentioned, and @BRK#in what terms, and wanted to look to see if he could recognise the names of any of the proto-Astartes warriors. @BRK#But he felt he owed it to Kyril Sindermann to read the thing thoroughly, and returned to his original place and order. He quickly became absorbed by a sequence detailing Shang Khal's campaigns against the Nordafrik Conclaves. Shang Khal had assembled a significant horde of irregular levies from the southern client states of Ursh, and used them to support his main armed strengths, including the infamous Tupelov Lancers and the Red Engines, during the invasion. @BRK#The Nordafrik technogogues had preserved a great deal more high technology for the good of their conclaves than Ursh possessed, and sheer envy, more than anything, motivated the war. Kalagann was hungry for the fine instruments and mechanisms the conclaves owned. @BRK#Eight epic battles marked Shang Khal's advance into the Nordafrik zones, the greatest of them being Xozer. Over a period of nine days and nights, the war machines of the Red Engines blasted their way across the cultivated agroponic pastures and reduced them back to the desert, from which they had originally been irrigated and nurtured. They cut through the laserthorn hedges and the jewelled walls of the outer conclave, and unleashed dirty atomics into the heart of the ruling zone, before the Lancers led a tidal wave of screaming berserkers through the breach into the earthly paradise of the gardens at Xozer, the last fragment of Eden on a corrupted planet. @BRK#Which they, of course, trampled underfoot. @BRK#Loken felt himself skipping ahead again, as the account bogged down in interminable lists of battle glories and honour rolls. Then his eyes alighted on a strange phrase, and he read back. At the heart of the @BRK#ruling zone, a ninth, minor battle had marked the conquest, almost as an afterthought. One bastion had remained, the @BRK#murengon, @BRK#or walled sanctuary, where the last hierophants of the conclaves held out, practising, so the text said, their 'sciomancy by the flame lyght of their burning realm'. @BRK#Shang Khal, wishing swift resolution to the conquest, had sent Anult Keyser to crush the sanctuary. Keyser was lord martial of the Tupelov Lancers and, by various bonds of honour, could call freely upon the services of the Roma, a squadron of mercenary fliers whose richly decorated interceptors, legend said, never landed or touched the earth, but lived eternally in the scope of the air. During the advance on the murengon, Keyser's oneirocriticks - and by that word, Loken understood the text meant 'interpreters of dreams' - had warned of the hierophants' sciomancy, and their phantasmagorian ways. @BRK#When the battle began, just as the oneirocriticks had warned, majiks were unleashed. Plagues of insects, as thick as monsoon rain and so vast in their swirling masses that they blacked out the sun, fell upon Keyser's forces, choking air intakes, weapon ports, visors, ears, mouths and throats. Water boiled without fire. Engines overheated or burned out. Men turned to stone, or their bones turned to paste, or their flesh succumbed to boils and buboes and flaked off their limbs. Others went mad. Some became daemons and turned upon their own. @BRK#Loken stopped reading and went back over the sentences again, '...and where the plagueing ynsects did nott crawle, or madness lye, so men did blister and recompose them ownselves ynto the terrible likeness of daimons, such foule pests as the afreet and the d'genny that persist in the silent desert places. In such visage, they turned uponn theyr kin and gnawed then upon their bloody bones...' @BRK#Some became daemons and turned upon their own. @BRK#Anult Keyser himself was slain by one such daemon, which had, just hours previously, been his loyal lieutenant, Wilhym Mardol. @BRK#When Shang Khal heard the news, he flew into a fury, and went at once to the scene, bringing with him what the text described as his 'wrathsingers', who appeared to be magi of some sort. Their leader, or master, was a man called Mafeo Orde, and somehow, Orde drew the wrathsingers into a kind of remote warfare with the hierophants. The text was annoyingly vague about exactly what occurred next, almost as if it was beyond the understanding of the writer. Words such as 'sorcery' and 'majik' were employed frequency, without qualification, and there were invocations to dark, primordial gods that the writer clearly thought his audience would have some prior knowledge of. Since the start of the text, Loken had seen references to Kalagann's 'sorcerous' powers, and the 'invisibles artes' that formed a key part of Ursh's power, but he had taken them to be hyperbole. This was the first time sorcery had appeared on the page, as a kind of fact. @BRK#The earth trembled, as if afraid. The sky tore like silk. Many in the Urshite force heard the voices of the dead whispering to them. Men caught fire, and walked around, bathed in lambent flames that did not consume them, pleading for help. The remote war between the wrathsingers and the hierophants lasted for six days, and when it ended, the ancient desert was thick with snow, and the skies had turned blood red. The air formations of the Roma had been forced to flee, lest their craft be torn from the heavens by screaming angels and dashed down upon the ground. @BRK#At the end of it, all the wrathsingers were dead, except Orde himself. The murengon was a smoking hole in the ground, its stone walls so hideously melted by heat they @BRK#had become slips of glass. And the hierophants were extinct. @BRK#The chapter ended. Loken looked up. He had been so enthralled, he wondered if he had missed an alert or a summons. The arming chamber was quiet. No signal runes blinked on the wall panel. @BRK#He began to read the next part, but the narrative had switched to a sequence concerning some northern war against the nomadic caterpillar cities of the Taiga. He skipped a few pages, hunting for further mention of Orde or sorcery, but could detect none. Frustrated, he set the book aside. @BRK#Sindermann... had he given Loken this work deliberately? To what end? A joke? Some veiled message? Loken resolved to study it, section by section, and take his questions to his mentor. @BRK#But he'd had enough of it for the time being. His mind was clouded and he wanted it clear for combat. He walked to the vox plate beside the chamber door and activated it. @BRK#'Officer of the watch. How can I serve, captain?' @BRK#'Any word from the speartip?' @BRK#'I'll check, sir. No, nothing routed to you.’ @BRK#Thank you. Keep me appraised.' @BRK#'Sir.’ @BRK#Loken clicked the vox off. He walked back to where he had left the book, picked it up, and marked his page. He was using a thin sliver of parchment torn from the edge of one of his oath papers as a marker. He closed the book, and went to put it away in the battered metal crate where he kept his belongings. There were precious few items in there, little to show for such a long life. It reminded him of Jubal's meagre effects. If I die, Loken thought, who will clean this out? What will they preserve? Most of the bric-a-brac was worthless trophies, stuff that only meant something to him: the handle of @BRK#a combat knife he'd broken off in the gullet of a green-skin warboss; long feathers, now musty and threadbare, from the hatchet-beak that had almost killed him on Balthasar, decades earlier; a piece of dirty, rusted wire, knotted at each end, which he'd used to garrote a nameless eldar champion when all other weapons had been lost to him. @BRK#That had been a fight. A real test. He decided he ought to tell Oliton about it, sometime. How long ago was it? Ages past, though the memory was as fresh and heavy as if it had been yesterday Two warriors, deprived of their common arsenals by the circumstance of war, stalking one another through the fluttering leaves of a wind-lashed forest. Such skill and tenacity. Loken had almost wept in admiration for the opponent he had slain. @BRK#All that was left was the wire and the memory, and when Loken passed, only the wire would remain. Whoever came here after his death would likely throw it out, assuming it to be a twist of rusty wire and nothing more. @BRK#His rummaging hands turned up something that would not be cast away. The data-slate Karkasy had given him. The data-slate from Keeler. @BRK#Loken sat back and switched it on, flicking through the picts again. Rare picts. Tenth Company, assembled on the embarkation deck for war. The company banner. Loken himself, framed against the bold colour of the flag. Loken taking his oath of moment. The Mournival group: Abaddon, Aximand, Torgaddon and himself, with Targost and Sedirae. @BRK#He loved the picts. They were the most precious material gift he'd ever received, and the most unexpected. Loken hoped that, through Oliton, he might leave some sort of useful legacy. He doubted it would be anything like as significant as these images. @BRK#He scrolled the picts back into their file, and was about to deactivate the slate when he saw, for the first time, there was another file lodged in the memory. It was stored, perhaps deliberately, in an annex to the slate's main data folder, hidden from cursory view. Only a tiny icon digit '2' betrayed that the slate was loaded with more than one file of material. @BRK#It took him a moment to find the annex and open it. It looked like a folder of deleted or discarded images, but there was a tag caption attached to it that read 'IN CONFIDENCE'. @BRK#Loken cued it. The first pict washed into colour on the slate's small screen. He stared at it, puzzled. It was dark, unbalanced in colour or contrast, almost unreadable. He thumbed up the next, and the next. @BRK#And stared in horrid fascination. @BRK#He was looking at Jubal, or rather the thing that Jubal had become in the final moments. A rabid, insane mass, ploughing down a dark hallway towards the viewer. @BRK#There were more shots. The light, the sheen of them, seemed unnatural, as if the picter unit that had captured them had found difficulty reading the image. There were clear, sharp-focused droplets of gore and sweat frozen in the air as they splashed out in the foreground. The thing behind them, the thing that had shaken the droplets out, was fuzzy and imprecise, but never less than abominable. @BRK#Loken switched the slate off and began to strip off his armour as quickly as he could. When he was down to the thick, mimetic polymers of his sub-suit bodyglove, he stopped, and pulled on a long, hooded robe of brown hemp. He took up the slate, and a vox-cuff, and went outside. @BRK#'Nero!' @BRK#Vipus appeared, fully plated except for his helm. He frowned in confusion at the sight of Loken's attire. @BRK#'Garvi? Where's your armour? What's going on?' @BRK#'I've an errand to run.’ Loken replied quickly, clasping on the vox-cuff. 'You have command here in my absence.’ @BRK#'I do?' @BRK#'I'll return shortly.’ Loken held up the cuff, and allowed it to auto-sync channels with Vipus's vox system. Small notice lights on the cuff and the collar of Vipus's armour flashed rapidly and then glowed in unison. @BRK#'If the situation changes, if we're called forwards, vox me immediately. I'll not be derelict of my duties. But there's something I must do.’ @BRK#'Like what?' @BRK#'I can't say.’ Loken said. @BRK#Nero Vipus paused and nodded. 'Just as you say, brother. I'll cover for you and alert you of any changes.’ He stood watching as his captain, hooded and hurrying, slipped away down an access tunnel and was swallowed by the shadows. @BRK#The game was going so badly against him that Ignace Karkasy decided it was high time he got his fellow players drunk. Six of them, with a fairly disinterested crowd of onlookers, occupied a table booth at the forward end of the Retreat, under the gilded arches. Beyond them, remembrancers and off-duty soldiers, along with ship personnel relaxing between shifts, and a few iterators (one could never tell if an iterator was on duty or off) mingled in the long, crowded chamber, drinking, eating, gaming and talking. There was a busy chatter, laughter, the clink of glasses. Someone was playing a viol. The Retreat had become quite the social focus of the flagship. @BRK#Just a week or two before, a sozzled second engineer had explained to Karkasy that there had never been any @BRK#gleeful society aboard the @BRK#Vengeful Spirit, @BRK#nor on any other line ship in his experience. Just quiet after-shift drinking and sullen gambling schools. The remembrancers had brought their bohemian habits to the warship, and the crewmen and soldiery had been drawn to its light. @BRK#The iterators, and some senior ship officers, had clucked disapprovingly at the growing, casual conviviality, but the mingling was permitted. When Comnenus had voiced his objections to the unlicensed carousing the @BRK#Vengeful Spirit @BRK#was now host to, someone - and Karkasy suspected the commander himself - had reminded him that the purpose of the remembrancers was to meet and fraternise. Soldiers and Navy adepts flocked to the Retreat, hoping to find some poor poet or chronicler who would record their thoughts and experiences for posterity. Though mostly, they came to get a skinful, play cards and meet girls. @BRK#It was, in Karkasy's opinion, the finest achievement of the remembrancer programme to date: to remind the expedition warriors they were human, and to offer them some fun. @BRK#And to win rudely from them at cards. @BRK#The game was @BRK#targe main, @BRK#and they were playing with a pack of square-cut cards that Karkasy had once lent to Mer-sadie Oliton. There were two other remembrancers at the table, along with a junior deck officer, a sergeant-at-arms and a gunnery oberst. They were using, as bidding tokens, scurfs of gilt that someone had cheerfully scraped off one of the stateroom's golden columns. Karkasy had to admit that the remembrancers had abused their facilities terribly. Not only had the columns been half-stripped to the ironwork, the murals had been written on and painted over. Verses had been inscribed in patches of sky between the shoulders of ancient heroes, and those ancient heroes found themselves facing eternity wearing comical beards @BRK#and eye patches. In places, walls and ceilings had been whitewashed, or lined with gum-paper, and entire tracts of new composition inscribed upon them. @BRK#'I'll sit this hand out.’ Karkasy announced, and pushed back his chair, scooping up the meagre handful of scraped gilt flecks he still owned. 'I'll find us all some drinks.’ @BRK#The other players murmured approval as the sergeant-at-arms dealt the next hand. The junior deck officer, his head sunk low and his eyes hooded, thumped the heels of his hands together in mock applause, his elbows on the table top, his hands fixed high above his lolling head. @BRK#Karkasy moved off through the crowd to find Zinkman. Zinkman, a sculptor, had drink, an apparently bottomless reserve of it, though where he sourced it from was anyone's guess. Someone had suggested Zinkman had a private arrangement with a crewman in climate control who distilled the stuff. Zinkman owed Karkasy at least one bottle, from an unfinished game of @BRK#merci merci @BRK#two nights earlier. @BRK#He asked for Zinkman at two or three tables, and also made inquiries with various groups standing about the place. The viol music had stopped for the moment, and some around were clapping as Carnegi, the composer, clambered up onto a table. Carnegi owned a half-decent baritone voice, and most nights he could be prevailed upon to sing popular opera or take requests. @BRK#Karkasy had one. @BRK#A squall of laughter burst from nearby, where a small, lively group had gathered on stools and recliners to hear a remembrancer give a reading from his latest work. In one of the wall booths formed by the once golden colonnade, Karkasy saw Ameri Sechloss carefully inscribing her latest remembrance in red ink over a wall she'd washed white with stolen hull paint. She'd @BRK#masked out an image of the Emperor triumphant at Cyclonis. Someone would complain about that. Parts of the Emperor, beloved by all, poked out from around the corners of her white splash. 'Zinkman? Anyone? Zinkman?' he asked. 'I think he's over there.’ one of the remembrancers watching Sechloss suggested. @BRK#Karkasy turned, and stood on tiptoe to peer across the press. The Retreat was crowded tonight. A figure had just walked in through the chamber's main entrance. Karkasy frowned. He didn't need to be on tiptoe to spot this newcomer. Robed and hooded, the figure towered over the rest of the crowd, by far and away the tallest person in the busy room. Not a human's build at all. The general noise level did not drop, but it was clear the newcomer was attracting attention. People were whispering, and casting sly looks in his direction. @BRK#Karkasy edged his way through the crowd, the only person in the chamber bold enough to approach the visitor. The hooded figure was standing just inside the entrance arch, scanning the crowd in search of someone. @BRK#'Captain?' Karkasy asked, coming forwards and peering up under the cowl. 'Captain Loken?' @BRK#'Karkasy.’ Loken seemed very uncomfortable. @BRK#'Were you looking for me, sir? I didn't think we were due to meet until tomorrow.’ @BRK#T was... I was looking for Keeler. Is she here?' @BRK#'Here? Oh no. She doesn't come here. Please, captain, come with me. You don't want to be in here.’ @BRK#'Don't I?' @BRK#T can read the discomfort in your manner, and when we meet, you never step inside the archway. Come on.’ @BRK#They went back out through the arched entranceway into the cool, gloomy quiet of the corridor outside. A few people passed them by, heading into the Retreat. @BRK#'It must be important.’ Karkasy said, 'for you to set foot in there.’ @BRK#'It is.’ Loken replied. He kept the hood of his robe up, and his manner remained stiff and guarded. 'I need to find Keeler.’ @BRK#'She doesn't much frequent the common spaces. She's probably in her quarters.’ @BRK#'Where's that?' @BRK# Той could have asked the watch officer for her billet reference.’ @BRK#'I'm asking you, Ignace.’ @BRK#That important, and that private.’ Karkasy remarked. Loken made no reply. Karkasy shrugged. 'Come with me and I'll show you.’ @BRK#Karkasy led the captain down into the warren of the residential deck where the remembrancers were billeted. The echoing metal companionways were cold, the walls brushed steel and marked with patches of damp. This area had once been a billet for army officers but, like the Retreat, it had ceased to feel anything like the interior of a military vessel. Music echoed from some chambers, often through half-open hatches. The sound of hysterical laughter came from one room, and from another the din of a man and a woman having a ferocious quarrel. Paper notices had been pasted to the walls: slogans and verses and essays on the nature of man and war. Murals had also been daubed in places, some of them magnificent, some of them crude. There was litter on the deck, an odd shoe, an empty bottle, scraps of paper. @BRK#'Here.’ said Karkasy. The shutter of Keeler's billet was closed. Would you like me to... ?' Karkasy asked, gesturing to the door. @BRK#-Yes.’ @BRK#Karkasy rapped his fist against the shutter and listened. After a moment, he rapped again, harder. 'Euphrati? Euphrati, are you there?' @BRK#The shutter slid open, and the scent of body warmth spilled out into the cool corridor. Karkasy was face to face with a lean young man, naked but for a pair of half-buttoned army fatigue pants. The man was sinewy and tough, hard-bodied and hard-faced. He had numerical tattoos on his upper arms, and metal tags on a chain around his neck. @BRK#'What?' he snapped at Karkasy. @BRK#'I want to see Euphrati.’ @BRK#'Piss off.’ the soldier replied. 'She doesn't want to see you.’ @BRK#Karkasy backed away a step. The soldier was physically intimidating. @BRK#'Cool down.’ said Loken, looming behind Karkasy and lowering his hood. He stared down at the soldier. 'Cool down, and I won't ask your name and unit.’ @BRK#The soldier looked up at Loken with wide eyes. 'She... she's not here.’ he said. @BRK#Loken pushed past him. The soldier tried to block him, but Loken caught his right wrist in one hand and turned it neatly so that the man suddenly found himself contorted in a disabling lock. @BRK#'Don't do that again.’ Loken advised, and released his hold, adding a tiny shove that dropped the soldier onto his hands and knees. @BRK#The room was quite small, and very cluttered. Discarded clothes and rumpled bedding littered the floor space, and the shelves and low table were covered with bottles and unwashed plates. @BRK#Keeler stood on the far side of the room, beside the unmade cot. She had pulled a sheet around her slim, naked body and stared at Loken with disdain. She looked weary, unhealthy. Her hair was tangled and there were dark shadows under her eyes. @BRK#'It's all right, Leef.’ she told the soldier. 'I'll see you later.’ @BRK#Still wary, the soldier pulled on his vest and boots, snatched up his jacket, and left, casting one last murderous look at Loken. @BRK#'He's a good man.’ Keeler said. 'He cares for me.’ @BRK#'Army?' @BRK#"Yes. It's called fraternization. Does Ignace have to be here for this?' @BRK#Karkasy was hovering in the doorway. Loken turned. Thank you for your help.’ he said. 'I'll see you tomorrow.’ @BRK#Karkasy nodded. 'All right.’ he said. Reluctantly, he walked away. Loken closed the shutter. He looked back at Keeler. She was pouring clear liquor from a flask into a shot glass. @BRK#'Can I interest you?' she asked, gesturing with the flask. 'In the spirit of hospitality?' @BRK#He shook his head. @BRK#'Ah. I suppose you Astartes don't drink. Another biological flaw ironed out of you.’ @BRK#'We drink well enough, under certain circumstances.’ @BRK#'And this isn't one, I suppose?' Keeler put the flask down and took up her glass. She walked back to the cot, holding the sheet around her with one hand and sipping from the glass held in the other. Holding her drink out steady, she settled herself down on the cot, drawing her legs up and folding the sheet modestly over herself. @BRK#'I can imagine why you're here, captain.’ she said. 'I'm just amazed. I expected you weeks ago.’ @BRK#'I apologise. I only found the second file tonight. I obviously hadn't looked carefully enough.’ @BRK#What do you think of my work?' @BRK#Astonishing. I'm flattered by the picts you shot on the embarkation deck. I meant to send you a note, thanking you for copying them to me. Again, I apologise. The second file, however, is...' @BRK#'Problematic?' she suggested. @BRK#'At the very least.’ he said. @BRK#'Why don't you sit down?' she asked. Loken shrugged off his robe and sat carefully on a metal stool beside the cluttered table. @BRK#'I wasn't aware any picts existed of that incident.’ Loken said. @BRK#'I didn't know I'd shot them.’ Keeler replied, taking another sip. 'I'd forgotten, I think. When the first captain asked me at the time, I said no, I hadn't taken anything. I found them later. I was surprised.’ @BRK#'Why did you send them to me?' he asked. @BRK#She shrugged. 'I don't really know. You have to understand, sir, that I was... traumatised. For a while, I was in a very bad way. The shock of it all. I was a mess, but I got through it. I'm content now, stable, centred. My friends helped me through it. Ignace, Sadie, some others. They were kind to me. They stopped me from hurting myself.’ @BRK#'Hurting yourself?' @BRK#She fiddled with her glass, her eyes focused on the floor. 'Nightmares, Captain Loken. Terrible visions, when I was asleep and when I was awake. I found myself crying for no reason. I drank too much. I acquired a small pistol, and spent long hours wondering if I had the strength to use it.’ @BRK#She looked up at him. 'It was in that... that pit of despair that I sent you those picts. It was a cry for help, I suppose. I don't know. I can't remember. Like I said, I'm past that now. I'm fine, and feel a little foolish for bothering you, especially as my efforts took so long to reach you. You wasted a visit.’ @BRK#'I'm glad you feel better.’ Loken said, 'but I haven't wasted anything. We need to talk about those images. Who's seen them?' @BRK#'No one. You and me. No one else.’ @BRK#'Did you not think it wise to inform the first captain of their existence?' @BRK#Keeler shook her head. 'No. No, not at all. Not back then. If I'd gone to the authorities, they'd have confiscated them... destroyed them, probably, and told me the same story about a wild beast. The first captain was very certain it was a wild beast, some xenos creature, and he was very certain I should keep my mouth shut. For the sake of morale. The picts were a lifeline for me, back then. They proved I wasn't going mad. That's why I sent them to you.’ @BRK#'Am I not part of the authorities?' @BRK#She laughed. Той were there, Loken. You were there. You saw it. I took a chance. I thought you might respond and-' @BRK#'And what?' @BRK#Tell me the truth of it.' @BRK#Loken hesitated. @BRK#'Oh, don't worry.’ she admonished, rising to refill her glass. 'I don't want to know the truth now. A wild beast. A wild beast. I've got over it. This late in the day, captain, I don't expect you to break loyalty and tell me something you're sworn not to tell. It was a foolish notion, which I now regret. My turn to apologise to you.’ @BRK#She looked over at him, tugging up the edge of the sheet to cover her bosom. 'I've deleted my copies. All of them. You have my word. The only ones that exist are the ones I sent to you.’ @BRK#Loken took out the data-slate and placed it on the table. He had to push dirty crockery aside to make a space for it. Keeler looked at the slate for a long while, and then knocked back her glass and refilled it. @BRK#Imagine that.’ she said, her hand trembling as it lifted the flask. 'I'm terrified even to have them back in the room.’ @BRK#'I don't think you're as over it as you like to pretend.’ Loken said. @BRK#'Really?' she sneered. She put down her glass and ran the fingers of her free hand through her short blonde hair. 'Hell with it, then, since you're here. Hell with it.’ @BRK#She walked over and snatched up the slate. Wild beast, eh? Wild beast?' @BRK#'Some form of vicious predator indigenous to the mountain region that-' @BRK#'Forgive me, that's so much shit.’ she said. She snapped the slate into the reader slot of a compact edit engine on the far side of the room. Some of her picters and spare lenses littered the bench beside it. The engine whirred into life, and the screen lit up, cold and white. "What did you make of the discrepancies?' @BRK#'Discrepancies?' Loken asked. @BRK#Yes.’ She expertly tapped commands into the engine's controls, and selected the file. With a stab of her index finger, she opened the first image. It bloomed on the screen. @BRK#Terra, I can't look at it.’ she said, turning away. @BRK#'Switch it off, Keeler.’ @BRK#'No, you look at it. Look at the visual distortion there. Surely you noticed that? It's like it's there and yet not there. Like it's phasing in and out of reality.’ @BRK#'A signal error. The conditions and the poor light foxed your picter's sensors and-' @BRK#'I know how to use a picter, captain, and I know how to recognise poor exposure, lens flare, and digital mal-formance. That's not it. Look.’ @BRK#She punched up the second pict, and half-looked at it, gesturing with her hand. 'Look at the background. And the droplets of blood in the foreground there. Perfect pict capture. But the thing itself. I've never seen anything create that effect on a high-gain instrument. That "wild beast" is out of sync with the physical continuity around it. Which is, captain, exactly as I saw it. You've studied these closely, no doubt?' @BRK#'No.’ said Loken. @BRK#Keeler pulled up another image. She stared at it fully this time, and men looked away. "There, you see? The afterimage? It's on all of them, but this is the dearest.' @BRK#'I don't see...' @BRK#'I'll boost the contrast and lose a little of the motion blurring.’ She fiddled with the engine's controls. "There. See now?' @BRK#Loken stared. What had at first seemed to be a frothy, milky ghost blurring across the image of the nightmare thing had resolved clearly thanks to her manipulation. Superimposed on the fuz2y abomination was a semi-human shape, echoing the pose and posture of the creature. Though it was faint, there was no mistaking the shrieking face and wracked body of Xavyer Jubal. @BRK#'Know him?' she asked. 'I don't, but I recognise the physiognomy and build of an Astartes when I see it. Why would my picter register that, unless...' @BRK#Loken didn't reply. @BRK#Keeler switched the screen off, popped out the slate and tossed it back to Loken. He caught it neatly. She went back over to the cot and flopped down. @BRK#That's what I wanted you to explain to me.’ she said. That's why I sent you the picts. When I was in my deepest, darkest pits of madness, that's what I was hoping you'd come and explain to me, but don't worry. I'm past that now. I'm fine. A wild beast, that's all it was. A wild beast.’ @BRK#Loken gazed at the slate in his hand. He could barely imagine what Keeler had been through. It had been bad enough for the rest of them, but he and Nero and Sinder-mann had all enjoyed the benefit of proper closure. They'd been told the truth. Keeler hadn't. She was smart and bright and clever, and she'd seen the holes in the story, the awful inconsistencies that proved there had been more to the event than the first captain's explanation. And she'd managed with that knowledge, coped with it, alone. @BRK#'What did you think it was?' he asked. @BRK#'Something awful that we should never know about.’ she replied. Throne, Loken. Please don't take pity on me now. Please don't decide to tell me.’ @BRK#'I won't.’ he said. 'I can't. It was a wild beast. Euphrati, how did you deal with it?' @BRK#What do you mean?' @BRK#'You say you're fine now. How are you fine?' @BRK#'My friends helped me through. I told you.’ @BRK#Loken got up, picked up the flask, and went over to the cot. He sat down on the end of the mattress and refilled the glass she held out. @BRK#Thank you.’ she said. 'I've found strength. I've found-' @BRK#For a moment, Loken was certain she had been about to say 'faith'. @BRK#'What?' @BRK#Trust. Trust in the Imperium. In the Emperor. In you.’ @BRK#'In me?' @BRK#'Not you, personally. In the Astartes, in the Imperial army, in every branch of mankind's warrior force that is dedicated to the protection of us mere mortals.’ She took a sip and sniggered. The Emperor, you see, protects.’ @BRK#'Of course he does.’ said Loken. @BRK#'No, no, you misunderstand.’ said Keeler, folding her arms around her raised, sheet-covered knees. 'He actually does. He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the martial corps, through the war machines of the Mechanicum. He understands the dangers. The inconsistencies. He uses you, and all the instruments like you, to protect us from harm. To protect our physical bodies from murder and damage, to protect our minds from madness, to protect our souls. This is what I now understand. This is what this trauma has taught me, and I am thankful for it. There are insane dangers @BRK#in the cosmos, dangers that mankind is fundamentally unable to comprehend, let alone survive. So he protects us. There are truths out there that would drive us mad by one fleeting glimpse of them. So he chooses not to share them with us. That's why he made you.’ @BRK#That's a glorious concept.’ Loken admitted. @BRK#'In the Whisperheads, that day... You saved me, didn't you? You shot that thing apart. Now you save me again, by keeping the truth to yourself. Does it hurt?' @BRK#'Does what hurt?' @BRK#The truth you keep hidden?' @BRK#'Sometimes.’ he said. @BRK#'Remember, Garviel. The Emperor is our truth and our light. If we trust in him, he will protect.’ @BRK#'Where did you get that from?' Loken asked. @BRK#'A friend. Garviel, I have only one concern. A lingering thing that will not quit my mind. You Astartes are loyal, through and through. You keep to your own, and never break confidence.’ @BRK#'And?' @BRK#Tonight, I really believe you would have told me something, but for the loyalty you keep with your brothers. I admire that, but answer me this. How far does your loyalty go? Whatever it was happened to us in the Whisperheads, I believe an Astartes brother was part of it. But you close ranks. What has to happen before you forsake your loyalty to the Legion and recognise your loyalty to the rest of us?' @BRK#'I don't know what you mean.’ he said. @BRK#Yes, you do. If a brother turns on his brothers again, will you cover that up too? How many have to turn before you act? One? A squad? A company? How long will you keep your secrets? What will it take for you to cast aside the fraternal bonds of the Legion and cry out "This is wrong!"?' @BRK#You're suggesting an impossible-' @BRK#'No, I'm not. You, of all people, know I'm not. If it can happen to one, it can happen to others. You're all so drilled and perfect and identical. You march to the same beat and do whatever is asked of you. Loken, do you know of any Astartes who would break step? Would you?' @BRK#'I...' @BRK#'Would you? If you saw the rot, a hint of corruption, would you step out of your regimented life and stand against it? For the greater good of mankind, I mean?' @BRK#'It's not going to happen.’ Loken said. That would never happen. You're suggesting civil disunity. Civil war. That is against every fibre of the Imperium as the Emperor has created it. With Horus as Warmaster, as our guiding light, such a possibility is beyond countenance. The Imperium is firm and strong, and of one purpose. There are inconsistencies, Euphrati, just like there are wars and plagues and famines. They hurt us, but they do not kill us. We rise above them and move onwards.’ @BRK#'It rather depends.’ she remarked, 'where those inconsistencies occur.’ @BRK#Token's vox-cuff suddenly began to bleat. Loken raised his wrist, and thumbed the call stud. I'm on my way.’ he said. He looked back at her. @BRK#'Let's talk again, Euphrati.’ he said. @BRK#She nodded. He leant forwards and kissed her on the forehead. 'Be well. Be better. Look to your friends.’ @BRK#'Are you my friend?' she asked. @BRK#'Know it.’ he said. He got up and retrieved his robe from the floor. @BRK#'Garviel.’ she called from the cot. @BRK#Yes?' @BRK#'Delete those images, please. For me. They don't need to exist.’ @BRK#He nodded, opened the shutter, and stepped out into the chill of the hall. @BRK#Once the shutter had closed, Keeler got up off the cot and let the sheet fall from her. Naked, she padded over to a cupboard, knelt and opened its doors. From inside, she took out two candles and a small figurine of the Emperor. She placed them on the top of the cupboard, and lit the candles with an igniter. Then she rummaged in the cupboard and pulled out the dog-eared pamphlet that Leef had given her. It was a cheap, crude thing, badly pressed from a mechanical bulk-printer. There were ink soils along its edges, and rather a lot of spelling mistakes in the text. @BRK#Keeler didn't care. She opened the first page and, bowed before the makeshift shrine, she began to read. @BRK#The Emperor of Mankind is the Light and the Way, and all his actions are for the benefit of mankind, which is his people. The Emperor is God and God is the Emperor, so it is taught in the Lectio Divinitatus, and above all things, the Emperor will protect...' @BRK#Loken ran down the companionways of the remembrancers' billet wing, his cloak billowing out behind him. Sirens were sounding. Men and women peered out of doorways to look at him as he passed by. @BRK#He raised his cuff to his mouth. 'Nero. Report! Is it Tarik? Has something happened?' @BRK#The vox crackled and Vipus's voice issued tinnily from the cuff speaker. 'Something's happened all right, Garvi. Get back here.’ @BRK#"What? What's happened?' @BRK#'A ship, that's what. A barge has just translated in-system behind us. It's Sanguinius. Sanguinius himself has come.' @BRK#SEVEN @BRK#Lord of the Angels @BRK#Brotherhood in Spiderland @BRK#Interdiction @BRK#Just a week or so earlier, during one of their regular, private interviews, Loken had finally told Mersadie Oliton about the Great Triumph after Ullanor. @BRK#'You cannot imagine it,' he said. @BRK#'I can try.' @BRK#Loken smiled. The Mechanicum had planed smooth an entire continent as a stage for the event.' @BRK#'Planed smooth? What?' @BRK#'With industrial meltas and geoformer engines. Mountains were erased and their matter used to infill valleys. The surface was left smooth and endless, a vast table of dry, polished rock chippings. It took months to accomplish.’ @BRK#'It ought to have taken centuries!' @BRK#'You underestimate the industry of the Mechanicum. They sent four labour fleets to undertake the work. They made a stage worthy of an Emperor, so broad it could know midnight at one end and midday at the other.’ @BRK#'You exaggerate!' she cried, with a delighted snort. @BRK#'Maybe I do. Have you known me do that before?' @BRK#Oliton shook her head. @BRK#'You have to understand, this was a singular event. It was a Triumph to mark the turn of an era, and the Emperor, beloved of all, knew it. He knew it had to be remembered. It was the end of the Ullanor campaign, the end of the crusade, the coronation of the Warmas-ter. It was a chance for the Astartes to say farewell to the Emperor before his departure to Terra, after two centuries of personal leadership. We wept as he announced his retirement from the field. Can you picture that, Mer-sadie? A hundred thousand warriors, weeping?' @BRK#She nodded. 'I think it was a shame no remembrancers were there to witness it. It was a moment that comes only once every epoch.' @BRK#'It was a private affair.' @BRK#She laughed again. 'A hundred thousand present, a continent levelled for the event, and it was a private affair?' @BRK#Loken looked at her. 'Even now, you don't understand us, do you? You still think on a very human scale.' @BRK#'I stand corrected,' she replied. @BRK#'I meant no offence.’ he said, noticing her expression, 'but it was a private affair. A ceremony. A hundred thousand Astartes. Eight million army regulars. Legions of Titan war machines, like forests of steel. Armour units by the hundred, formations of tanks, thousands upon thousands. Warships filling the low orbit, eclipsed by the squadrons of aircraft flying over in unending echelons. Banners and standards, so many banners and standards.' @BRK#He fell silent for a moment, remembering. The Mechanicum had made a roadway. Half a kilometre wide, and five hundred kilometres long, a straight line across the stage they had levelled. On each side of this road, every five metres, was an iron post topped with @BRK#the skull of a greenskin, trophies of the Ullanor war. Beyond the roadway, to either hand, promethium fires burned in rockcrete basins. For five hundred kilometres. The heat was intense. We marched along the roadway in review, passing below the dais on which the Emperor stood, beneath a steel-scale canopy. The dais was the only raised structure the Mechanicum had left, the root of an old mountain. We marched in review, and then assembled on the wide plain below the dais.' @BRK#'Who marched?' @BRK#All of us. Fourteen Legions were represented, either in total or by a company. The others were engaged in wars too remote to allow them to attend. The Luna Wolves were there en mass, of course. Nine primarchs were there, Mersadie. Nine. Horns, Dorn, Angron, Fulgrim, Lorgar, Mortarion, Sanguinius, Magnus, the Khan. The rest had sent ambassadors. Such a spectacle. You cannot imagine.’ @BRK#'I'm still trying.’ @BRK#Loken shook his head. 'I'm still trying to believe I was there.’ @BRK#^Vhat were they like?' @BRK#You think I met them? I was just another brother-warrior marching in the file. In my life, lady, I have seen almost all of the primarchs at one time or another, but mostly from a distance. I've personally spoken to two of them. Until my election to the Mournival, I didn't move in such elevated circles. I know the primarchs as distant figures. At the Triumph, I could barely believe so many were present.’ @BRK#'But still, you had impressions?' @BRK#'Indelible impressions. Each one, so mighty, so huge and so proud. They seemed to embody human characteristics. Angron, red and angry; Dorn solid and implacable; Magnus, veiled in mystery, and Sanguinius, of course. So perfect. So charismatic.’ @BRK#'I've heard this of him.' Then you've heard the truth.’ @BRK#His long black hair was pressed down by the weight of the shawl of gold chain he wore across his head. The edges of it framed his solemn features. He had marked his cheeks with grey ash in mourning. @BRK#An attendant stood by with ink pot and brush to paint the ritual tears of grief on his cheeks, but Primarch Sanguinius shook his head, making the chain shawl clink. T have real tears.’ he said. @BRK#He turned, not to his brother Horus, but to Torgad-don. @BRK#'Show me, Tarik.’ he said. @BRK#Torgaddon nodded. The wind moaned around the still figures assembled on the lonely hillside, and rain pattered off their armour plate. Torgaddon gestured, and Tarvitz, Bulle and Lucius stepped forwards, holding out the dirty relics. @BRK#These men, my lord.’ Torgaddon said, his voice unusually shaky, 'these Children of the Emperor, recovered these remains selflessly, and it is fit they offer them to you themselves.’ @BRK#'You did this honour?' Sanguinius asked Tarvitz. @BRK#'I did, my lord.’ @BRK#Sanguinius took the battered Astartes helm from Tarvitz's hands and studied it. He towered over the captain, his golden plate badged with rubies and bright jewels, and marked, like the armour of the Warmaster, with the unblinking eye of terra. Sanguinius's vast wings, like the pinions of a giant eagle, were furled against his back, and hung with silver bands and loops of pearls. @BRK#Sanguinius turned the helm over in his hands, and regarded the armourer's mark inside the rim. @BRK#'Eight knight leopard.’ he said. @BRK#At his side, Chapter Master Raldoron began to inspect the manifest. @BRK#'Don't trouble yourself, Ral.’ Sanguinius told him. 'I know the mark. Captain Thoros. He will be missed.’ @BRK#Sanguinius handed the helm to Raldoron and nodded to Tarvitz. Thank you for this kindness, captain.’ he said. He looked across at Eidolon. 'And to you, sir, my gratitude that you came to Frome's help so urgently.’ @BRK#Eidolon bowed, and seemed to ignore the dark glare the Warmaster was casting in his direction. @BRK#Sanguinius turned to Torgaddon. 'And to you, Tarik, most of all. For breaking this nightmare open.’ @BRK#'I do only what my Warmaster instructs me.’ Torgaddon replied. @BRK#Sanguinius looked over at Horus. 'Is that right?' @BRK#Tarik had some latitude.’ Horus smiled. He stepped forwards and embraced Sanguinius to his breast. No two primarchs were as close as the Warmaster and the Angel. They had barely been out of each other's company since Sanguinius's arrival. @BRK#The majestic Lord of the Blood Angels, the IX Legion Astartes, stepped back, and looked out across the forlorn landscape. Around the base of the ragged hill, hundreds of armoured figures waited in silence. The vast majority wore either the hard white of the Luna Wolves or the arterial red of the Angels, save for the remnants of the detachment of Emperor's Children, a small knot of purple and gold. Behind the Astartes, the war machines waited in the rain, silent and black, ringing the gathering like spectral mourners. Beyond them, the hosts of the Imperial army stood in observance, banners flapping sluggishly in the cold breeze. Their armoured vehicles and troop carriers were drawn up in echelon, and many of the soldiers had clambered up to stand on the hulls to get a better view of the proceedings. @BRK#Torgaddon's speartip had razed a large sector of the landscape, demolishing stone trees wherever they could be found, and thus taming the formidable weather in this part of Murder. The sky had faded to a mottled powder-grey, ran through with thin white bars of cloud, and rain fell softly and persistently, reducing visibility in the distances to a foggy blur. At the Warmaster's command, the main force of the assembled Imperial ships had made planetfall in the comparative safely of the storm-free zone. @BRK#'In the old philosophies of Terra.’ Sanguinius said, 'so I have read, vengeance was seen as a weak motive and a flaw of the spirit. It is hard for me to feel so noble today. I would cleanse this rock in the memory of my lost brothers, and their kin who died trying to save them.’ @BRK#The Angel looked at his primarch brother. 'But that is not necessary. Vengeance is not necessary. There is xenos here, implacable alien menace that rejects any civilised intercourse with mankind, and has greeted us with murder and murder alone. That suffices. As the Emperor, beloved by all, has taught us, since the start of our crusade, what is anathema to mankind must be dealt with directly to ensure the continued survival of the Imperium. Will you stand with me?' @BRK#We will murder Murder together.’ Horas replied. @BRK#Once those words were spoken, the Astartes went to war for six months. Supported by the army and the devices of the Mechanicum, they assaulted the bleak, shivering latitudes of the world called Murder, and laid waste the megarachnid. @BRK#It was a glorious war, in many ways, and not an easy one. No matter how many of them were slaughtered, the megarachnid did not cower or turn in retreat. It seemed as if they had no will, nor any spirit, to be broken. They came on and on, issuing forth from cracks and crevasses @BRK#in the ruddy land, day after day, set for further dispute. At times, it felt as if there was an endless reserve of them, as if unimaginably vast nests of them infested the mantle of the planet, or as if ceaseless subterranean factories manufactured more and yet more of them every day to replace the losses delivered by the Imperial forces. For their own part, no matter how many of them they slaughtered, the warriors of the Imperium did not come to underestimate the megarachnid. They were lethal and tough, and so numerous as to put a man out of countenance. The fiftieth beast I killed.’ Little Horns remarked at one stage, 'was as hard to overcome as the first.' @BRK#Loken, like many of the Luna Wolves present, personally rejoiced in the circumstances of the conflict, for it was the first time since his election as Warmaster that the commander had led them on the field. Early on, in the command habitent one rainy evening, the Mourni-val had gently tried to dissuade Horas from field operations. Abaddon had attempted, deftly, to portray the Warmaster's role and importance as a thing of a much higher consequence than martial engagement. @BRK#Am I not fit for it?' Horas had scowled, the rain dramming on the canopy overhead. @BRK#'I mean you are too precious for it, lord.’ Abaddon had countered. This is one world, one field of war. The Emperor has charged you with the concerns of all worlds and all fields. Your scope is-' @BRK#'Ezekyle...' The Warmaster's tone had betrayed a warning note, and he had switched to Cthonic, a clear sign his mind was on war and nothing else, '...do not presume to instruct me on my duties.’ @BRK#'Lord, I would not!' Abaddon exclaimed immediately, with a respectful bow. @BRK#'Precious is the word.’ Aximand had put in quickly, coming to Abaddon's aid. If you were to be wounded, to fall even, it would-' @BRK#Horns rose, glaring. 'Now you deride my abilities as a warrior, little one? Have you grown soft since my ascendance?' @BRK#'No, my lord, no...' @BRK#Only Torgaddon, it seemed, had noticed the glimmer of amusement behind the Warmaster's pantomime of anger. @BRK#'We're only afraid you won't leave any glory for us,' he said. @BRK#Horus began to laugh. Realising he had been playing with them, the members of the Mournival began to laugh too. Horus cuffed Abaddon across the shoulder and pinched Aximand's cheek. @BRK#"We'll war this together, my sons,' he said. That is how 1 was made. If I had suspected, back at Ullanor, that the rank of Warmaster would require me to relinquish the glories of the field forever, I would not have accepted it. Someone else could have taken the honour. Guilleman or the Lion, perhaps. They ache for it, after all.' @BRK#More loud amusement followed. The laughter of Cthonians is dark and hard, but the laughter of Luna Wolves is a harder thing altogether. @BRK#Afterwards, Loken wondered if the Warmaster had not been using his sly political skills yet again. He had avoided the central issue entirely, and deflected their concerns with good humour and an appeal to their code as warriors. It was his way of telling them that, for all their good counsel, there were some matters on which his mind would not be swayed. Loken was sure that Sanguinius was the reason. Horus could not bring himself to stand by and watch his dearest brother go to war. Horus could not resist the temptation of fighting shoulder to shoulder with Sanguinius, as they had done in the old days. @BRK#Horus would not let himself be outshone, even by the one he loved most dearly. @BRK#To see them together on the battlefield was a heart-stopping thing. Two gods of war, raging at the head of a tide of red and white. Dozens of times, they accomplished victories in partnership on Murder that should, had what followed been any different, become deeds as lauded and immortal as Ullanor or any other great triumph. @BRK#Indeed the war as a whole produced many extraordinary feats that posterity ought to have celebrated, especially now the remembrancers were amongst them. @BRK#Like all her kind, Mersadie Oliton was not permitted to descend to the surface with the fighting echelons, but she absorbed every detail transmitted back from the surface, the daily ebb and flow of the brutal warfare, the losses and the gains. When, periodically, Loken returned with his company to the flagship to rest, repair and re-arm, she quizzed him furiously, and made him describe all he had seen. Horus and Sanguinius, side by side, was what interested her the most, but she was captivated by all his accounts. @BRK#Many battles had been vast, pitched affairs, where thousands of Astartes led tens of thousands of army troopers against endless files of the megarachnid. Loken struggled to find the language to describe it, and sometimes felt himself, foolishly, borrowing lurid turns of phrase he had picked up from @BRK#The Chronicles of Ursh. @BRK#He told her of the great things he had witnessed, the particular moments. How Luc Sedirae had led his company against a formation of megarachnid twenty-five deep and one hundred across, and splintered it in under half an hour. How Sacrus Carminus, Captain of the Blood Angels Third Company, had held the line against a buzzing host of winged clades through one long, hideous afternoon. How Iacton Qruze, despite his stubborn, tiresome ways, had broken the back of a surprise megarachnid assault, and proved there was mettle in @BRK#him still. How Tybalt Marr, 'the Either', had taken the low mountains in two days and elevated himself at last into the ranks of the exceptional. How the megarachnid had revealed more, and yet more nightmarish biological variations, including massive dades that strode forwards like armoured war machines, and how the Titans of the Mechanicum, led at the van by the @BRK#Dies lrae @BRK#of the Legio Mortis, smote them apart and trampled their blackened wing cases underfoot. How Saul Tarvitz, fighting at Torgaddon's side rather than in the cohort of his arrogant lord Eidolon, renewed the Luna Wolves' respect for the Emperor's Children through several feats of arms. @BRK#Tarvitz and Torgaddon had achieved a brotherhood during the war and eased the discontent between the two Legions. Loken had heard rumours that Eidolon was initially displeased with Tarvitz's deportment, until he recognised how simple brotherhood and effort was redeeming his mistake. Eidolon, though he would never admit it, realised full well he was out of favour with the Warmaster, but as time passed, he found he was at least tolerated within the bounds of the commander's war-tent, and consulted along with the other officers. @BRK#Sanguinius had also smoothed the way. He knew his brother Horus was keen to rebuke Fulgrim for the highhanded qualities his Astartes had lately displayed. Horus and Fulgrim were close, almost as close as Sanguinius and the Warmaster. It dismayed the Lord of Angels to see a potential rift in the making. @BRK#'You cannot afford dissent.’ Sanguinius had said. 'As Warmaster, you must have the undivided respect of the primarchs, just as the Emperor had. Moreover, you and Fulgrim are too long bound as brothers for you to fall to bickering.' @BRK#The conversation had taken place during a brief hiatus in the fighting, during the sixth week, when @BRK#Raldoron and Sedirae were leading the main force west into a series of valleys and narrow defiles along the foothills of a great bank of mountains. The two primarchs had rested for a day in a command camp some leagues behind the advance. Loken remembered it well. He and the others of the Mournival had been present in the main wartent when Sanguinius brought the matter up. @BRK#'I don't bicker.’ Horus said, as his armourers removed his heavy, mud-flecked wargear and bathed his limbs. The Emperor's Children have always been proud, but that pride is becoming insolence. Brother or not, Fulgrim must know his place. I have trouble enough with Angron's bloody rages and Perturabo's damn petulence. I'll not brook disrespect from such a close ally.’ @BRK#Was it Fulgrim's error, or his man Eidolon's?' Sanguinius asked. @BRK#'Fulgrim made Eidolon lord commander. He favours his merits, and evidently trusts him, and approves of his manner. If Eidolon embodies the character of the III Legion, then I have issue with it. Not just here. I need to know I can rely upon the Emperor's Children.’ @BRK#'And why do you think you can't?' @BRK#Horus paused while an attendant washed his face, then spat sidelong into a bowl held ready by another. 'Because they're too damn proud of themselves.’ @BRK#'Are not all Astartes proud of their own cohort?' Sanguinius took a sip of wine. He looked over at the Mournival. 'Are you not proud, Ezekyle?' @BRK#To the ends of creation, my lord.’ Abaddon replied. @BRK#'If I may, sir.’ said Torgaddon, 'there is a difference. There is a man's natural pride and loyalty to his own Legion. That may be a boastful pride, and the source of rivalry between Astartes. But the Emperor's Children seem particularly haughty, as if above the likes of us. Not all of them, I hasten to add.’ @BRK#Listening, Loken knew Torgaddon was referring to Tarvitz and the other friends he had made amongst Tarvitz's unit. @BRK#Sanguinius nodded. 'It is their mindset. It has always been so. They seek perfection, to be the best they can, to echo the perfection of the Emperor himself. It is not superiority. Fulgrim has explained this to me himself.’ @BRK#'And Fulgrim may believe so.’ Horus said, 'but superiority is how it manifests amongst some of his men. There was once mutual respect, but now they sneer and condescend. I fear it is my new rank that they resent. I'll not have it.’ @BRK#They don't resent you.’ Sanguinius said. @BRK#'Maybe, but they resent the role my rank invests upon my Legion. The Luna Wolves have always been seen as rude barbarians. The flint of Cthonia is in their hearts, and the smudge of its dirt upon their skins. The Children regard the Luna Wolves as peers only by dint of my Legion's record in war. The Wolves sport no finery or elegant manners. We are cheerfully raw where they are regal.’ @BRK#Then maybe it is time to consider doing what the Emperor suggested.’ Sanguinius said. @BRK#Horus shook his head emphatically. 'I refused that on Ullanor, honour though it was. I'll not contemplate it again.’ @BRK#Things change. You are Warmaster now. All the Legions Astartes must recognise the preeminence of the XVI Legion. Perhaps some need to be reminded.’ @BRK#Horus snorted. 'I don't see Russ trying to clean up his berserk horde and rebrand them to court respect.’ @BRK#'Leman Russ is not Warmaster.’ said Sanguinius. 'Your title changed, brother, at the Emperor's command, so that all the rest of us would be in no mistake as to the power you wield and the trust the Emperor placed in you. Perhaps the same thing must happen to your Legion.’ @BRK#Later, as they trudged west through the drizzle, following the plodding Titans across red mudflats and skeins of surface water, Loken asked Abaddon what the Lord of Angels had meant. @BRK#At Ullanor.’ the first captain answered, 'the beloved Emperor advised our commander to rename the XVI Legion, so there might be no mistake as to the power of our authority.’ @BRK#What name did he wish us to take?' Loken asked. @BRK#The Sons of Horus.’ Abaddon replied. @BRK#The sixth month of the campaign was drawing to a close when the strangers arrived. @BRK#Over the period of a few days, the vessels of the expedition, high in orbit, became aware of curious signals and etheric displacements that suggested the activity of starships nearby, and various attempts were made to locate the source. Advised of the situation, the Warmaster presumed that other reinforcements were on the verge of arrival, perhaps even additional units from the Emperor's Children. Patrolling scout ships, sent out by Master Comnenus, and cruisers on picket control, could find no concrete trace of any vessels, but many reported spectral readings, like the precursor field elevations that announced an imminent translation. The expedition fleet left high anchor and took station on a battle-ready grid, with the @BRK#Vengeful Spirit @BRK#and the @BRK#Proudheart @BRK#in the vanguard, and the @BRK#Misericord @BRK#and the @BRK#Red Tear, @BRK#San-guinius's flagship, on the trailing flank. @BRK#When the strangers finally appeared, they came in rapidly and confidently, gunning in from a translation point at the system edges: three massive capital ships, of a build pattern and drive signature unknown to Imperial records. @BRK#As they came closer, they began to broadcast what seemed to be challenge signals. The nature of these signals @BRK#was remarkably similar to the repeat of the outstation beacons, untranslatable and, according to the Warmaster, akin to music. @BRK#The ships were big. Visual relay showed them to be bright, sleek and silver-white, shaped like royal sceptres, with heavy prows, long, lean hulls and splayed drive sections. The largest of them was twice the keel length of the @BRK#Vengeful Spirit. @BRK#General alert was sounded throughout the fleet, shields raised and weapons unshrouded. The Warmaster made immediate preparations to quit the surface and return to his flagship. Engagements with the megarachnid were hastily broken off, and the ground forces recalled into a single host. Horus ordered Com-nenus to make hail, and hold fire unless fired upon. There seemed a high probability that these vessels belonged to the megarachnid, come from other worlds in support of the nests on Murder. @BRK#The ships did not respond directly to the hails, but continued to broadcast their own, curious signals. They prowled in close, and halted within firing distance of the expedition formation. @BRK#Then mey spoke. Not with one voice, but with a chorus of voices, uttering the same words, overlaid with more of the curious musical transmissions. The message was received cleanly by the Imperial vox, and also by the astrotelepaths, conveyed with such force and authority, Ing Mae Sing and her adepts winced. @BRK#They spoke in the language of mankind. 'Did you not see the warnings we left?' they said. 'What have you done here?' @BRK#PART THREE @BRK#THE DREADFUL SAGITTARY @BRK#ONE @BRK#Make no mistakes @BRK#Cousins far removed @BRK#Other ways @BRK#As an unexpected sequel to the war on Murder, they became the guests of the interex, and right from the start of their sojourn, voices had begun to call for war. @BRK#Eidolon was one, and a vociferous one at that, but Eidolon was out of favour and easy to dismiss. Mal-oghurst was another, and so too were Sedirae and Targost, and Goshen, and Raldoron of the Blood Angels. Such men were not so easy to ignore. @BRK#Sanguinius kept his counsel, waiting for the Warmas-ter's decision, understanding that Horns needed his brother primarch's unequivocal support. @BRK#The argument, best summarised by Maloghurst, ran as follows: the people of the interex are of our blood and we descend from common ancestry, so they are lost kin. But they differ from us in fundamental ways, and these are so profound, so inescapable, that they are cause for legitimate war. They contradict absolutely the essential tenets of Imperial culture as expressed by the Emperor, and such contradictions cannot be tolerated. @BRK#For the while, Horus tolerated them well enough. Loken could understand why. The warriors of the interex were easy to admire, easy to like. They were gracious and noble, and once the misunderstanding had been explained, utterly without hostility. @BRK#It took a strange incident for Loken to learn the truth behind the Warmaster's thinking. It took place during the voyage, the nine-week voyage from Murder to the nearest outpost world of the interex, the mingled ships of the expedition and its hangers-on trailing the sleek vessels of the interex flotilla. @BRK#The Mournival had come to Horus's private staterooms, and a bitter row had erupted. Abaddon had been swayed by the arguments for war. Both Mal-oghurst and Sedirae had been whispering in his ear. He was convinced enough to face the Warmaster and not back down. Voices had been raised. Loken had watched in growing amazement as Abaddon and the Warmaster bellowed at each other. Loken had seen Abaddon wrathful before, in the heat of combat, but he had never seen the commander so ill-tempered. Horus's fury startled him a little, almost scared him. @BRK#As ever, Torgaddon was trying to diffuse the confrontation with levity. Loken could see that even Tarik was dismayed by the anger on show. @BRK#'You have no choice!' Abaddon snarled. 'We have seen enough already to know that their ways are in opposition to ours! You must-' @BRK#'Must?' Horus roared. 'Must I? You are Mournival, Abaddon! You advise and you counsel, and that is your place! Do not imagine you can tell me what to do!' @BRK#'I don't have to! There is no choice, and you know what must be done!' @BRK#'Get out!' @BRK#'You know it in your heart!' @BRK#'Get out!' Horus yelled, and cast aside his drinking cup with such force it shattered on the steel deck. He glared at Abaddon, teeth clenched. 'Get out, Ezekyle, before I look to find another first captain!' @BRK#Abaddon glowered back for a moment, spat on the floor and stormed from the chamber. The others stood in stunned silence. @BRK#Horus turned, his head bowed. Torgaddon?' he said quietly. @BRK#'Lord, yes?' @BRK#'Go after him, please. Calm him down. Tell him if he craves my forgiveness in an hour or two, I might soften enough to hear him, but he'd better be on his knees when he does it, and his voice had better not rise above a whisper.’ @BRK#Torgaddon bowed and left the chamber immediately. Loken and Aximand glanced at one another, made an awkward salute, and turned to follow him out. @BRK#You two stay.’ Horus growled. @BRK#They stopped in their tracks. When they turned back, they saw the Warmaster was shaking his head, wiping a hand across his mouth. A kind of smile informed his wide-set eyes. 'Throne, my sons. How the molten core of Cthonia burns in us sometimes.’ @BRK#Horus sat down on one of the long, cushioned couches, and waved to them with a casual flick of his hand. 'Hard as a rock, Cthonia, hot as hell in the heart. Volcanic. We've all known the heat of the deep mines. We all know how the lava spurts up sometimes, without warning. It's in us all, and it wrought us all. Hard as rock with a burning heart. Sit, sit. Take wine. Forgive my outburst. I'd have you close. Half a Mournival is better than nothing.’ @BRK#They sat on the couch facing him. Horus took up a fresh cup, and poured wine from a silver ewer. The wise one and the quiet one.’ he said. Loken wasn't sure which @BRK#the Warmaster thought he was. 'Counsel me, then. You were both entirely too silent during that debate.' @BRK#Aximand cleared his throat. 'Ezekyle had... a point.’ he began. He stiffened as he saw the Warmaster raise his eyebrows. @BRK#'Go on, little one.’ @BRK#4ve... that is to say... we prosecute this crusade according to certain doctrines. For two centuries, we have done so. Laws of life, laws on which the Imperium is founded. They are not arbitrary. They were given to us, to uphold, by the Emperor himself.’ @BRK#'Beloved of all.’ Horus said. @BRK#The Emperor's doctrines have guided us since the start. We have never disobeyed them.’ Aximand paused, then added, 'Before.’ @BRK#"You think this is disobedience, little one?' Horus asked. Aximand shrugged. 'What about you, Garviel?' Horus asked. 'Are you with Aximand on this?' @BRK#Loken looked back into the Warmaster's eyes. 'I know why we ought to make war upon the interex, sir.’ he said. 'What interests me is why you think we shouldn't.’ @BRK#Horus smiled. 'At last, a thinking man.’ He rose to his feet and, carrying his cup carefully, walked across to the right-hand wall of the stateroom, a section of which had been richly decorated with a mural. The painting showed the Emperor, ascendant above all, catching the spinning constellations in his outstretched hand. The stars.’ Horus said. 'See, there? How he scoops them up? The zodiacs swirl into his grasp like fireflies. The stars are mankind's birthright. That's what he told me. That's one of the first things he told me when we met. I was like a child then, raised up from nothing. He set me at his side, and pointed to the heavens. Those points of light, he said, are what we have been waiting generations to master. Imagine, Horus, every one a human culture, every one a realm of beauty and magnificence, @BRK#free from strife, free from war, free from bloodshed and the tyrannous oppression of alien overlords. Make no mistake, he said, and they will be ours.’ @BRK#Horus slowly traced his fingers across the whorl of painted stars until his hand met the image of the Emperor's hand. He took his touch away and looked back at Aximand and Loken. As a foundling, on Ctho-nia, I saw the stars very infrequently. The sky was so often thick with foundry smoke and ash, but you remember, of course.’ Yes.’ said Loken. Litde Horus nodded. 'On those few nights when the stars were visible, I wondered at them. Wondered what they were and what they meant. Little, mysterious sparks of light, they had to have some purpose in being there. I wondered such things every day of my life until the Emperor came. I was not surprised when he told me how important they were.’ @BRK#'I'll tell you a thing,' said Horus, walking back to them and resuming his seat. The first thing my father gave me was an astrological text. It was a simple thing, a child's primer. I have it here somewhere. He noted my wonder in the stars, and wished me to leam and understand.’ @BRK#He paused. Loken was always captivated whenever Horus began to refer to the Emperor as 'my father'. It had happened a few times since Loken had been part of the inner circle, and on every occasion it had led to unguarded revelations. @BRK#There were zodiac charts in it. In the text.’ Horus took a sip of his wine and smiled at the memory. 'I learned them all. In one evening. Not just the names, but the patterns, the associations, the structure. All twenty signs. The next day, my father laughed at my appetite for knowledge. He told me the zodiac signs were old and unreliable models, now that the explorator fleets had begun detailed cosmological mapping. He told me that @BRK#the twenty signs in the heavens would one day be matched by twenty sons like me. Each son would embody the character and notion of a particular zodiac group. He asked me which one I liked the best.’ AVhat did you answer?' Loken asked. Horns sat back, and chuckled. 'I told him I liked all the patterns they made. I told him I was glad to finally have names for the sparks of light in the sky. I told him I liked Leos, naturally for his regal fury and Skorpos, for his armour and warlike blade. I told him that Tauromach appealed to my sense of stubbornness, and Arbitos to my sense of fairness and balance.’ The Warmaster shook his head, sadly. 'My father said he admired my choices, but was surprised I had not picked another in particular. He showed me again the horseman with the bow, the galloping warrior. The dreadful Sagittary he said. Most warlike of all. Strong, relentless, unbridled, swift and sure of his mark. In ancient times, he told me, this was the greatest sign of all. The centaur, the horse-man, the hunter-warrior, had been beloved in the old ages. In Anatoly in his own childhood, the centaur had been a revered symbol. A rider upon a horse, so he said, armed with a bow. The most potent martial instrument of its age, conquering all before it. Over time, myth had blended horseman and steed into one form. The perfect synthesis of man and war machine. That is what you must learn to be, he told me. That is what you must master. One day, you must command my armies, my instruments of war, as if they were an extension of your own person. Man and horse, as one, galloping the heavens, submitting to no foe. At Ullanor, he gave me this.’ @BRK#Horus set down his cup, and leaned forward to show them the weathered gold ring he wore on the smallest finger of his left hand. It was so eroded by age that the image was indistinct. Loken thought he could detect hooves, a man's arm, a bent bow. @BRK#'It was made in Persia, the year before the Emperor was born. The dreadful Sagittary. This is you now, he said to @BRK#me. @BRK#My Warmaster, my centaur. Half man, half army embedded in the Legions of the Imperium. Where you turn, so the Legions turn. Where you move, so they move. Where you strike, so they strike. Ride on without me, my son, and the armies will ride with you.’ There was a long silence. 'So you see.’ Horus smiled. 'I am predisposed to like the dreadful Sagittary, now we meet him, face to face.’ @BRK#His smile was infectious. Both Loken and Aximand nodded and laughed. 'Now tell them the real reason.’ a voice said. They turned. Sanguineus stood in an archway at the far end of the chamber, behind a veil of white silk. He had been listening. The Lord of Angels brushed the silk hanging aside, and stepped into the stateroom, the crests of his wings brushing the glossy material. He was dressed in a simple white robe, clasped at the waist with a girdle of gold links. He was eating fruit from a bowl. Loken and Aximand stood up quickly. 'Sit down.’ Sanguinius said. 'My brother's in the mood to open his heart, so you had better hear the truth.’ @BRK#'I don't believe-' Horus began. Sanguinius scooped one @BRK#of the small, red fruits from his bowl and threw it at Horus. @BRK#Tell them the rest.’ he sniggered. @BRK#Horus caught the thrown fruit, gazed at it, then bit @BRK#into it. He wiped the juice off his chin with the back of @BRK#his hand and looked across at Loken and Aximand. @BRK#'Remember the start of my story?' he asked. What the Emperor said to me about the stars? @BRK#Make no mistake, and they will be ours! @BRK#He took another two bites, threw the fruit stone away, and swallowed the flesh before he continued. 'Sanguinius, my dear brother, is right, for Sanguinius has always been my conscience.’ @BRK#Sanguinius shrugged, an odd gesture for a giant with furled wings. @BRK#'Make no mistake' @BRK#Horus continued. Those three words. Make no mistake. I am Warmaster, by the Emperor's decree. I cannot fail him. I cannot make mistakes.’ @BRK#'Sir?' Aximand ventured. @BRK#'Since Ullanor, little one, I have made two. Or been party to two, and that is enough, for the responsibility for all expedition mistakes falls to me in the final count.’ @BRK#What mistakes?' asked Loken. @BRK#'Mistakes. Misunderstandings.’ Horus stroked his hand across his brow. 'Sixty-Three Nineteen. Our first endeavour. My first as Warmaster. How much blood was spilt there, blood from misunderstanding? We misread the signs and paid the price. Poor, dear Sejanus. I miss him still. That whole war, even that nightmare up on the mountains you had to endure, Garviel... a mistake. I could have handled it differendy. Sixty-Three Nineteen could have been brought to compliance without bloodshed.’ @BRK#'No, sir.’ said Loken emphatically. They were too set in their ways, and their ways were set against us. We could not have made them compliant without a war.’ @BRK#Horus shook his head. You are kind, Garviel, but you are mistaken. There were ways. There should have been ways. I should have been able to sway that civilisation without a shot being fired. The Emperor would have done so.’ @BRK#'I don't believe he would.’ Aximand said. @BRK#Then there's Murder.’ Horus continued, ignoring Little Horus's remark. 'Or Spiderland, as the interex has it. What is the way of their name for it again?' @BRK#'Urisarach.’ Sanguinius said, helpfully. Though I mink the word only works with the appropriate harmonic accompaniment.’ @BRK#'Spiderland will suffice, then.’ said Horus. 'What did we waste there? What misunderstandings did we make? The interex left us warnings to stay away, and we ignored them. An embargoed world, an asylum for the creatures they had bested in war, and we walked straight in.’ @BRK#"We @BRK#weren't to know.’ Sanguinius said. @BRK#"We @BRK#should have known!' Horus snapped. @BRK#Therein lies the difference between our philosophy and that of the interex.’ Aximand said. @BRK#"We @BRK#cannot endure the existence of a malign alien race. They subjugate it, but refrain from annihilating it. Instead, they deprive it of space travel and exile it to a prison world.’ @BRK#"We @BRK#annihilate.’ said Horus. They find a means around such drastic measures. Which of us is the most humane?' @BRK#Aximand rose to his feet. 1 find myself with Ezekyle on this. Tolerance is weakness. The interex is admirable, but it is forgiving and generous in its dealings with xenos breeds who deserve no quarter.’ @BRK#'It has brought them to book, and learned to live in sympathy.’ said Horus. 'It has trained the kinebrach to-' @BRK#'And that's the best example I can offer!' Aximand replied. The kinebrach. It embraces them as part of its culture.’ @BRK#1 will not make another rash or premature decision.’ Horus stated flatly. 'I have made too many, and my War-mastery is threatened by my mistakes. I will understand the interex, and learn from it, and parlay with it, and only then will I decide if it has strayed too far. They are a fine people. Perhaps we can learn from them for a change.’ @BRK#The music was hard to get used to. Sometimes it was majesterial and loud, especially when the meturge players struck up, and sometimes it was just a quiet whisper, @BRK#like a buzz, like tinnitus, but it seldom went away. The people of the interex called it the aria, and it was a fundamental part of their communication. They still used language - indeed, their spoken language was an evolved human dialect closer in form to the prime language of Terra than Cthonic - but they had long ago formulated the aria as an accompaniment and enhancement of speech, and as a mode of translation. @BRK#Scrutinised by the iterators during the voyage, the aria proved to be hard to define. Essentially, it was a form of high mathematics, a universal constant that transcended linguistic barriers, but the mathematical structures were expressed through specific harmonic and melodic modes which, to the untrained ear, sounded like music. Strands of complex melody rang in the background of all the interex's vocal transmissions, and when one of their kind spoke face to face, it was usual to have one or more of the meturge players accompany his speech with their instruments. The meturge players were the translators and envoys. @BRK#Tall, like all the people of the interex, they wore long coats of a glossy, green fibre, laced with slender gold piping. The flesh of their ears was distended and splayed, by genetic and surgical enhancement, like the ears of bats or other nocturnal fliers. Comm technology, the equivalent of vox, was laced around the high collars of their coats, and each one carried an instrument strapped across his chest, a device with amplifiers and coiled pipes, and numerous digital keys on which the meturge player's nimble fingers constantly rested. A swan-necked mouthpiece rose from the top of each instrument, enabling the player to blow, hum, or vocalise into the device. @BRK#The first meeting between Imperium and interex had been formal and cautious. Envoys came aboard the @BRK#Vengeful Spirit, @BRK#escorted by meturge players and soldiers. @BRK#The envoys were uniformly handsome and lean, with piercing eyes. Their hair was dressed short, and intricate dermatoglyphics - Loken suspected permanent tattoos - decorated either the left or right-hand sides of their faces. They wore knee-length robes of a soft, pale blue cloth, under which they were dressed in close-fitting clothing woven from the same, glossy fibre that composed the meturge players' coats. @BRK#The soldiers were impressive. Fifty of them, led by officers, had descended from their shuttle. Taller than the envoys, they were clad from crown to toe in metal armour of burnished silver and emerald green with aposematic chevrons of scarlet. The armour was of almost delicate design, and sheathed their bodies tightly; it was in no way as massive or heavy-set as the Astartes' plate. The soldiers - variously gleves or sagit-tars, Loken learned - were almost as tall as the Astartes, but with their far more slender build and more closely fitted armour, they seemed slight compared to the Imperial giants. Abaddon, at the first meeting, muttered that he doubted their fancy armour would stand even a slap. @BRK#Their weapons caused more remarks. Most of the soldiers had swords sheathed across their backs. Some, the gleves, carried long-bladed metal spears with heavy ball counterweights on the base ends. The others, the sagit-tars, carried recurve bows wrought from some dark metal. The sagittars had sheaves of long, flightless darts laced to their right thighs. @BRK#'Bows?' Torgaddon whispered. 'Really? They stun us with the power and scale of their vessels, then come aboard carrying bows?' @BRK#They're probably ceremonial.’ Aximand murmured. @BRK#The soldier officers wore serrated half-discs across the skulls of their helmets. The visors of their close-fitting helms were all alike: the metal modelled to the lines of @BRK#brow and cheekbone and nose, with simple oval eyeslits that were backlit blue. The mouth and chin area of each visor was built out, like a thrusting, pugnacious jaw, containing a communication module. @BRK#Behind the slender soldiers, as a further escort, came heavier forms. Shorter, and far more thick-set, these men were similarly armoured, though in browns and golds. Loken supposed them to be heavy troopers, their bodies gene-bred for bulk and muscle, designed for close combat, but they carried no weapons. There were twenty of them, and they flanked five robotic creatures, slender, silver quadrupeds of intricate and elegant design, made to resemble the finest Terra-stock horses, except that they possessed no heads or necks. @BRK#'Artificials.’ Horas whispered aside to Maloghurst. 'Make sure Master Regulus is observing this via the pict feed. I'll want his notes later.’ @BRK#One of the flagship's embarkation decks had been entirely cleared for the ceremonial meeting. Imperial banners had been hung along the vault, and the whole of First Company assembled in full plate as an honour guard. The Astartes formed two unwavering blocks of white figures, rigid and still, their front rows a glossy black line of Justaerin Terminators. In the aisle between the two formations, Horus stood with the Mournival, Maloghurst and other senior officials like Ing Mae Sing. The Warmaster and his lieutenants wore full armour and cloaks, though Horus's head was bare. @BRK#They watched the heavy interex shuttle move ponderously down the lighted runway of the deck, and settle on polished skids. Then hatch-ramps in its prow opened, the white metal unfolding like giant origami puzzles, and the envoys and their escorts disembarked. In total, with the soldiers and the meturge players, there were over one hundred of them. They came to a halt, with the envoys in a line at the front and the escort @BRK#arranged in perfect symmetry behind. Forty-eight hours of intense intership communication had preceded that cautious moment. Forty-eight hours of delicate diplomacy. @BRK#Horas gave a nod, and the men of First Company chested their weapons and bowed their heads in one, loud, unified motion. Horus himself stepped forward and walked alone down the aisle space, his cloak billowing behind him. @BRK#He came face to face with what seemed to be the senior envoy, made the sign of the aquila, and bowed. @BRK#1 greet you on-' he began. @BRK#The moment he started speaking, the meturge players began sounding their instruments softly. Horus stopped. @BRK#Translation form.’ the envoy said, his own words accompanied by meturge playing. @BRK#'It is disconcerting,' Horus smiled. @BRK#'For purposes of clarity and comprehension.’ the envoy said. @BRK#We appear to understand each other well enough.’ Horus smiled. @BRK#The envoy nodded curtly. Then I will tell the players to stop.’ he said. @BRK#'No.’ said Horus. 'Let us be natural. If this is your way.’ @BRK#Again, the envoy nodded. The exchange continued, surrounded by the oddly melodied playing. @BRK#'I greet you on behalf of the Emperor of Mankind, beloved by all, and in the name of the Imperium of Terra.’ @BRK#'On behalf of the society of the interex, I accept your greetings and return them.’ @BRK#Thank you.’ said Horus. @BRK#'Of the first thing.’ the envoy said. You are from Terra?' @BRK#Yes.’ @BRK#'From old Terra, that was also called Earth?' @BRK#Yes.’ @BRK#This can be verified?' @BRK#'By all means.’ smiled Horns. "You know of Terra?' @BRK#An odd expression, like a pang, crossed the envoy's face, and he glanced round at his colleagues. We are from Terra. Ancestrally. Genetically It was our origin world, eons ago. If you are truly of Terra, then this is a momentous occasion. For the first time in thousands of years, the interex has established contact with its lost cousins.’ @BRK#'It is our purpose in the stars.’ Horns said, 'to find all the lost families of man, cast away so long ago.’ @BRK#The envoy bowed his head. 'I am Diath Shehn, abbro-carius.’ @BRK#'I am Horus, Warmaster.’ @BRK#The music of the meturge players made a slight, but noticeably discordant sound as it expressed 'Warmaster'. Shehn frowned. @BRK#'Warmaster?' he repeated. @BRK#The rank given to me personally by the Emperor of Mankind, so that I may act as his most senior lieutenant.’ @BRK#'It is a robust title. Bellicose. Is your fleet a military undertaking?' @BRK#'It has a military component. Space is too dangerous for us to roam unarmed. But from the look of your fine soldiers, abbrocarius, so does yours.’ @BRK#Shehn pursed his lips. 'You laid assault to Urisarach, with great aggression and vehemence, and in disregard to the advisory beacons we had positioned in the system. It would appear your military component is a considerable one.’ @BRK# ЧУе will discuss this in detail later, abbrocarius. If an apology needs to be made, you will hear it directly from me. First, let me welcome you in peace.’ @BRK#Horus turned, and made a signal. The entire company of Astartes, and the plated officers, locked off their weapons and removed their helms. Human faces, row after row. Openness, not hostility. @BRK#Shehn and the other envoys bowed, and made a signal of their own, a signal supported by a musical sequence. The warriors of the interex removed their visors, displaying clean, hard-eyed faces. @BRK#Except for the squat figures, the heavy troops in brown and gold. When their helmets came off, they revealed faces that weren't human at all. @BRK#They were called the kinebrach. An advanced, mature species, they had been an interstellar culture for over fifteen thousand years. They had already founded a strong, multi-world civilisation in the local region of space before Terra had entered its First Age of Technology, an era when humanity was only just feeling its way beyond the Solar system in sub-light vehicles. @BRK#By the time the interex encountered them, their culture was aging and fading. A territorial war developed after initial contact, and lasted for a century. Despite the kinebrach's superior technology, the humans of the interex were victorious, but, in victory, they did not annihilate the aliens. Rapprochement was achieved, thanks in part to the interex's willingness to develop the aria to facilitate a more profound level of inter-species communication. Faced with options including further warfare and exile, the kinebrach elected to become client citizens of the expanding interex. It suited them to place their tired, flagging destiny in the charge of the vigorous and progressive humans. Culturally bonded as junior partners in society, the kinebrach shared their technological advances by way of exchange. For three thousand years, the interex humans had successfully coexisted with the kinebrach. @BRK#'Conflict with the kinebrach was our first significant alien war.’ Diath Shehn explained. He was seated with the other envoys in the Warmaster's audience chamber. The Mournival was present, and meturge players lined the walls, gently accompanying the talks. 'It taught us a great deal. It taught us about our place in the cosmos, and certain values of compassion, understanding and empathy. The aria developed directly from it, as a tool for use in further dealings with non-human parties. The war made us realise that our very humanity, or at least our trenchant dependance on human traits, such as language, was an obstacle to mature relations with other species.’ @BRK#'No matter how sophisticated the means, abbrocar-ius.’ Abaddon said, 'sometimes communication is not enough. In our experience, most xenos types are wilfully hostile. Communication and bargaining is not an option.’ The first captain, like many present, was uncomfortable. The entire interex party had been permitted to enter the audience chamber, and the kinebrach were attending at the far end. Abaddon kept glancing at them. They were hefty, simian things with eyes so oddly sunken beneath big brow ridges that they were just sparks in shadows. Their flesh was blue-black, and deeply creased, with fringes of russet hair, so fine it was almost like feather-down, surrounding the bases of their heavy, angular craniums. Mouth and nose was one organ, a trifold split at the end of their blunt jaw-snouts, capable of peeling back, wet and pink, to sniff, or opening laterally to reveal a comb of small, sharp teeth like a dolphin's beak. There was a smell to them, a distinctive earthy smell that wasn't exactly unpleasant, except that it was entirely and completely not human. @BRK#This we have found ourselves.’ Shehn agreed, 'though it would seem less frequently than you. Sometimes we have encountered a species that has no wish to @BRK#exchange with us, that approaches us with predatory or invasive intent. Sometimes conflict is the only option. Such was the case with the... What did you say you called them again?' @BRK#'Megarachnid.’ Horns smiled. @BRK#Shehn nodded and smiled. 'I see how that word is formed, from the old roots. The megarachnid were highly advanced, but not sentient in a way we could understand. They existed only to reproduce and develop territory. When we first met them, they infested eight systems along the Shartiel Edge of our provinces, and threatened to invade and choke two of our populated worlds. We went to war, to safeguard our own interests. In the end, we were victorious, but there was still no opportunity for rapprochement or peace terms. We gathered all the megarachnid remaining into captivity, and transported them to Urisarach. We also deprived them of all their interstellar technology, or the means to manufacture the same. Urisarach was created as a reservation for them, where they might exist without posing a threat to ourselves or others. The interdiction beacons were established to warn others away.’ @BRK#'You did not consider exterminating them?' Mal-oghurst asked. @BRK#Shehn shook his head. 'What right do we have to make another species extinct? In most cases, an understanding can be reached. The megarachnid were an extreme example, where exile was the only humane option.’ @BRK#The approach you describe is a fascinating one.’ Horns said quickly, seeing that Abaddon was about to speak again. 'I believe it is time for that apology, abbro-carius. We misunderstood your methods and purpose on Urisarach. We violated your reservation. The Imperium apologises for its transgression.’ @BRK#TWO @BRK#Envoys and delegations @BRK#Xenobia @BRK#Hall of @BRK#Devices @BRK#Abaddon was furious. Once the interex envoys had returned to their vessels, he withdrew with the others of the Mournival and vented his feelings. @BRK#'Six months! Six months warring on Murder! How many great deeds, how many brothers lost? And now he apologises? As if it was an error? A mistake? These xenos-loving bastards even admit themselves the spiders were so dangerous they had to lock them away!' @BRK#'It's a difficult situation.’ Loken said. @BRK#'It's an insult to the honour of our Legion! And to the Angels too!' @BRK#'It takes a wise and strong man to know when to apologise,' remarked Aximand. @BRK#'And only a fool appeases aliens!' Abaddon snarled. "What has this crusade taught us?' @BRK#That we're very good at killing things that disagree with us?' suggested Torgaddon. @BRK#Abaddon glared at him. 'We know how brutal this cosmos is. How cruel. We must fight for our place in it. @BRK#Name one species we have met that would not rejoice to see mankind vanished in a blink.’ @BRK#None of them could answer that. @BRK#'Only a fool appeases aliens.’ Abaddon repeated, 'or appeases those who seek such appeasement.’ @BRK#'Are you calling the Warmaster a fool?' Loken asked. @BRK#Abaddon hesitated. 'No. No, I'm not. Of course. I serve at his will.’ @BRK#'We have one duty.’ Aximand said, 'as the Mournival, we must speak with one mind when we advise him.’ @BRK#Torgaddon nodded. @BRK#'No.’ said Loken. That's not why he values us. We must tell him what we think, each one of us, even if we disagree. And let him decide. That is our duty.’ @BRK#Meetings with the various interex envoys continued over a period of days. Sometimes the interex ships sent a mission to the @BRK#Vengeful Spirit, @BRK#sometimes an Imperial embassy crossed to their command ship and was entertained in glittering chambers of silver and glass where the aria filled the air. @BRK#The envoys were hard to read. Their behaviour often seemed superior or condescending, as if they regarded the Imperials as crude and unsophisticated. But still, clearly, they were fascinated. The legends of old Terra and the human bloodline had long been a central tenet of their myths and histories. However disappointing the reality, they could not bear to break off contact with their treasured ancestral past. @BRK#Eventually, a summit was proposed, whereby the War-master and his entourage would travel to the nearest interex outpost world, and conduct more detailed negotiations with higher representatives than the envoys. @BRK#The Warmaster took advice from all quarters, though Loken was sure he had already made up his mind. Some, like Abaddon, counselled that links should be @BRK#broken, and the interex held at abeyance until sufficient forces could be assembled to annex their territories. There were other matters at hand that urgently demanded the Warmaster's attention, matters that had been postponed for too long while he indulged in the six-month spider-war on Murder. Petitions and salutations were being received on a daily basis. Five primarchs had requested his personal audience on matters of general crusade strategy or for councils of war. One, the Lion, had never made such an approach before, and it was a sign of a welcome thawing in relations, one that Horus could not afford to overlook. Thirty-six expedition fleets had sent signals asking for advice, tactical determination or outright martial assistance. Matters of state also mounted. There was now a vast body of bureaucractic material relayed from the Council of Terra that required the Warmaster's direct attention. He had been putting it off for too long, blaming the demands of the crusade. @BRK#Accompanying the Warmaster on most of his daily duties, Loken began to see plainly what a burden the Emperor had placed on Horus's broad shoulders. He was expected to be all things: a commander of armies, a mastermind of compliance, a judge, a decider, a tactician, and the most delicate of diplomats. @BRK#During the six-month war, more ships had arrived at high anchor above Murder, gathering around the flagship like supplicants. The rest of the 63rd Expedition had translated, under Varvarus's charge, Sixty-Three Nineteen having at last been left in the lonely hands of poor Rakris. Fourteen vessels of the 88th Expedition had also appeared, under the command of Trajus Boniface of the Alpha Legion. Boniface claimed they had come in response to the 140th's plight, and hoped to support the war action on Murder, but it rapidly emerged he hoped to use the opportunity to convince @BRK#Horns to lend the 63rd's strengths to a proposed offensive into ork-held territories in the Kayvas Belt. This was a scheme his primarch, Alpharius, had long cherished and, like the Lion's advances, was a sign that Alpharius sought the approval and comradeship of the new War-master. @BRK#Horns studied the plans in private. The Kayvas Belt offensive was a projected five-year operation, and required ten times the manpower the Warmaster could currently muster. @BRK#'Alpharius is dreaming.’ he muttered, showing the scheme to Loken and Torgaddon. 'I cannot commit myself to this.' @BRK#One of Varvaras's ships had brought with it a delegation of eaxector tributi administrators from Terra. This was perhaps the most galling of all the voices baying for the Warmaster's attention. On the instruction of Mal-cador the Sigillite, and counter-signed by the Council of Terra, the eaxectors had been sent throughout the spreading territories of the Imperium, in a programme of general dispersal that made the mass deployment of the remembrancers look like a modest operation. @BRK#The delegation was led by a high administrix called Aenid Rathbone. She was a tall, slender, handsome woman with red hair and pale, high-boned features, and her manner was exacting. The Council of Terra had decreed that all expedition and crusade forces, all pri-marchs, all commanders, and all governors of compliant world-systems should begin raising and collecting taxes from their subject planets in order to bolster the increasing fiscal demands of the expanding Imperium. All she insisted on talking about was the collection of tithes. @BRK#'One world cannot support and maintain such a gigantic undertaking singlehanded.’ she explained to the Warmaster in slightly over-shrill tones. Terra cannot @BRK#shoulder this burden alone. We are masters of a thousand worlds now, a thousand thousand. The Imperium must begin to support itself.' @BRK#'Many worlds are barely in compliance, lady,' Horus said gently. 'They are recovering from the damage of war, rebuilding, reforming. Taxation is a blight they do not need.' @BRK#The Emperor has insisted this be so.' @BRK#'Has he?' @BRK#'Malcador the Sigillite, beloved by all, has impressed this upon me and all of my rank. Tribute must be collected, and mechanisms established so that such tribute is routinely and automatically gathered.' @BRK#The world governors we have put in place will find this too thankless a task,' Maloghurst said. They are still legitimising their rule and authority. This is premature.' @BRK#The Emperor has insisted this be so.’ she repeated. @BRK#That's the Emperor, beloved by all?' Loken asked. His comment made Horus smile broadly. Rathbone sniffed. 'I'm not sure what you're implying, captain.’ she said. This is my duty, and this is what I must do.’ @BRK#When she had retired from the room with her staff, Horus sat back, alone amongst his inner circle. 'I have often thought.’ he remarked, 'that it might be the eldar who unseat us. Though fading, they are the most ingenious creatures, and if any could over-master mankind and break our Imperium apart, it would likely be them. At other times, I have fancied that it would be the green-skins. No end of numbers and no end of brute strength, but now, friends, I am certain it will be our own tax collectors who will do us in.’ @BRK#There was general laughter. Loken thought of the poem in his pocket. Most of Karkasy's output he handed on to Sindermann for appraisal, but at their last meeting, Karkasy had introduced 'something of the doggerel'. Loken had read it. It had been a scurrilous @BRK#and mordant stanza about tax collectors that even Loken could appreciate. He thought about bringing it out for general amusement, but Horus's face had darkened. @BRK#'I only half joke.’ Horus said. Through the eaxectors, the Council places a burden on the fledgling worlds that is so great it might break us. It is too soon, too comprehensive, too stringent. Worlds will revolt. Uprisings will occur. Tell a conquered man he has a new master, and he'll shrug. Tell him his new master wants a fifth of his annual income, and he'll go and find his pitchfork. Aenid Rathbone, and administrators like her, will be the undoing of all we have achieved.’ @BRK#More laughter echoed round the room. @BRK#'But it is the Emperor's will.’ Torgaddon remarked. @BRK#Horus shook his head. 'It is not, for all she says. I know him as a son knows his father. He would not agree to this. Not now, not this early. He must be too bound up in his work to know of it. The Council is making decisions in his absence. The Emperor understands how fragile things are. Throne, this is what happens when an empire forged by warriors devolves executive power to civilians and clerics.’ @BRK#They all looked at him. @BRK#'I'm serious.’ he said. This could trigger civil war in certain regions. At the very least, it could undermine the continued work of our expeditions. The eaxectors need to be... sidelined for the moment. They should be given terrific weights of material to pore through to determine precise tribute levels, world by world, and bombarded with copious additional intelligence concerning each world's status.’ @BRK#'It won't slow them down forever, lord.’ Maloghurst said. The Administration of Terra has already determined systems and measures by which tribute should be calculated, pro rata, world by world.’ @BRK#'Do your best, Mai.’ Horus said. 'Delay that woman at least. Give me breathing space.’ @BRK#'I'll get to it.’ Maloghurst said. He rose and limped from the chamber. @BRK#Horus turned to the assembled circle and sighed. 'So...' he said. The Lion calls for me. Alpharius too.’ @BRK#'And other brothers and numerous expeditions.’ Sanguinis remarked. @BRK#'And it seems my wisest option is to return to Terra and confront the Council on the issue of taxation.’ @BRK#Sanguinius sniggered. @BRK#'I was not wrought to do that.’ Horus said. @BRK#Then we should consider the interex, lord.’ said Erebus. @BRK#Erebus, of the Word Bearers Legion, the XVII, had joined them a fortnight earlier as part of the contingent brought by Varvaras. In his stone-grey Mark IV plate, inscribed with bas-relief legacies of his deeds, Erebus was a sombre, serious figure. His rank in the XVII was first chaplain, roughly equivalent to that of Abaddon or Eidolon. He was a senior commander of that Legion, close to Kor Phaeron and the primarch, Lorgar, himself. His quiet manner and soft, composed voice commanded instant respect from all who met him, but the Luna Wolves had embraced him anyway. The Wolves had historically enjoyed a relationship with the Bearers as close as the one they had formed with the Emperor's Children. It was no coincidence that Horus counted Lorgar amongst his most intimate brothers, alongside Fulgrim and Sanguinius. @BRK#Erebus, who time had fashioned as much into a statesman as a warrior, both of which duties he performed with superlative skill, had come to find the Warmaster at the behest of his Legion. Evidently, he had a favour to crave, a request to make. One did not send Erebus except to broker terms. @BRK#However, on his arrival, Erebus had understood immediately the pressure laid at Horas's door, the countless voices screaming for attention. He had shelved his reason for coming, wishing to add nothing to the Warmaster's already immense burden, and had instead acted as a solid counsel and advisor with no agenda of his own. @BRK#For this, the Mournival had admired him greatly, and welcomed him, like Raldorus, into the circle. Abaddon and Aximand had served alongside Erebus in numerous theatres. Torgaddon knew him of old. All three spoke in nothing but the highest terms of First Chaplain Erebus. @BRK#Loken had needed little convincing. From the outset, Erebus had made a particular effort to establish good terms with Loken. Erebus's record and heritage were such that he seemed to Loken to cany die weight of a primarch with him. He was, after all, Lorgar's chosen mouthpiece. @BRK#Erebus had dined with them, counselled with them, sat easy after hours and drunk with them, and, on occasions, had entered the practice cages and sparred with them. In one afternoon, he had bested Torgaddon and Aximand in quick bouts, then tallied long with Saul Tarvitz before dumping him on the mat. Tarvitz and his comrade Lucius had been brought along at Torgaddon's invitation. @BRK#Loken had wanted to test his hand against Erebus, but Lucius had insisted he was next. The Mournival had grown to like Tarvitz, their impression of him favourably influenced by Torgaddon's good opinions, but Lucius remained a separate entity, too much like Lord Eidolon for them to warm to him. He always appeared plaintive and demanding, like a spoilt child. 'You go, then.’ Loken had waved, 'if it matters so much.’ It was clear that Lucius strained to restore the honour of his Legion, an honour lost, as he saw it, the moment Erebus had dropped Tarvitz with a skillful slam of his sword. @BRK#Drawing his blade, Lucius had entered the practice cage facing Erebus. The iron hemispheres closed around them. Lucius took up a straddled stance, his broadsword held high and close. Erebus kept his own blade extended low. They circled. Both Astartes were stripped to die waist, the musculature of their upper bodies rippling. This was play, but a wrong move could maim. Or kill. @BRK#The bout lasted sixteen minutes. That in itself would have made it one of the longest sparring sessions any of diem had ever known. What made it more remarkable was die fact that in that time, mere was no pause, no hesitation, no cessation. Erebus and Lucius flew at one another, and rang blows off one another's blades at a rate of three or four a second. It was relentless, extraordinary, a dizzying blur of dancing bodies and gleaming swords that rang on and on like a dream. @BRK#Abaddon, Tarvitz, Torgaddon, Loken and Aximand closed around the cage in fascination, beginning to clap and yell in thorough approval of the amazing skill on display. @BRK#'He'll kill him!' Tarvitz gasped. 'At tiiat speed, unprotected. He'll kill him!' @BRK#'Who will?' asked Loken. @BRK#'I don't know, Garvi. Either one!' Tarvitz exclaimed. @BRK#Too much, too much!' Aximand laughed. @BRK#'Loken fights the winner.’ Torgaddon cried. @BRK#'I don't think so!' Loken rejoined. 'I've seen winner and loser!' @BRK#Still they duelled on. Erebus's style was defensive, low, repeating and changing each parry like a mechanism. Lucius's style was full of attack, furious, brilliant, dextrous. The play of them was hard to follow. @BRK#'If you think I'm taking on eimer of them after this.’ Loken began. @BRK#'What? Can't you do it?' Torgaddon mocked. @BRK#'No.' @BRK#'You go in next.’ chuckled Abaddon, clapping his hands. We'll give you a bolter to even it up.' @BRK#'How very humorous, Ezekyle.’ @BRK#At the fifty-ninth second of the sixteenth minute, according to the practice cage chron, Lucius scored his winning blow. He hooked his broadsword under Ere-bus's guard and wrenched the Word Bearer's blade out of his grip. Erebus fell back against the bars of the practice cage, and found Lucius's blade edge at his throat. @BRK#'Whoa! Whoa now, Lucius!' Aximand cried, triggering the cage open. @BRK#'Sony.’ said Lucius, not sorry at all. He withdrew his broadsword and saluted Erebus, sweat beading his bare shoulders @BRK#A good match. Thank you, sir.' @BRK#'My thanks to you,' Erebus smiled, breathing hard. He bent to pick up his blade. 'Your skill with a sword is second to none, Captain Lucius.’ @BRK#'Out you come, Erebus.’ Torgaddon called. 'It's Garvi's turn.’ @BRK#'Oh no.’ Loken said. @BRK#You're the best of us with a blade.’ Little Horus insisted. 'Show him how the Luna Wolves do it.’ @BRK#'Skill with a blade isn't everything.’ Loken protested. @BRK#'Just get in there and stop shaming us.’ Aximand hissed. He looked over at Lucius, who was wiping his torso down with a cloth. 'You ready for another, Lucius?' @BRK#'Bring it on.’ @BRK#'He's mad.’ Loken whispered. @BRK#'Legion honour.’ Abaddon muttered back, pushing Loken forward. @BRK#That's right.’ crowed Lucius. Anyway you want me. Show me how a Luna Wolf fights, Loken. Show me how you win.’ @BRK#'It's not just about the blade.’ Loken said. @BRK#'However you want it.’ Lucius snorted. @BRK#Erebus stood up from the corner of the platform and tossed his blade to Loken. 'It sounds like it's your turn, Garviel.’ he said. @BRK#Loken caught the sword, and tested it through the air, back and forth. He stepped up into the cage and nodded. The hemispheres of bars closed around him and Lucius. @BRK#Lucius spat and shook out his shoulders. He turned his sword and began to dance around Loken. @BRK#'I'm no swordsman.’ Loken said. @BRK#Then this will be over quickly.’ @BRK#'If we spar, it won't be just about the blade.’ @BRK#'Whatever, whatever.’ Lucius called, jumping back and forth. 'Just get on and fight me.’ @BRK#Loken sighed. 'I've been watching you, of course, the attacking strokes. I can read you.’ @BRK#'You wish.’ @BRK#'I can read you. Come for me.’ @BRK#Lucius lunged at Loken. Loken side-stepped, blade down, and punched Lucius in the face. Lucius fell on his back, hard. @BRK#Loken dropped Erebus's sword onto the mat. 'I think I made my point. That's how a Luna Wolf fights. Understand your foe and do whatever is necessary to bring him down. Sorry, Lucius.’ @BRK#Spitting blood, Lucius's response was incoherent. @BRK#'I said we should consider the interex, sir.’ Erebus pressed. @BRK#4Ve should.’ Horus replied, 'and my mind is made up. All these voices calling for my attention, pulling me this way and that. They can't disguise the fact that the interex is a significant new culture, occupying a significant region of space. They're human. We can't ignore @BRK#them. We can't deny their existence. We must deal with them directly. Either they are friends, potential allies, or they are enemies. We cannot turn our attention elsewhere and expect them to stay put. If they are enemies, if they are against us, then they could pose a threat as great as the greenskins. I will go to the summit and meet their leaders.’ @BRK#Xenobia was a provincial capital on the marches of interex territory. The envoys had been guarded in revelations of the precise size and extent of the interex, but their cultural holdings evidently occupied in excess of thirty systems, with the heartworlds some forty weeks from the advancing edge of Imperial influence. Xenobia, a gateway world and a sentinel station on the edge of interex space, was chosen as the site for the summit. @BRK#It was a place of considerable wonder. Escorted from mass anchorage points in the orbit of the principal satellite, the Warmaster and his representatives were conducted to Xenobia Principis, a wealthy, regal city on the shores of a wide, ammonia sea. The city was set into the slopes of a wide bay, so that it shelved down the ramparts of the hills to sea-level. The continental region behind it was sheathed in verdant rainforest, and this lush growth spilled down through the city too, so that the city structures - towers of pale grey stone and turrets of brass and silver - rose up out of the thick canopy like hilltop peaks. The vegetation was predominately dark green, indeed so dark in colour it seemed almost black in the frail, yellow daylight. The city was structured in descending tiers under the trees, where arched stone viaducts and curved street galleries stepped down to the shoreline in the quiet, mottled shadow of the greenery. Where the grey towers and ornate campaniles rose above the forest, they were often capped in polished @BRK#metal, and adorned with high masts from which flags and standards hung in the warm air. @BRK#It was not a fortress city. There was little evidence of defences either on the ground or in local orbit. Horas was in no doubt that the place could protect itself if necessary. The interex did not wear its martial power as obviously as the Imperium, but its technology was not to be underestimated. @BRK#The Imperial party was over five hundred strong and included Astartes officers, escort troops and iterators, as well as a selection of remembrancers. Horus had authorised the latter's inclusion. This was a fact-finding mission, and the Warmaster thought the eager, inquisitive remembrancers might gather a great deal of supplementary material that would prove valuable. Loken believed that the Warmaster was also making an effort to establish a rather different impression than before. The envoys of the interex had seemed so disdainful of the expedition's military bias. Horas came to them now, surrounded as much by teachers, poets and artists as he was warriors. @BRK#They were provided with excellent accommodation in the western part of the city, in a quarter known as the @BRK#Extranus, @BRK#where, they were politely informed, all 'strangers and visitors' were reserved and hosted. Xenobia Principis was a place designed for trade delegations and diplomatic meetings, with the @BRK#Extranus @BRK#set aside to keep guests reserved in one place. They were handsomely provided with meturge players, household servants, and court officers to see to their every need and answer any questions. @BRK#Under the guided escort of abbrocarii, the Imperials were allowed beyond the shaded compound of the @BRK#Extranus @BRK#to visit the city. In small groups, they were shown the wonders of the place: halls of trade and industry, museums of art and music, archives and @BRK#libraries. In the green twilight of the galleried streets, under the hissing canopy of the trees, they were guided along fine avenues, through splendid squares, and up and down endless flights of steps. The city was home to buildings of exquisite design, and it was clear the interex possessed great skill in both the old crafts of stonemasonry and metalwork, and the newer crafts of technology. Pavements abounded with gorgeous statuary and tranquil water fountains, but also with modernist public sculpture of light and sonics. Ancient lancet window slits were equipped with glass panels reactive to light and heat. Doors opened and closed via automatic body sensors. Interior light levels could be adjusted by a wave of the hand. Everywhere, the soft melody of the aria played. @BRK#The Imperium possessed many cities that were larger and grander and more cyclopean. The super-hives of Terra and the silver spires of Prospero both were stupendous monuments to cultural advancement that quite diminished Xenobia Principis. But the interex city was every bit as refined and sophisticated as any conurbation in Imperial space, and it was merely a border settlement. @BRK#On the day of their arrival, the Imperials were welcomed by a great parade, which culminated in their presentation to the senior royal officer of Xenobia, a 'general commander' named Jephta Naud. There were high-ranking civil officers in the interex party too, but they had decided to allow a military leader to oversee the summit. Just as Horus had diluted the martial composition of his embassy to impress the interex, so it had brought its military powers to the fore. @BRK#The parade was complex and colourful. Meturge players marched in great numbers, dressed in rich formal robes, and performed skirling anthems that were as much non-verbal messages of welcome as they were @BRK#mood-setting music. Gleves and sagittars strode in long, uniform columns, their armour polished brightly and dressed with garlands of ribbons and leaves. Behind the human soldiery came the kinebrach auxiliaries, armoured and lumbering, and glittering formations of robotic cavalry. The cavalry was made up of hundreds of the headless artificial horses that had featured in the envoys' honour guard. They were headless no longer. Sagittars and gleves had mounted the quadruped frames, seating themselves where the base of the neck would have been. Warrior armour and robot technology had fused smoothly, locking the 'riders' in place, their legs folded into the breastbones of the steeds. They were centaurs now, man and device linked as one, myths given technological reality. @BRK#The citizenry of Xenobia Principis came out in force for the parade, and cheered and sang, and strewed the route of the procession with petals and strips of ribbon. @BRK#The parade's destination was a building called the Hall of Devices, a place which apparently had some military significance to the interex. Old, and of considerable size, the hall resembled a museum. Built into a steep section of the bay slopes, the hall enclosed many chambers that were more than two or three storeys high. Plunging display vaults, some of great size, showed off assemblies of weapons, from forests of ancient swords and halberds to modern motorised cannons, all suffused in the pale blue glow of the energy fields that secured them. @BRK#The hall is both a museum of weapons and war devices, and an armoury.’ Jephta Naud explained as he greeted them. Naud was a tall, noble creature with complicated dermatoglyphics on the right side of his face. His eyes were the colour of soft gold, and he wore silver armour and a cloak of scalloped red metal links that made a sound like distant chimes when he moved. An @BRK#armoured officer walked at his side, carrying Naud's crested warhelm. @BRK#Though the Astartes had come armoured, the War-master had chosen to wear robes and furs rather than his battle-plate. He showed great and courteous interest as Naud led them through the deep vaults, commenting on certain devices, remarking with delight when archaic weapons revealed a shared ancestry. @BRK#They're trying to impress us.’ Aximand murmured to his brothers. A museum of weapons? They're as good as telling us they are so advanced... so beyond war... they've been able to retire it as a curiosity. They're mocking us.’ @BRK#'No one mocks me.’ Abaddon granted. @BRK#They were entering a chamber where, in the chilly blue field light, the artifacts were a great deal stranger than before. @BRK#'We hold the weapons of the kinebrach here.’ Naud said, to meturge accompaniment. 'Indeed, we preserve here, in careful stasis, examples of the weapons used by many of the alien species we have encountered. The kinebrach have, as a sign of service to us, foresworn the bearing of arms, unless under such circumstances as we grant them said use in time of war. Kinebrach technology is highly advanced, and many of their weapons are deemed too lethal to be left beyond securement.’ @BRK#Naud introduced a hulking, robed kinebrach called Asherot, who held the rank of Keeper of Devices, and was the trusted curator of the hall. Asherot spoke the human tongue in a lisping manner, and for the first time, the Imperials were grateful for the meturge accompaniment. The baffling cadences of Asherot's speech were rendered crystal clear by the aria. @BRK#Most of the kinebrach weapons on display didn't resemble weapons at all. Boxes, odd trinkets, rings, hoops. Naud clearly expected the Imperials to ask questions @BRK#about the devices, and betray their warmongering appetites, but Horus and his officers affected disinterest. In truth, they were uneasy in the society of the indentured alien. @BRK#Only Sindermann expressed curiosity. A very few of the kinebrach weapons looked like weapons: long daggers and swords of exotic design. @BRK#'Surely, general commander, a blade is just a blade?' Sindermann asked politely. These daggers here, for instance. How are these weapons "too lethal to be left beyond securement"?' @BRK#They are tailored weapons.’ Naud replied. 'Blades of sentient metal, crafted by the kinebrach metallurgists, a technique now utterly forbidden. We call them anathames. When such a blade is selected for use against a specific target, it becomes that target's nemesis, utterly inimical to the person or being chosen.’ @BRK#'How?' Sindermann pressed. @BRK#Naud smiled. The kinebrach have never been able to explain it to us. It is a factor of the forging process that defies technical evaluation.’ @BRK#'Like a curse?' prompted Sindermann. An enchantment?' @BRK#The aria generated by the meturge players around them hiccupped slightly over those words. To Sinder-mann's surprise, Naud replied, 'I suppose that is how you could describe it, iterator.’ @BRK#The tour moved on. Sindermann drew close to Loken, and whispered, 'I was joking, Garviel, about the curse, I mean, but he took me seriously. They are enjoying treating us as unsophisticated cousins, but I wonder if their superiority is misplaced. Do we detect a hint of pagan superstition?' @BRK#THREE @BRK#Impasse @BRK#Illumination @BRK#The wolf and the moon @BRK#They all rose as the Warmaster entered the room. It was a large chamber in the Extranus compound where the Imperials met for their regular briefings. Large shield-glass windows overlooked the tumbling terraces of the forested city and the glittering ocean beyond. @BRK#Horus waited silently while six officers and servitors from the Master of Vox's company finished their routine sweep for spyware, and only spoke once they had activated the portable obscurement device in the corner of the room. The distant melodies of the aria were immediately blanked out. @BRK#Two weeks without solid agreement.’ Horus said, 'nor even a mutually acceptable scheme of how to continue. They regard us with a mixture of curiosity and caution, and hold us at arm's length. Any commentary?' @BRK#'We've exhausted all possibilities, lord.’ Maloghurst said, 'to the extent that I fear we are wasting our time. They will admit to nothing but a willingness to open and pursue ambassadorial links, with a view to trade @BRK#and some cultural exchange. They will not be led on the subject of alliance.’ @BRK#'Or compliance.’ Abaddon remarked quietly. @BRK#'An attempt to enforce our will here.’ said Horus, 'would only confirm their worst opinions of us. We cannot force them into compliance.’ @BRK#'We can.’ Abaddon said. @BRK#Then I'm saying we shouldn't.’ Horus replied. @BRK#'Since when have we worried about hurting people's feelings, lord?' Abaddon asked. Whatever our differences, these are humans. It is their duty and their destiny to join with us and stand with us, for the primary glory of Terra. If they will not...' @BRK#He let the words hang. Horus frowned. 'Someone else?' @BRK#- 'It seems certain that the interex has no wish to join us in our work.’ said Raldoron. They will not commit to a war, nor do they share our goals and ideals. They are content with pursuing their own destiny.’ @BRK#Sanguineus said nothing. He allowed his Chapter Master to weigh in with the opinion of the Blood Angels, but kept his own considerable influence for Horus's ears alone. @BRK#'Maybe they fear we will try to conquer them.’ Loken said. @BRK#'Maybe they're right.’ said Abaddon. They are deviant in their ways. Too deviant for us to embrace them without forcing change.’ @BRK#*We will not have war here.’ Horus said. We cannot afford it. We cannot afford to open up a conflict on this front. Not at this time. Not on the vast scale subduing the interex would demand. If they even need subduing.’ @BRK#'Ezekyle has a valid point.’ said Erebus quietly. The interex, for good reasons, I'm sure, have built a society that is too greatly at variance to the model of human culture that the Emperor has proclaimed. Unless they @BRK#show a willingness to adapt, they must by necessity be regarded as enemies to our cause.’ @BRK#'Perhaps the Emperor's model is too stringent.’ the Warmaster said flady. @BRK#There was a pause. Several of those present glanced at each other in quiet unease. @BRK#'Oh, come on!' Sanguinius exclaimed, breaking the silence. 'I see those looks. Are you honestly nursing concerns that our Warmaster is contemplating defiance of the Emperor? His father?' He laughed aloud at the very notion, and forced a few smiles to surface. @BRK#Abaddon was not smiling. The Emperor, beloved of all.’ he began, 'enfranchised us to do his bidding and make known space safe for human habitation. His edicts are unequivocal. We must suffer not the alien, nor the uncontrolled psyker, safeguard against the darkness of the warp, and unify the dislocated pockets of mankind. That is our charge. Anything else is sacrilege against his wishes.’ @BRK#And one of his wishes.’ said Horus, 'was that I should be Warmaster, his sole regent, and strive to make his dreams reality. The crusade was born out of the Age of Strife, Ezekyle. Born out of war. Our ruthless approach of conquest and cleansing was formulated in a time when every alien form we met was hostile, every fragment of humanity that was not with us was profoundly opposed to us. War was the only answer. There was no room for subtlety, but two centuries have passed, and different problems face us. The bulk of war is over. That is why the Emperor returned to Terra and left us to finish the work. Ezekyle, the people of the interex are clearly not monsters, nor resolute foes. I believe that if the Emperor were with us today, he would immediately embrace the need for adaptation. He would not want us to wantonly destroy that which there is no good reason @BRK#to destroy. It is precisely to make such choices that he has placed his trust in me.' @BRK#He looked round at them all. 'He trusts me to make the decisions he would make. He trusts me to make no mistakes. I must be allowed the freedom to interpret policy on his behalf. I will not be forced into violence simply to satisfy some slavish expectation.’ @BRK#A chill evening had covered the tiers of the city, and under layers of foliage stirred by the ocean's breath, the walkways and pavements were lit with frosty white lamps. @BRK#Loken's duty for that part of the night was as perimeter bodyguard. The commander was dining with Jephta Naud and other worthies at the general commander's palatial house. Horas had confided to the Mournival that he hoped to use the occasion to informally press Naud for some more substantial commitments, including the possibility that the interex might, at least in principle for now, recognise the Emperor as the true human authority. Such a suggestion had not yet been risked in formal talks, for the iterators had predicted it would be rejected out of hand. The Warmaster wanted to test the general commander's feelings on the subject in an atmosphere where any offence could be smoothed over as conjecture. Loken didn't much like the idea, but trusted his commander to couch it delicately. It was an uneasy time, well into the third week of their increasingly fruitless visit. Two days earlier, Pri-march Sanguinius had finally taken his leave and returned to Imperial territory with the Blood Angels contingents. @BRK#Horns clearly hated to see him go, but it was a prudent move, and one Sanguinius had chosen to make simply to buy his brother more time with the interex. Sanguinius was returning to deal direcdy with some of @BRK#the matters most urgently requiring the Warmaster's attention, and thus mollify the many voices pleading for his immediate re-call. @BRK#Naud's house was a conspicuously vast structure near the centre of the city. Six storeys high, it overhung one of the grander civic tiers and was formed from a great black-iron frame infilled with mosaics of varnished wood and coloured glass. The interex did not welcome armed foreigners abroad in their city, but a small detail of bodyguards was permitted for so august a personage as the Warmaster. Most of the substantial Imperial contingent was sequestered in the @BRK#Extranus @BRK#compound for the night. Torgaddon, and ten hand-picked men from his company, were inside the dining hall, acting as close guard, while Loken, with ten men of his own, roamed the environs of the house. @BRK#Loken had chosen Tenth Company's Sixth Squad, Walkure Tactical Squad, to stand duty with him. Through its veteran leader, Brother-sergeant Kairus, he'd spread the men out around the entry areas of the hall, and formulated a simple period of patrol. @BRK#The house was quiet, the city too. There was the sound of the soft ocean breeze, the hissing of the overgrowth, the splash and bell-tinkle of ornamental fountains, and the background murmur of the aria. Loken strolled from chamber to chamber, from shadow to light. Most of the house's public spaces were lit from sources within the walls, so they played matrices of shade and colour across the interior, cast by the inset wall panels of rich wood and coloured gem-glass. Occasionally, he encountered one of Walkure on a patrol loop, and exchanged a nod and a few quiet words. Less frequendy, he saw scurrying servants running courses to and from the closed dining hall, or crossed the path of Naud's own sentries, mosdy armoured gleves, who said nothing, but saluted to acknowledge him. @BRK#Naud's house was a treasure trove of art, some of it mystifyingly alien to Loken's comprehension. The art was elegantly displayed in lit alcoves and on free-standing plinths with their own shimmering field protection. He understood some of it. Portraits and busts, paintings and light sculptures, pictures of interex nobles and their families, studies of animals or wildflowers, mountain scenes, elaborate and ingenious models of unnamed worlds opened in mechanical cross-section like the layers of an onion. @BRK#In one lower hallway in the eastern wing of the house, Loken came upon an artwork that especially arrested him. It was a book, an old book, large, rumpled, illuminated, and held within its own box field. The lurid woodcut illuminations caught his eye first, the images of devils and spectres, angels and cherubs. Then he saw it was written in the old text of Terra, the language and form that had survived from prehistory to @BRK#The Chronicles of Ursh @BRK#that lay, still unfinished, in his arming chamber. He peered at it. A wave of his hand across the field's static charge turned the pages. He turned them right back to the front and read the tide page in its bold woodblock. @BRK#A Marvelous Historie of Eevil; Being a warninge to Man Kind on the Abuses ofSorcerie and the Seduction of the Daemon. @BRK#That has taken your eye, has it?' @BRK#Loken rose and turned. A royal officer of the interex stood nearby, watching him. Loken knew the man, one of Naud's subordinate commanders, by the name of Mithras Tull. What he didn't know was how Tull had managed to come up on him wifhout Loken noticing. @BRK#'It is a curious thing, commander.’ he said. @BRK#Tull nodded and smiled. A gleve, his weighted spear was leant against a pillar behind him, and he had removed his visor to reveal his pleasant, honest face. A likeness.’ he said. @BRK#A what?' @BRK#'Forgive me, that is the word we have come to use to refer to things that are old enough to display our common heritage. A likeness. That book means as much to you as it does to us, I'm sure.' @BRK#'It is curious, certainly.’ Loken admitted. He unclasped his helm and removed it, out of politeness. 'Is there a problem, commander?' @BRK#Tull made a dismissive gesture. 'No, not at all. My duties are akin to yours tonight, captain. Security. I'm in charge of the house patrols.’ @BRK#Loken nodded. He gestured back at the ancient book on display. 'So tell me about this piece. If you've the time?' @BRK#'It's a quiet night.’ Tull smiled again. He came forward, and brushed the field with his metal-sleeved fingers to flip the pages. 'My lord Jephta adores this book. It was composed during the early years of our history, before the interex was properly founded, during our outwards expansion from Terra. Very few copies remain. A treatise against the practice of sorcery.’ @BRK#'Naud adores it?' Loken asked. @BRK#'As a... what was your word again? A curiosity?' There was something strange about Tull's voice, and Loken finally realised what it was. This was die first conversation he'd had with a representative of die interex without meturge players producing the aria in the background. 'It's such a woe-begotten, dark age piece.’ Tull continued. 'So doomy and apocalyptic. Imagine, captain... men of Terra, voyaging out into the stars, equipped with great and wonderful technologies, and fearing the dark so much they have to compose treatises on daemons.’ @BRK#'Daemons?' @BRK#'Indeed. This warns against witches, gross practices, familiars, and the arts by which a man might transform into a daemon and prey upon his own kind.’ @BRK#Some became daemons and turned upon their own. @BRK#'So... you regard it as a joke? An odd throwback to unenlightened days?' @BRK#Tull shrugged. 'Not a joke, captain. Just an old-fashioned, alarmist approach. The interex is a mature society. We understand the threat of Kaos well enough, and set it in its place.' @BRK#'Chaos?' @BRK#Tull frowned. 'Yes, captain. @BRK#Kaos. @BRK#You say the word like you've never heard it before.’ @BRK#'I know the word. You say it like it has a specific connotation.’ @BRK#'Well, of course it has.’ Tull said. 'No star-faring race in the cosmos can operate without understanding the nature of Kaos. We thank the eldar for teaching us the rudiments of it, but we would have recognised it soon enough without their help. Surely, one can't use the Immaterium for any length of time without coming to terms with Kaos as a...' his voice trailed off. 'Great and holy heavens! You don't know, do you?' @BRK#'Don't know what?' Loken snapped. @BRK#Tull began to laugh, but it wasn't mocking. 'All this time, we've been pussy-footing around you and your great Warmaster, fearing the worst. @BRK#Loken took a step forward. 'Commander.’ he said, 'I will own up to ignorance and embrace illumination, but I will not be laughed at.’ @BRK#'Forgive me.’ @BRK#Tell me why I should. Illuminate me.’ Tull stopped laughing and stared into Loken's face. His blue eyes were terribly cold and hard. 'Kaos is the damnation of all mankind, Loken. Kaos will outlive us and dance on our ashes. All we can do, all we can strive for, is to recognise its menace and keep it at bay, for as long as we persist.’ 'Not enough.’ said Loken. @BRK#Tull shook his head sadly. We were so wrong.’ he said. @BRK#'About what?' @BRK#'About you. About the Imperium. I must go to Naud at once and explain this to him. If only the substance of this had come out earlier...' @BRK#'Explain it to me first. Now. Here.’ @BRK#Tull gazed at Loken for a long, silent moment, as if judging his options. Finally, he shrugged and said, 'Kaos is a primal force of the cosmos. It resides within the Immaterium... what you call the warp. It is a source of the most malevolent and complete corruption and evil. It is the greatest enemy of mankind - both interex and Imperial, I mean - because it destroys from within, like a canker. It is insidious. It is not like a hostile alien form to be defeated or expunged. It spreads like a disease. It is at the root of all sorcery and magic. It is...' @BRK#He hesitated and looked at Loken with a pained expression. 'It is the reason we have kept you at arm's length. You have to understand that when we first made contact, we were exhilarated, overjoyed. At last. At last! Contact with our lost kin, contact with Terra, after so many generations. It was a dream we had all cherished, but we knew we had to be careful. In the ages since we last had contact with Terra, things might have changed. An age of strife and damnation had passed. There was no guarantee that the men, who looked like men, and claimed to come from Terra in the name of a new Ter-ran Emperor, might not be agents of Kaos in seemly guise. There was no guarantee that while the men of the interex remained pure, the men of Terra might have become polluted and transformed by the ways of Kaos.’ @BRK#"We @BRK#are not-' @BRK#'Let me finish, Loken. Kaos, when it manifests, is brutal, rapacious, warlike. It is a force of unquenchable destruction. So the eldar have taught us, and the kine-brach, and so the pure men of the interex have stood to @BRK#check Kaos wherever it rears its warlike visage. Tell me, captain, how warlike do you appear? Vast and bulky, bred for battle, driven to destroy, led by a man you happily title Warmaster? @BRK#War @BRK#master? What manner of rank is that? Not Emperor, not commander, not general, but Warmaster. The bluntness of the term reeks of Kaos. We want to embrace you, yearn to embrace you, to join with you, to stand shoulder to shoulder with you, but we fear you, Loken. You resemble the enemy we have been raised from birth to anticipate. The all-conquering, unrelenting daemon of Kaos-war. The bloody-handed god of annihilation.' @BRK#'That is not us,' said Loken, aghast. @BRK#Tull nodded eagerly. 'I know it. I see it now. Truly. We have made a mistake in our delays. There is no taint in you. There is only the most surprising innocence.' @BRK#Til try not to be offended.' @BRK#Tull laughed and clasped his hands around Loken's right fist. 'No need, no need. We can show you the dangers to watch for. We can be brothers and-' @BRK#He paused suddenly, and took his hands away. @BRK#'What is it?' Loken asked. @BRK#Tull was listening to his comm-relay. His face darkened. 'Understood.’ he said to his collar mic. 'Action at once.’ @BRK#He looked back at Loken. 'Security lock-down, captain. Would... I'm sorry, this seems very blunt after what we've just been saying... but would you surrender your weapons to me?' @BRK#'My weapons?' @BRK#Yes, captain.’ @BRK#'I'm sorry, commander. I can't do that. Not while my commander is in the building.’ @BRK#Tull cleared his throat and carefully fitted his visor plate to his armour. He reached out and carefully took hold of his spear. 'Captain Loken.’ he said, his voice @BRK#now gusting from his audio relays, 'I demand you turn your weapons over to me at this time.’ @BRK#Loken took a step back. 'For what reason?' @BRK#'I don't have to give a reason, dammit! I'm officer of the watch, on interex territory. Hand over your weapons!' @BRK#Loken clamped his own helm in place. The visor screens were alarmingly blank. He checked sub-vox and security channels, trying to reach Kairus, Torgaddon or any of the bodyguard detail. His suit systems were being comprehensively blocked. @BRK#'Are you damping me?' he asked. @BRK#'City systems are damping you. Hand me your sidearm, Loken.’ @BRK#'I'm afraid I can't. My priority is to safeguard my commander.’ @BRK#Tull shook his armoured head. 'Oh, you're clever. Very clever. You almost had me there. You almost had me believing you were innocent.’ @BRK#Tull, I don't know what's going on.’ @BRK#'Naturally you don't.’ @BRK#'Commander Tull, we had reached an understanding, man to man. Why are you doing this?' @BRK#'Seduction. You almost had me. It was very good, but you got the timing off. You showed your hand too soon.’ @BRK#'Hand? What hand?' @BRK#'Don't pretend. The Hall of Devices is burning. You've made your move. Now the interex replies.’ @BRK#Tull.’ Loken warned, placing his hand firmly on the pommel of his blade. 'Don't make me fight you.’ @BRK#With a snarl of disappointed rage, Tull swung his spear at Loken. @BRK#The interex officer moved with astounding speed. Even with his hand on his blade, Loken had no time to draw it. He managed to snatch up his plated arms to @BRK#fend off the blow, and die two that followed it. The lightweight armour of the interex soldiery seemed to facilitate the most dazzling motion and dexterity, perhaps even augmenting the user's natural abilities, lull's attack was fluent and professional, slicing in blows with die long spear blade designed to force Loken back and down into submission. The microfine edge of the blade hacked several deep gouges into Loken's plating. @BRK#Tull! Stop!' @BRK#'Surrender to me now!' @BRK#Loken had no wish to fight, and scarcely any clue as to what had turned Tull so suddenly and completely, but he had no intention of surrendering. The Warmas-ter was on site, exposed. As far as Loken knew, all Imperial agents in the area had been deprived of vox and sensor links. There was no cue to the Warmaster's party, or to the @BRK#Extranns @BRK#compound, and certainly none to the fleet. He knew his priority was simple. He was a weapon, an instrument, and he had one simply defined purpose: protect the life of the Warmaster. All other issues were entirely secondary and moot. @BRK#Loken focussed. He felt the power in his limbs, in the suddenly warming, suddenly active flex of the polymer muscles in his suit's inner skin. He felt the throb of the power unit against the small of his back as it obeyed his instincts and yielded full power. He'd been swatting away the spear blows, allowing Tull to disfigure his plate. @BRK#No more. @BRK#He swung out, met the next blow, and smashed the blade aside with the ball of his fist. Tull travelled with the recoil expertly, spinning and using the momentum to drive a thrust directly at Loken's chest. It never landed. Loken caught the spear at the base of the blade with his left hand, moving as quickly and dazzlingly as the interex officer, and stopped it dead. Before Tull @BRK#could pull free, Loken punched with his right fist against the flat of the blade and broke the entire blade-tip off the spear. It spun away, end over end. @BRK#Tull rallied, and rotated the broken weapon to drive the weighted base-end at Loken like a long club. Loken guarded off two heavy blows from the ball-end with the edges of his gaundets. Tull twisted his grip, and the spear suddenly became charged with dancing blue sparks of electrical charge. He slammed the crackling ball at Loken again and there was a loud bang. The discharging force of the spear was so powerful that Loken was thrown bodily across the chamber. He landed on the polished floor and slid a few metres, dying webs of charge flickering across his chest plate. He tasted blood in his mouth, and felt the brief, quickly-occluded pain of serious bruising to his torso. @BRK#Loken scissored his back and legs, and sprang up on to his feet as Tull closed in. Now he brought his sword out. In the multi-coloured light, the white-steel blade of his combat sword shone like a spike of ice in his fist. @BRK#He offered Tull no opportunity to renew the bout as aggressor. Loken launched forward at the charging man and swung hammer blows with his sword. Tull recoiled, forced to use the remains of the spear as a parrying tool, the Imperial blade biting chips out of its haft. @BRK#Tull leapt back, and drew his own sword over his shoulder from the scabbard over his back. He clutched the long, silver sword - a good ten fingers longer than Loken's utilitarian blade - in his right hand, and the spear.’club in his left. When he came in again, he was swinging blows with both. @BRK#Loken's Astartes-born senses predicted and matched all of me strikes. His blade flicked left and right, spinning the club back and parrying the sword with two loud chimes of metal. He forced his way into Tull's bodyline guard and pressed his sword aside long @BRK#enough to shoulder-barge the royal officer in the chest. Tull staggered back. Loken gave him no respite. He swung again and tore the club out of lull's left hand. It bounced across the floor, sparking and firing. @BRK#Then they dosed, blade on blade, The exchange was furious. Loken had no doubts about his own ability: he'd been tested too many times of late, and not found wanting. But Tull was evidently a master swordsman and, more significantly, had learned his art via some entirely different school of bladesmanship. There was no common language in their fight, no shared basis of technique. Every blow and parry and ripostes each one essayed was inexplicable and foreign to the other. Every millisecond of the exchange was a potentially lethal learning curve. @BRK#It was almost enjoyable. Fascinating. Inventive. Illuminating. Loken believed Lucius would have enjoyed such a match, so many new techniques to delight at. @BRK#But it was wasting time. Loken parried Tull's next quicksilver slice, captured his right wrist firmly in his left hand, and struck off Tull's sword-arm at the elbow with a neat and deliberate chop. @BRK#Tull rocked backwards, blood venting from his stump. Loken tossed the sword and severed limb aside. He grabbed Tull by the face and was about to perform the mercy stroke, the quick, down-up decapitation, then thought better of it. He smashed Tull in the side of the head with his sword instead, using the flat. @BRK#Tull went flying. His body cartwheeled clumsily across the floor and came to rest against the foot of one of the display plinths. Blood leaked out of it in a wide pool. @BRK#This is Loken, Loken, Loken!' Loken yelled in this link. Nothing but dead patterns and static. Switching his blade to his left hand, he drew his bolter and ran forward. He'd gone three steps when the two sagittars @BRK#bounded into the chamber. They saw him, and their bows were already drawn to fire. @BRK#Loken put a bolt round into the wall behind them and made them flinch. @BRK#'Drop the bows!' he ordered via his helmet speakers. The bolter in his hand told them not to argue. They threw aside the bows and shafts with a clatter. Loken nodded his head at Tull, his gun still covering them both. 'I've no wish to see him die.’ he said. 'Bind his arm quickly before he bleeds out.’ @BRK#They wavered and then ran to Tull's side. When they looked up again, Loken had gone. @BRK#He ran down a hallway into an adjoining colonnade, hearing what was certainly bolter firing in the distance. Another sagittar appeared ahead, and fired what seemed like a laser bolt at him. The shot went wide past his left shoulder. Loken aimed his bolter and put the warrior on his back, hard. @BRK#No room for compassion now. @BRK#Two more interex soldiers came into view, another sagittar and a gleve. Loken, still running, shot them both before they could react. The force of his bolts, both torso-shots, threw the soldiers back against the wall, where they slithered to the ground. Abaddon had been wrong. The armour of the interex warriors was masterful, not weak. His rounds hadn't penetrated the chest plates of either of the men, but the sheer, concussive force of the impacts had taken them out of the fight, probably pulping their innards. @BRK#He heard footsteps and turned. It was Kairus and one of his men, Oltrentz. Both had weapons drawn. @BRK#'What the hell's happening, captain?' Kairus yelled. @BRK#'With me!' Loken demanded. ^Vhere's the rest of the detail?' @BRK#'I have no idea.’ Kairus complained. The vox is dead!' @BRK#'We're being damped.’ Oltrentz added. @BRK#'Priority is the Warmaster,' Loken assured them. 'Follow me and-' @BRK#More flashes, like laser fire. Projectiles, moving so fast they were just lines of light, zipped down the colonnade, faster than Loken could track. Oltrentz dropped onto his knees with a heavy clang, transfixed by two flightless arrows that had cut clean through his Mark IV plate. @BRK#Clean through. Loken could still remember Torgad-don's amusement and Aximand's assurance... @BRK#They're probably ceremonial. @BRK#Oltrentz fell onto his face. He was dead, and there was no time, and no apothecary, to make his death fruitful. @BRK#Further shafts flashed by. Loken felt an impact. Kairus staggered as a sagittar's dart punched entirely through his torso and embedded itself in the wall behind him. @BRK#'Kairus!' @BRK#'Keep on, captain!' Kairus drawled, in pain. 'Too clean a shot. I'll heal!' @BRK#Kairus rose and opened up with his storm bolter, firing on auto. He hosed the colonnade ahead of them, and Loken saw three sagittars crumble and explode under the thunderous pummel of the weapon. Now their armour broke. Under six of seven consecutive explosive penetrators, @BRK#now @BRK#their armour broke. @BRK#How we have underestimated them, @BRK#Loken thought. He moved on, with Kairus limping behind him. Already Kairus had stopped bleeding. His genhanced body had self-healed the entry and exit wounds, and whatever the sagittar dart had skewered between those two points was undoubtedly being compensated for by the built-in redundancies of the Astartes's anatomy. @BRK#Together, they kicked their way into the main dining hall. The room was chaotic. Torgaddon and the rest of his detail were covering the Warmaster as they led him @BRK#towards the south exit. There was no sign of Naud, but interex soldiers were firing at Torgaddon's group from a doorway on the far side of the chamber. Bolter fire lit up the air. Several bodies, including that of a Luna Wolf, lay twisted amongst the overturned chairs and banquet tables. Loken and Kairus trained their fire on the far doorway. @BRK#Tarik!' @BRK#'Good to see you, Garvi!' @BRK#What the hell is this?' @BRK#'A mistake.’ Horus roared, his voice cracking with despair. This is wrong! Wrong!' @BRK#Brilliant shafts of light stung into the wall alongside them. Sagittar darts sliced through the smoky air. One of Torgaddon's men buckled and fell, a dart speared through his helm. @BRK#'Mistake or not, we have to get clear. Now!' Loken yelled. @BRK#'Zakes! Cyclos! Regold!' Torgaddon yelled, firing. 'Close with Captain Loken and see us out!' @BRK#'With me!' Loken shouted. @BRK#'No!' bellowed the Warmaster. 'Not like this! We can't-' @BRK#'Go!' Loken screamed at his commander. @BRK#The fight to extricate themselves from Naud's house lasted ten furious minutes. Loken and Kairus led the rearguard with the brothers Torgaddon had appointed to them, while Torgaddon himself ferried the Warmaster out through the basement loading docks onto the street. Twice, Horus insisted on going back in, not wanting to leave anyone, especially not Loken, behind. Somehow, using words Torgaddon never shared with Loken, Torgaddon persuaded him otherwise. @BRK#By the time they had come out into the street, the remainder of Loken's outer guard had formed up with them, adding to the armour wall around the Warmaster, all except Jaeldon, whose fate they never learned. @BRK#The rearguard was a savage action. Backing metre by metre through the exit hall and the loading dock, Loken's group came under immense fire, most of it dart-shot from sagittars, but also some energised beams from heavy weapons. Bells and sirens were ringing everywhere. Zakes fell in the loading dock, his head shorn away by a blue-white beam of destruction that scorched the walls. Cyclos, his body a pincushion of darts, dropped at the doors of the exit hall. Prone, bleeding furiously, he tried to fire again, but two more shafts impaled his skull and nailed him to the door. Kairus took another dart through the left thigh as he gave Loken cover. Regold was felled by an arrow that pierced his right eyeslit, and got up in time to be finished by another through the neck. @BRK#Firing behind him, Loken dragged Kairus out through the dock area onto the street. @BRK#They were out into the city evening, the dark canopy hissing in the breeze over their heads. Lamps twinkled. In the distance, a ruddy glow backlit the clouds, spilling up from a building in the lower depths of the tiered city. Sirens wailed around mem. @BRK#'I'm all right,' Kairus said, though it was clear he was having trouble standing. 'Close, that one, captain.' @BRK#He reached up and plucked out a sagittar shaft that had stuck through Loken's right shoulder plate. In the colonnade, the impact he'd felt. 'Not close enough, brother.’ Loken said. 'Come on, if you're coming!' Torgaddon yelled, approaching them and spraying bolter fire back down the dock. This is a mess,' Loken said. @BRK#'As if I hadn't noticed!' Torgaddon spat. He uncoupled a charge pack from his belt and hurled it down the @BRK#dockway. The blast sent smoke and debris tumbling out at them. @BRK#4Ve have to get the Warmaster to safety.’ Torgaddon said. To the @BRK#Extranus.' @BRK#Loken nodded. %Ve have to-' @BRK#'No.’ said a voice. @BRK#They looked round. Horns stood beside them. His face was sidelit by the burning dock. His wide-set eyes were fierce. He had dressed for dinner that night, not for war. He was wearing a robe and a wolf-pelt. It was clear from his manner that he itched for armour plate and a good sword. @BRK#'With respect, sir.’ Torgaddon said. We are drawn bodyguard. You are our responsibility.’ @BRK#'No.’ Horus said again. 'Protect me by all means, but I will not go quietly. Some terrible mistake has been made tonight. All we have worked for is overthrown.’ @BRK#'And so, we must get you out alive.’ Torgaddon said. @BRK#Tarik's right, lord.’ Loken added. This is not a situation that-' @BRK#'Enough, enough, my son.’ Horus said. He looked up at the sighing black branches above them. 'What has gone so wrong? Naud took such great and sudden offence. He said we had transgressed.’ @BRK#'I spoke with a man.’ Loken said. 'Just when things turned sour. He was telling me of Chaos.’ @BRK#'What?' @BRK#'Of Chaos, and how it is our greatest common foe. He feared it was in us. He said that is why they had been so careful with us, because they feared we had brought Chaos with us. Lord, what did he mean?' @BRK#Horus looked at Loken. 'He meant Jubal. He meant the Whisperheads. He meant the warp. Have you brought the warp here, Garviel Loken?' @BRK#'No, sir.’ @BRK#Then the fault is within them. The great, great fault that the Emperor himself, beloved by all, told me to watch for, foremost of all things. Oh gods, I wished this @BRK#place to be free of it. To be clean. To be cousins we could hug to our chests. Now we know the truth.’ @BRK#Loken shook his head. 'Sir, no. I don't think that's what was meant. I think these people despise Chaos... the warp... as much as we do. I think they only fear it in us, and tonight, something has proved that fear right.' 'Like what?' Torgaddon snapped. Tull said the Hall of Devices was on fire.' Horns nodded. This is what they accused us of. Robbery. Deceit. Murder. Apparently someone raided the Hall of Devices tonight and slew the curator. Weapons were stolen.' @BRK#What weapons, sir?' Loken asked. Horns shook his head. 'Naud didn't say. He was too busy accusing me over the dinner table. That's where we should go now.' @BRK#Torgaddon laughed derisively. 'Not at all. We have to get you to safety, sir. That is our priority.' @BRK#The Warmaster looked at Loken. 'Do you think this also?' @BRK#"Yes, @BRK#lord.' @BRK#Then I am troubled that I will have to countermand you both. I respect your efforts to safeguard me. Your strenuous loyalty is noted. Now take me to the Hall of Devices.' @BRK#The hall was on fire. Bursting fields exploded through the lower depths of the placer and cascaded flames up into the higher galleries. A meturge player, blackened by smoke, limped out to greet them. @BRK#'Have you not sinned enough?' he asked, venomously. @BRK#4Vhat is it you think we have done?' Horus asked. @BRK#'Petty murder. Asherot is dead. The hall is burning. You could have asked to know of our weapons. You had no need to kill to win them.' @BRK#Horus shook his head. 'We have done nothing.' @BRK#The meturge player laughed, then fell. @BRK#'Help him,' Horus said. @BRK#Scads of ash were falling on them, drizzling from a choking black sky. The blaze had spread to the oversweep-ing forest, and the street was flame lit. There was a rank smell of burning vegetation. On lower street tiers, hundreds of figures gathered, looking up at the fire. A great panic, a horror was spreading through Xenobia Principis. @BRK#They feared us from the start,' the Warmaster said. 'Suspected us. Now this. They will believe they were right to do so.' @BRK#'Enemy warriors are gathering on the approach steps.’ Kairus called out. @BRK#'Enemy?' Horus laughed. When did they become the enemy? They are men like us.’ He glared up at the night sky, threw back his head and screamed a curse at the stars. Then his voice fell to a whisper. Loken was close enough to hear his words. @BRK#"Why have you tasked me with this, father? Why have you forsaken me? Why? It is too hard. It is too much. Why did you leave me to do this on my own?' @BRK#Interex formations were approaching. Loken heard hooves clattering on the flagstones, and saw the shapes of mounted sagittars bobbing black against the fires. Darts, like bright tears, began to drizzle through the night. They struck the ground and the walls nearby. @BRK#'My lord, no more delays.’ Torgaddon urged. Gleves were massing too, their moving spears black stalks against the orange glow. Sparks flew up like lost prayers into the sky. @BRK#'Hold!' Horus bellowed at the advancing soldiers. 'In the name of the Emperor of Mankind! I demand to speak to Naud. Fetch him now!' @BRK#The only reply was another flurry of shafts. The Luna Wolf beside Torgaddon fell dead, and another staggered @BRK#back, wounded. An arrow had embedded itself in the Warmaster's left arm. Without wincing, he dragged it out, and watched his blood spatter the flagstones at his feet. He walked to the fallen Astartes, bent down, and gathered up the man's bolter and sword. @BRK#Their mistake,' he said to Loken and Torgaddon. Their damn mistake. Not ours. If they're going to fear us, let us give them good reason.' He raised the sword in @BRK#his fist. 'For the Emperor!' he yelled in Cthonic. 'Illuminate @BRK#them!' @BRK#'Lupercal! Lupercal!' answered the handful of warriors around him. @BRK#They met the charging sagittars head on, bolter fire strobing the narrow street. Robot steeds shattered and tumbled, men falling from them, arms spread wide. Horns was already moving to meet them, ripping his sword into steel flanks and armoured chests. His first blow knocked a man-horse clear into the air, hooves kicking, crashing it back over onto the ranks behind it. 'Lupercal!' Loken yelled, coming to the Warmaster's right side, and swinging his sword double-handed. Torgaddon covered the left, striking down a trio of gleves, then using a lance taken from one of them to smite the pack that followed. Interex soldiers, some screaming, were forced back down the steps, or toppled over the stone railing of the street to plunge onto the tier @BRK#beneath. @BRK#Of all the battles Loken had fought at his commander's side, that was the fiercest, the saddest, the most vicious. Teeth bared in the firelight, swinging his blade at the foe on all sides, Horus seemed more noble than Loken had ever known. He would remember that moment, years later, when fate had played its cruel trick and sense had turned upside down. He would remember Horus, Warmaster, in that narrow firelit street, @BRK#defining the honour and unyielding courage of the Imperium of Man. @BRK#There should have been frescoes painted, poems written, symphonies composed, all to celebrate that instant when Horus made his most absolute statement of devotion to the Throne. @BRK#And to his father. @BRK#There would be none. The hateful future swallowed up such possibilities, swallowed the memories too, until the very fact of that nobility became impossible to believe. @BRK#The enemy warriors, and they were enemy warriors now, choked the street, driving the Warmaster and his few remaining bodyguards into a tight ring. A last stand. It was oddly as he had imagined it, that night in the garden, making his oath. Some great, last stand against an unknown foe, fighting at Horus's side. @BRK#He was covered in blood, his suit gouged and dented in a hundred places. He did not falter. Through the smoke above, Loken glimpsed a moon, a small moon glowing in the corner of the alien sky. @BRK#Appropriately, it was reflected in the glimmering mirror of ocean out in the bay. @BRK#'Lupercal!' screamed Loken. @BRK#FOUR @BRK#Parting shots @BRK#The Sons of Horus @BRK#Anathame @BRK#'What was taken?' Mersadie Oliton asked. @BRK#'An anathame, so diey claim.' @BRK#'One weapon?' @BRK#'We didn't take it.’ Loken said, stripping off the last of his battered armour. We took nothing. The killing was for nothing.’ @BRK#She shrugged. She took a sheaf of papers from her gown. They were Karkasy's latest offerings, and she had come to the arming chamber on the pretence of delivering them. In truth, she was hoping to learn what had befallen on Xenobia. @BRK#'Will you tell me?' she asked. He looked up. There was dried blood on his face and hands. @BRK#'Yes.’ he said. @BRK#The battle of Xenobia Principis lasted until dawn, and engulfed much of the city. At the first sign of commotion, unable to establish contact with either the Warmaster or the fleet, Abaddon and Aximand had @BRK#mobilised the two companies of Luna Wolves garrisoned at the @BRK#Extranns. @BRK#In the streets surrounding the compound area, the people of the interex got their first taste of the power of the Imperial Astartes. In the years to come, they would experience a good deal more. Abaddon was in wrathful mood, so much so that Axi-mand had to rein him back on several occasions. @BRK#It was Aximand's units that first reached the embattled Warmaster on the upper tier near the Hall of Devices, and fought a route to him through the cream of Naud's army. Abaddon's forces had struck at several of the city's control stations, and restored communications. The fleet was already moving in, in response to the apparent threat to the Warmaster and the Imperial parties on the ground. As interex warships moved to engage, landing assaults began, led by Sedirae and Targost. @BRK#With communications restored, a fullscale extraction was coordinated, drawing all Imperial personnel from the @BRK#Extranus, @BRK#and from fighting zones in the streets. @BRK#Horas sent one final communique to the interex. He expected no response, and received none. Far too much blood had been spilled and destruction wrought for relations to be soothed by diplomacy. Nevertheless, Horus expressed his bitter regret at the turn of events, lamented the interex for acting with such a heavy hand, and repeated once again his unequivocal denial that the Imperium had committed any of the crimes of which it stood accused. @BRK#When the ships of the expedition returned to Imperial space, some weeks later, the Warmaster had a decree proclaimed. He told the Mournival that, upon reflection, he had reconsidered the importance of defining his role, and the relationship of the XVI Legion to that role. Henceforth, the Luna Wolves would be known as the Sons of Horus. @BRK#The news was well-received. In the quiet corners of the flagship archives, Kyril Sindermann was told by some of his iterators, and approved the decision, before turning back to books that he was the first person to read in a thousand years. In the bustle of the Retreat, the remembrancers - many of whom had been extracted from the @BRK#Extranus @BRK#by the Astartes efforts - cheered and drank to the new name. Ignace Karkasy sank a drink to the honour of the Legion, and Captain Loken in particular, and then had another one just to be sure. @BRK#In her private room, Euphrati Keeler knelt by her secret shrine and thanked her god, the Emperor of Mankind, in the simple terms of the @BRK#lectio divinitatus, @BRK#praising him for giving strong and honourable men to protect them. Sons of Horus, all. @BRK#Air hummed down rusting ducts and flues. Darkness pooled in the belly vaults of the @BRK#Vengeful Spirit, @BRK#in the bilges where even the lowliest ratings and proto-servitors seldom strayed. Only vermin lived here, insect lice and rats, gnawing a putrid existence in the corroded bowels of the ancient ship. @BRK#By the light of a single candle, he held the strange blade up and watched how the glow coruscated off its edge. The blade was rippled along its length, grey like napped flint, and caught the light with a glitter like diamond. A fine thing. A beautiful thing. A cosmos-changing thing. @BRK#He could feel the promise within it breathing. The promise and the curse. @BRK#Slowly, Erebus lowered the anathame, placed it in its casket, and closed the lid. @BRK#'And that is all?' @BRK#We tried.’ said Loken. 'We tried to bond with them. It was a brave thing, a noble thing to attempt. War would have been easier. But it failed.’ @BRK#'Yes.’ he said. Loken had taken up the lapping powder and a doth, and was working at the scratches and gouges on his breastplate, knowing full well the scars were too deep this time. He'd have to fetch the armourers. @BRK#'So it was a tragedy?' she asked. @BRK#Yes.’ he nodded, 'but not of our making. I've never... I've never felt so sure.’ @BRK#'Of what?' she asked. @BRK#'Horns, as Warmaster. As the Emperor's proxy. I've never questioned it. But seeing him there, seeing what he was trying to do. I've never felt so sure the Emperor made the right choice.’ @BRK#'What happens now?' @BRK#'With the interex? I imagine attempts will be made to broker peace. The priority will be low, for the interex are marginal and show no inclination to get involved in our affairs. If peace fails, then, in time, a military expedition will be drawn up.’ @BRK#'And for us? Are you allowed to tell me the expedition's orders?' @BRK#Loken smiled and shrugged. 'We're due to rendezvous with the 203rd Fleet in a month, at Sardis, prior to a campaign of compliance in the Caiades Cluster, but on the way, a brief detour. We're to settle a minor dispute. An old tally, if you will. First Chaplain Erebus has asked the Warmaster to intercede. We'll be there and gone again in a week or so.’ @BRK#'Intercede where?' she asked. @BRK#'A little moon.’ Loken said, 'in the Davin System.’ @BRK#ABOUTTHEAUTHOR @BRK#Dan Abnett @BRK#lives and works in Maidstone, Kent, in England. Well known for his comic work, he has @BRK#written everything from the @BRK#Mr Men @BRK#to the @BRK#X-Men @BRK#in the last decade, and is currently scripting @BRK#Legion of Superheroes @BRK#and @BRK#Superman @BRK#for DC Comics, and @BRK#Sinister Dexter @BRK#and @BRK#The VCs @BRK#for 2000 AD. His work @BRK#for the Black Library includes the popular comic @BRK#strips @BRK#Lone Wolves, Titan @BRK#and @BRK#Inquisitor Ascendant, @BRK#the best-selling Gaunt's Ghosts novels, and the @BRK#acclaimed Inquisitor Eisenhom trilogy.