The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

‘I recall when I first met you aboard the Vengeful Spirit, Garviel Loken,’ said Dorn. ‘You and Tarik almost came to blows with Efried and… my First Captain.’

Loken nodded, reluctant to be drawn into reminiscence, even with a being as godly as a primarch. He heard the pause where he expected to hear Sigismund’s name, and wondered what, if anything, it meant.

Ares Voitek filled the silence by distributing tin cups around the table via his servo-arms and pouring a measure of clear liquid into each one.

‘What’s this you’re giving me, Ares?’ said Dorn, as Voitek handed him the first filled cup.

‘It’s called dzira, my lord,’ explained Voitek. ‘It’s what the clans of Medusa drink when there’s bridges to be mended between brothers.’

‘And you just happened to have some aboard?’

Loken looked at the clear liquid in the cup, smelling all manner of strange mixtures in its chemical structure.

‘Not exactly,’ said Voitek. ‘But there’s enough alcohol-based fluids aboard the Tarnhelm for someone with a working knowledge of alchymical processes to knock up a viable substitute. Normally a Clan Chief would pass a piyala bowl around his warring sons, but I think we can break protocol on that just this once.’

‘Just this once,’ agreed Dorn and took a drink.

The primarch’s eyebrow raised a fraction, which should have told Loken what to expect. He followed Lord Dorn’s example and swallowed a mouthful of Voitek’s spirit. Its heat was chemical and raw, like coolant drained from the core of a plasma reactor. Loken’s body could process almost any toxin and expel it as harmless waste product, but he doubted the Emperor had dzira in mind when conceiving the Legiones Astartes physiology.

The others around the table, Qruze included, drank from their cups. All apart from Bror Tyrfingr and Altan Nohai reacted as though Voitek had tried to poison them, but kept their reactions to coughs and splutters.

Dorn’s gaze swept the warriors at the table, and said, ‘I know little of Medusan customs, but if the drinking of this dzira has served its clans well, then let its purpose be echoed here.’

Dorn leaned over the table, pressing both palms to its surface.

‘Your mission is too important to fail through internal division. Every one of you is here because you have strengths and virtues that have cleft you from your parent Legions. Malcador trusts you, though some of you have yet to earn such from me. I hold deeds, not faith, gut-feelings or the whispers of prognosticators as the sum of a warrior’s character. Let this mission be what earns you the boon of my trust. Find what the Wolf King needs, and you will have earned the Sigillite a measure of that trust too.’

‘Why were you and Qruze here, my lord?’ asked Macer Varren without embarrassment.

Loken saw a conspiratorial glance pass between Rogal Dorn and Iacton Qruze. The Half-heard dropped his gaze, and Rogal Dorn let out a heavy sigh that made Varren wish he’d never asked.

‘To kill a man I once held in high esteem,’ said Dorn, ever unwilling to shirk from the truth. ‘A good man sent to his death by Horus to sap our resolve and unbind the mortar that holds the Imperium together.’

Loken swallowed another mouthful of dzira, and the shame keeping him pinned to his seat receded enough for him to ask, ‘My lord, do you know where Euphrati Keeler and Kyril Sindermann are?’

Dorn shook his head. ‘No, Loken, I do not, save that they are not on Terra. I am as ignorant of their whereabouts as Iacton, but if I had to guess, and I’m loath to guess, I’d say they were somewhere on Rodinia right now. They move from plate to plate, hidden by their followers and aided by deluded fools. There were reports she had been seen on Antillia, then Vaalbara and even around the globe on Lemurya. I hear reports of her sermonising all across the orbital ring, but I suspect a great deal of those are false dissemination to throw the hunters off the scent.’

‘Surely one woman isn’t worth that effort,’ said Cayne.

‘Mistress Keeler is more than just one woman,’ said Dorn. ‘This saint nonsense that’s sprung up around her is more dangerous than you know. Her words fill malleable hearts with false faith and the expectation of miraculous intervention. She imbues the Emperor with divine powers. And if He is a god, what need has He of His people to defend Him? No, the Lectio Divinitatus is just the sort of invented lunacy the Emperor sought to see ended with Unity.’

‘Perhaps her words give people hope,’ said Loken.

‘Hope in lies,’ replied Dorn, folding his arms and stepping away from the table. His brief time with them was over. The primarch made his way to the boarding ramp, but turned and said one last thing before departing for Terra.

‘I own only the empirical clarity of Imperial Truth.’

Loken knew those words well.

He’d said them once in the water garden on Sixty-Three Nineteen and many times since in the dungeons of Terra. It could be no coincidence that Rogal Dorn repeated them here. The memory of them was a reminder of sundered confraternity, oaths broken and brothers murdered in cold blood.