The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

I should be dead.

Nerve endings on fire. Pain. Pain like he’d never known.

Even the attack on the Dome of Revivification hadn’t been as bad. Burns and physical trauma he could endure, but the barbed fires of the Knight’s whip sawed at his nerves like gleeful torturers.

I should be dead.

No time to reflect that he wasn’t. Deal with the pain. Force it down into the pit. Endure it later.

Mal and Targost’s Luperci had saved him. No time to wonder how. Retreat was not an option. He had been hurt and needed to hurt back. Aximand and the Fifth Company were en route. This would be over before they reached him.

Horus looked up at the charging Knights.

I am alive, and that was your only chance.

The Luperci streamed from him, a flock of raptors loosed from the rookeries of his armour. Far faster than anything living ought to move. Where they had clung to him was marked by burns. Frost burns. Horus followed them, swinging Worldbreaker around his head.

The first Knight took a backward step, and Horus laughed.

‘Afraid now?’ he bellowed.

Screaming vox chatter filled his helmet. He tore it off and threw it away.

Luperci swarmed the legs of the Knight, climbing and vaulting. Hand over hand, gripping the lips of segmented plates. They tore as they climbed, snapping connector cables, ripping out servos and coupling rods. Ger Gerradon climbed fastest and punched a clawed fist into the pilot’s compartment. The Knight’s whip snapped, flagellating itself to shake him loose. More Knights advanced, flanking the leader.

Get close. Get inside their reach.

Chugging cannons thundered, muzzle flare churning the ground to powder. Solid rounds chased Horus, but he put the first Knight between him and its fire. Stubber shells ripped across the lead Knight’s carapace and thermal lance mount. The weapon exploded.

Another Knight body slammed the first, crushing two more of the Luperci who howled as they died. It rammed its ion shield into its leader’s carapace, sending the last of them hurtling through the air. Glass and lubricant drizzled like tears.

The revealed pilot was a darkly handsome man with a cruel smile.

Horus laughed. You still think you can kill me.

He dived as the Knight’s foot stomped down. Horus rolled to his feet and ripped his taloned gauntlet through a knot of pneumatics at the Knight’s ankle joint. It staggered, gyroscopic servos screaming as they fought to keep the war machine upright.

A third and a fourth Knight were moving into firing positions. More jostled for position behind them.

Keep moving. Don’t let them pin you in place.

Horus was the lone wolf among the fold, weaving between the legs of his attackers. But the creatures of this fold could crush him, burn him and gut him. Stamping feet pounded the ground flat. Roaring chainblades wider than a Javelin speeder stabbed around him. The energy whip of the lead Knight cracked and fused a three metre trench of glass in the sand.

Horus scrambled onto the claw mechanism of a Knight’s splayed foot. He gripped the ribbed cabling at its ankle and bent his legs. From a crouch, he leapt as high as he could. Worldbreaker swung and a knee joint exploded. The Knight’s leg buckled and it took a drunken step, every stabilisation system powerless to keep it upright.

The Knight crashed down, its armour crumpling, the carapace split open. Flames engulfed the downed machine as the power cells of its weapon mount exploded. Horus saw the pilot screaming inside the canopy as he burned to death.

Another Knight went down, its upper torso detonating in a cherry red fireball. Horus felt a wash of heat that had nothing to do with its destruction. A squadron of three Glaives roared over the black beach, their insanely powerful volkite carronades rippling in a haze of recent discharge.