The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit
- Автор: МакНилл Грэхем
- Год: 2014
- Язык: английский
- Год: Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd.
- ISBN: 978-1-78251-547-0
- Жанр: Боевая фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit». Краткое содержание книги:
ABOUT THIS EDITION
Includes 4 specially commissioned illustrations by Tiernen Trevallion, as well as an exclusive afterword by the author.
‘I’m not going to be king, nor even Emperor,’ said Horus. ‘I’m going to be a god.’
Targost, or the thing within Targost, reached for Iacton Qruze. The flesh of its face was bubbling like the surface of a muddy swamp. The stench was appalling. Qruze scrambled away on his backside, fumbling for his pistol.
Bror Tyrfingr charged the Samus-thing, but it was like trying to tackle the leg of a Warlord Titan. Samus slapped the Fenrisian away, like a man swatting an irritating fly. Bror landed on a flaming drum and rolled, spilling its contents in a shower of embers.
The creature’s jaw cracked wide open and oozing black ichor boiled up from the interior of its skull. Serrated triangular teeth pushed out from the stump of its neck and a host of lashing, vertical tongues emerged, rough and forked. A multitude of glowing eyes formed in the roiling, glutinous mass of its phantom skull.
Its form stretched upwards, diseased roots sprouting from its lower limbs and infesting the deck like oily ropes.
‘I’m Samus...’ it gurgled with mucus-thick breath, and the name struck a dreadful chord in Loken’s heart. The air tasted of static and biting on metal. Shadows moved on the wall, independent of the firelight.
Samus, he knew that name. He knew it from a world made compliant a long time ago in another life. He’d heard it over the vox and in the air of Sixty-Three Nineteen. He’d heard it spoken by Xaver Jubal just before he’d opened fire on his brothers.
The Whisperheads.
Loken was there again, in that glistening cave, fighting his fellow legionary as the foundations of his world came apart.
He had a sword in his hand, but he couldn’t raise it.
This is fear.
This was what mortals dealt with every day of their lives. Fear of the alien, fear of war, fear of pain, of disease. Fear of failing those who trusted them.
How could anyone live like this?
Loken was paralysed, his limbs leaden at his sides.
Varren charged, burying the smile of his axe in the Samus-thing’s belly. Sawing teeth bit deep. It bent over and plucked Varren from the ground, its circular mouth fastening on his shoulder. Blood sprayed and Varren’s arm spasmed, releasing the axe grip.
Voitek’s arms hacked at its flanks, as Severian sliced through gristle-like fronds whipping from Targost’s transforming flesh. A shot from above punched through its wraith skull.
Karayan.
Qruze finally had his pistol out and was pumping shot after shot into the creature’s chest. The mass-reactives were swallowed whole without effect.
The Samus-thing laughed and tossed Varren aside. He landed forty metres away beside the altar of Davinite stone. Bror Tyrfingr picked himself up, shouted something to Qruze and Severian. Loken heard Altan Nohai shout something in return, sounding surprised.
Loken’s armour registered a sudden drop in temperature.
Then Rubio was there.
The former Codicier threw himself at the Samus-thing, his sword a sliver of flame-wreathed bluesteel. Varren’s axe had achieved little, but Rubio’s blade sliced deep into the meat of the thing. The fire leapt from his weapon onto Samus, and the remains of Targost’s robes went up in flames with a roaring whoosh of ignition.
It screamed, finally hurting.
Loken felt something grip his leg and looked down to see Tubal Cayne’s hand scrabbling at his armour.
The other hand was clamped around his own neck. Blood welled between his fingers, pumping enthusiastically from the awful chasm in his throat. He’d ripped his helmet off and his eyes took Loken’s in an iron grip. Anger, vindication and something Loken couldn’t identify poured out of Tubal Cayne. Flickering reflections of Rubio’s white fire shimmered in his widening pupils. The dying warrior tried to speak, but only wet, liquid gurgles emerged.
Loken watched his eyes turn to glass and knew that he was dead.
And the fear that held him rigid vanished.
He’d fought Samus before.
He and Vipus had killed it.
Loken brought his sword up and charged.
Rama Karayan tracked the battle below through his bolter’s scope. Something was affecting it. The thing his brothers faced wasn’t registering. He could see Bror, Macer and the others, but not the thing they fought.
But prey could be hunted by its absences as much as by its leavings.
His hunter’s eye had been honed as a youngster in the darkened mine workings of Lycaeus. The lords of the Ravenspire had recognised his gift and developed it. Not invisible enough for the Shadowmasters, but perfect for the silent killers of the Seeker squads.
His auto-senses were linked directly with the scope of his modified bolter, and he took a breath, innately interpolating the locus of his brother’s attacks. Peripheral sight picked out the pellucid white flames of Rubio’s sword.
He found his centre and drew in a breath.
Held it.
He fired. A spent casing dropped to the scaffold boards.
It bounced, slower than should be possible. A web of frosted lines crazed its surface in a pale web.
Strange shadows moved on the walls. Impossible shadows. They were all around him, like stalking wolves in a twilit winter forest or the dust devils of Deliverance’s ash wastes.
Karayan felt grave-cold air and the hard, sharp edge of a blade at his throat.
‘Nice rifle,’ said a rasping voice. ‘I think I’ll take it.’
Karayan moved. Not fast enough.
The blade sliced deep, cutting back to bone.
Loken’s sword tore through the Samus-thing’s scorched belly. Bubbling laughter spilled from its smoking skull. Ash and greasy meat cinders billowed around it. Furnace-red light shone through wounds torn in its charred flesh.
Targost’s arms reached for him, stretching and cracking like timbers splitting in a fire. Loken put a bolt-round into its chest and hacked the hand from the arm. Another writhing appendage squirmed into existence at the stump, but it was a twisted, malformed thing.
‘It’s vulnerable!’ cried Rubio. ‘Its link to the warp is fraying.’
The pathfinders surrounded the daemon-thing, hacking and shooting it. Even in such desperate straits, each shot was carefully aimed, each strike precisely placed.
‘I know you, Garviel Loken,’ it hissed, looming over Loken. ‘I claimed your brother’s soul in that mountain cave. He screams in torment still.’
‘Don’t listen to it,’ shouted Rubio, blocking a whipping appendage of glistening dark flesh. The Librarian’s hood blazed with blue white fire.
‘Silence, witcher!’ bellowed the Samus-thing. The force of its words drove Rubio to his knees. It spat a torrent of black fire from its writhing, toothed gullet. Rubio threw up a shimmering wall of witchfire and the flames guttered and died.
Severian closed and slashed his blade into the daemon’s back, tearing upwards. Loken hadn’t even seen him move. Looping coils of what might once have been guts, but were now mouldering loops of dead meat spilled out.
The beast spun around and clubbed Severian to the deck with unnatural speed. It hurled Voitek and Qruze away with a scream of pure force and slammed Loken to the deck with slithering arms like blistered snakes.
Loken saw the gladius Targost had used to mutilate the Ultramarine prisoner. The ivory Ultima on its pommel glittered in the firelight. Its blade was dark, yet sheened with starlight. He reached for it, but a hand of scabbed knuckles and bruised fingers picked it up first.