The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Molech was screaming.

It bled magma from a score of wounds gouged by the wreckage dropped from orbit. It burned black where macro-munitions punched through the atmosphere and carved blazing canyons in its crust. Night was banished. The engine plumes of incoming warheads and the explosions of intercepted ones eclipsed the light of the moons.

I have been here before, but I do not remember it.

Little Horus Aximand watched the wreckage of Lord Admiral Brython’s fleet fall like continually dividing meteors. They scratched painfully bright parabolas in the sky. They shed blazing debris over tens of thousands of kilometres. The southern horizon was a fiery smudge of distant conflagrations and hard-burning retros. A pall of smoke pressed down on the landscape, underlit by the apocalyptic radiance of city fires.

Strange lightning arced in the clouds, the inevitable by-product of the sheer volume of metal piercing the atmosphere. Wrecked starships were coming down all across Molech, mostly on the industrialised landmass across the ocean. Its coastal embarkation facilities, starports and Army bases were in ruins, and saturation spreads of the Death Guard rad-bombs had rendered much of it uninhabitable for centuries.

There would be no reinforcements coming from that quarter.

The Catulan Reavers secured the Stormbird’s landing zone, a rain-lashed harbour in the lee of a partially collapsed tower. Waves boomed against the quay, sending up walls of foaming water.

Coming in ahead of the main invasion force, the Warmaster was exposed and vulnerable. Maloghurst and the Mournival cited the assassination attempt on Dwell as reason enough not to descend to this northern island, a volcanic scrap of rock named Damesek.

Horus had brooked no disagreement.

He would be first to Molech’s surface.

Lupercal stood at the base of the tower, resting a bare hand on the pale stone of a buttress. His head was bowed, his eyes closed.

‘What do you think he’s doing?’ asked Grael Noctua.

‘Lupercal will tell you in good time,’ said Aximand.

‘In other words, you don’t know,’ grunted Kibre.

Aximand didn’t bother to answer the Widowmaker, but Abaddon gave him a clout on the back of the head for good measure. The Warmaster craned his neck to see the tower’s upper reaches. Aximand did likewise and hoped this rainstorm would topple it into the sea.

Horus grinned and rejoined the Mournival, nodding as though in answer to an unheard question. The lustre of his battle armour had been restored, the amber eye upon its breast made whole once again. Had he not been blockaded on Mars, Urtzi Malevolus would have sought fault with the restoration work, but Aximand could find none. Unconsciously, his hand lifted to the split Mournival mark on his own helm. The half moon quartered.

‘It’s the sea, you understand,’ said Horus. ‘I recall the smell of it. The salt and the faint hint of sulphur. I know I remember it, but it’s like someone else’s memory.’

He turned on the spot, looking back at the tower, as though trying to picture what it might have looked like in its heyday.

‘You know what this is, of course?’ said Horus.

‘A ruined tower?’ said Kibre.

‘Oh, it’s so much more than that, Falkus,’ said Horus. ‘I’m almost sorry you can’t feel it.’

‘It’s the tower from Curze’s cards,’ said Aximand.

Horus snapped his fingers.

‘Exactly! Curze and his cartomancy. I told him no good would come of trafficking with arcana, but you know Konrad…’

‘I don’t,’ said Aximand. ‘And I count myself fortunate.’

Horus nodded in agreement. ‘He is my brother, but I wouldn’t choose him as my friend.’

‘Sir, why are we here?’ asked Noctua. ‘I don’t understand why we landed on this island when there’s plenty of tactically superior beachheads on the mainland. We should have dropped straight on Lupercalia.’

Horus let his hand drift to Worldbreaker’s haft.

‘You have a fine appreciation of tactical necessity, Grael,’ said Horus. ‘It’s why Little Horus here put your name forward, but you have a lot to learn about people and why they do things.’

‘I don’t understand, sir.’

Horus led Noctua to the tower. He put his new Mournival son’s hand on the stone and said, ‘Because he was here. The Emperor. Everything I learned on Dwell was true. My father came here a long time ago and left from this very tower.’

‘How can you tell, sir?’ asked Abaddon, examining the tower as if it might give up its secrets if he stared hard enough. The First Captain’s scalp was now shaven smooth, his manner still contrite.

‘Because I can feel it, Ezekyle,’ said Horus, and Aximand had never seen their master so vital, so alive. The Warmaster had not felt such a connection to his father since Ullanor, and it was energising him.

Horus closed his eyes again and said, ‘A being like the Emperor does not move gently through the world. His passing leaves a mark, and He left a very big bruise when he left Molech.’

Tilting his head back, Horus let the rain wash his skin. It fell in a hard, violent baptismal. Aximand smelled the smoke from the myriad fires, saw the ruddy haze that was this world’s red dawn.

Lupercal wiped a hand across his face and turned to Aximand.

‘This is where the Emperor left Molech,’ he said. ‘I mean to follow His steps and find what He took from it.’