The Path of Heaven Read online

  Mortarion listened cautiously, his filthy armour-systems cycling and gurgling.

  ‘I come to you,’ said Horus, softly, ‘because I have no others. The Khan remains on my flank, his Legion intact, his fury undimmed. The storms keep him hemmed, but he will find a way to break them. He cannot be suffered to live – you know this. Once Jaghatai has been destroyed, the last barrier falls.’

  Horus loomed over his hunched brother and grabbed him by the neck, one claw on either side.

  ‘And then,’ he breathed, drawing Mortarion’s scabrous face close to his own, ‘it shall be we two at the spearhead. You have kept your Legion pure. You do not disappoint. We approach the nexus now.’

  Mortarion’s suspicion never left him. His eyes flickered, the dry skin of his lips twitched. ‘You were true brothers, you and Jaghatai,’ he said. ‘You were as close as mingled blood.’

  ‘We were all brothers. Do not think I will regret one more death.’

  ‘Or is it this – you do not do it yourself, because you cannot.’

  At that, Horus hesitated. ‘You really think that?’

  ‘Have you not considered it?’

  The Warmaster said nothing. He released Mortarion from his grip, and withdrew. ‘I do not think there is a living soul I would not be able to slay now. Not since I saw… what waits.’ He looked back towards his gene-brother, less assured now, his visage haunted. ‘When the moment comes, when I have Him in my grasp, I will not hesitate. I know this at least.’

  Mortarion listened, breathing heavily. Even after all that had happened, considering the very end of the enterprise was uncomfortable. They all had blood on their hands, rivers of it, but killing mortals was one thing. Slaying a living god, however false and sickened, was another.

  ‘My gaze cannot waver from Terra,’ Horus went on. ‘You cannot imagine what a burden that is. Even as we bring the other-realm into this one, and the ancients respond to my lead like whipped dogs, there still remain the old soldier’s curses – munitions, ledgers, schedules. I cannot deviate. Every wasted day narrows the lens of the future.’

  Still Mortarion listened.

  ‘We reach the inner rings of iron now,’ Horus said. ‘The first of Dorn’s defences, arraigned on a hundred worlds. Each one will fight until the last breath is choked from them. Even with Perturabo, even with me, these will not be easy victories.’ The Warmaster looked back intently at his pallid brother. ‘So I need the Khan destroyed.’

  ‘He has his Legion, I have mine. This, too, will not be an easy victory.’

  ‘You will not be alone. Eidolon hunts him even now. You are to join him.’

  Mortarion laughed savagely. ‘Ah, I can see how that would appeal to you – me and that… thing. Perhaps all your humours have not yet been bled out after all.’

  Horus did not smile. ‘Fabius has made him deadly.’

  ‘Yes, yes, we are all deadly.’ Mortarion hacked again, shifting his weight, looking uncomfortable. ‘Then Eidolon knows where the Fifth Legion musters?’

  ‘He has their scent.’

  ‘So it is still a hunt.’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  Mortarion smiled darkly. ‘Aye.’ He sighed, and flexed his gauntlet absently. The great dents and scores in his armour made on the crystal dust of Prospero had not been excised – they were the badges of a contest that had not been concluded. In Mortarion’s exposed upper face, something like eagerness had kindled – the desire to finish what had been started. ‘I am not the same as I was, when we last met,’ he said.

  ‘You have not taken your full quota of gifts.’

  ‘Not yet, not ever. I am not like you. I do not wallow in this corruption. I use it. I control it. I set bounds on it.’

  Horus did not reply. His black-within-black eyes reflected nothing.

  ‘Then I have your word,’ said Mortarion at length. ‘You will wait. We shall assault the Throneworld together.’

  Horus held up the Talon to the faint blueish light, as if it now served as some kind of pledge of surety. ‘Have I ever lied?’ he asked. ‘Even to my Father? A time will come where there can no longer be lies, for truth and falsehood have no currency in the realm of dreams. I bring this time to the galaxy – that is why you follow me, just as you once followed Him.’

  ‘Not as I followed Him.’

  ‘But, yes, you have my word.’

  ‘Then you have mine.’ Mortarion seized the Talon with his own gauntlet, and its surface was subsumed within the massive lightning claw. ‘He will be caught, he will be slain.’

  If that news pleased the Warmaster, he showed no sign of it. He merely nodded – a fractional gesture, the mark of one more task achieved, one more obstacle to the Throne cleared away.

  ‘Tell me when it is done,’ he said, releasing Mortarion’s gauntlet and letting the Talon fall. Above them both, Spectre’s icy winds eddied. ‘All I need is the word. Then the final assault begins, and you will be there with me to lead it.’

  Part II

  Eight

  Ilya Ravallion sunk down to her haunches, shaking. She pressed her back against the wall behind her and wrung her hands together. Herevail was cold. She should have brought an environment suit, not just her old fatigues. But then, it had become important to her to wear the old colours. Once it hadn’t mattered, but now it did – all the colours, all the symbols, all of vital importance.

  She didn’t fill out the old uniform well any more. She had shrunk, and the material had not shrunk with her. Age was cruel, taking away the very faculties that had made her useful. She wondered if the Legion noticed her diminishment. If so, they never mentioned it, though perhaps, she thought, they had become even more solicitous.

  She closed her eyes and tried to stop shivering. From far away, crumps of artillery broke out, marking the steadily moving northern front. The III Legion troops on Herevail were some of the most debased yet encountered, but they could still fight. Even outnumbered, taken by surprise, they resisted with all that incredible tenacity every Space Marine possessed.

  It was perhaps the most loathsome thing about them. She even found it loathsome in those who warded her. A warrior of the Legions was a killing machine, devoid of fear, devoid of self-pity. Place one in an impossible situation, one that would have crushed the soul of any non-Ascended, and he would just keep fighting, trying everything, using all the near-infinite resources at his disposal with every scrap of guile and invention he possessed. To end them, you had to physically cut their throats into ribbons. To end one of Fulgrim’s grotesques, you often had to do more than that.

  And they took pride in it. She had heard the brotherhoods telling themselves the same things, over and again.

  We do not yield. We are the faithful. We are the oath-keepers.

  There were times, when she was tired and exhausted – which was often – when she wanted to scream at them.

  ‘You are not better for that!’ she wanted to shout. ‘If you had the slightest imagination, you would be running away.’

  She never said that. And they never changed. They remained as indomitable as ever, though they smiled less. They were weary now. They were rehearsing the old rituals of happiness, perhaps in the hope it would stop being a sham in some unforeseen future, or perhaps because it was all they had left.

  Lost in those thoughts, eyes shut, it took her a while to realise that she was not alone in the chamber. Even Yesugei, who could do many things, never seemed able to keep his armour from making a noise when he moved. And there was his smell, too – years of incense, stained into the ceramite.

  She didn’t open her eyes. ‘How goes it?’ she asked.

  She felt the Stormseer come close, stoop over her. She sensed his concern, and it irritated her.

  ‘The city falls within an hour,’ he said. ‘Others being secured.’

&nb
sp; Ilya nodded. Another battle over. At least they had won this one. ‘Did they have any warning of us?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘And any word of the Gate?’

  ‘None yet.’

  Sighing, Ilya opened her eyes at last.

  The Stormseer Targutai Yesugei stood before her. He had taken off his helm, revealing his weather-lined face, which was full of concern. His armour was splattered with the stain of old blood, masking the many charms and trinkets that hung from the ringed plate. But that was too cruel – they were much more than trinkets, and Ilya had seen just what he could do with them.

  ‘You found what you seek?’ he asked, his voice cautious.

  It was the question she had dreaded. This had been her initiative. She had finally prevailed upon the Khagan, and a fifth of the Legion’s entire strength had been diverted. Seven convoy raids had been orchestrated, clearing the ground for a major assault on the Kalium installation, all to prepare the way for the invasion of Herevail.

  ‘He is not here,’ she said, bluntly. She found it helped a little, not to mask the truth.

  Yesugei nodded, and there was not the slightest blame in his eyes. ‘And the one we find in the city? Will he live?’

  ‘Yes, he will live. He has been taken to the Sickle Moon.’ She ran her hands through her wiry hair, noticing as she did so how brittle it had become. ‘He knew him. He was wearing the robes of the House.’

  ‘Then that is good, szu. He may know more.’

  Ilya shrugged. ‘There will not be any more survivors now. I ordered Hoi-Xian to scan the spires in Vorlax. Nothing. They killed everything.’

  ‘That is what they do.’

  ‘Yes, that is what they do.’

  The distant crack of munitions carried on, steadily diminishing as the V Legion front established itself. More drop pods would be landing soon, bringing in the second wave of Tactical squads. Herevail would be scoured for the presence of the enemy. When the last of them were hunted down and slain, then the world would be abandoned again, its surviving facilities scuttled and any retrievable resources plundered for the use of the fleet. There were no thoughts of taking ground now – such considerations belonged to the past.

  ‘So, szu, do you require medicae attention?’ Yesugei asked.

  Ilya smiled wanly and looked up at him. ‘What would they do for me?’ Yesugei started to speak, but Ilya waved him silent. The time when she had crept around the Swordstorm in a state of petrified awe was long gone – the White Scars were like family to her now, a boisterous clan of younger brothers, no matter how lethal they could be when the mood came upon them. ‘You have no cure for age, I think.’

  As she said the words, the unwelcome realisation hit her again, one that had occurred to her with uncomfortable regularity over the last few months.

  I will not see the end to this war. And, even if I did, what would be the use of it? I was trained to serve in another Imperium, and that has gone forever.

  Yesugei lowered himself to her level. It was a clumsy manoeuvre in power armour. ‘Do not blame yourself,’ he said in his halting Gothic. ‘This worth trying. It may yet bear reward.’

  The optimism could get wearing. Even the ranking troops of the Legion had stopped mouthing platitudes at her, but Yesugei never lost faith.

  ‘How long before we can leave?’ she asked.

  Yesugei paused, consulting his retinal feeds. ‘Forty hours, if fate with us.’

  ‘I would prefer to move sooner.’

  ‘That risks leaving some alive.’

  Ilya grimaced, and looked up at the grimy ceiling of the narrow chamber. ‘And you absolutely have to kill them all, don’t you?’

  Yesugei withdraw his hand. ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘I suppose that is what you have become good at. And they are getting better at it too.’

  ‘Szu, you are tired.’

  ‘We could have made it!’ she cried, rising from her crouch, anger briefly driving out exhaustion. She balled her fists, futilely. ‘Two years ago, even one, there might have been a way. You could have left this slaughter and made it back to Terra. But no, that would not have satisfied honour. You had to keep going after them, again, again, again.’

  Yesugei remained on one knee, his expression never changing, waiting for the storm to abate.

  ‘He should have retreated earlier,’ said Ilya. ‘None of you told him. Tachseer just wants to keep fighting until something ends his agony. He needed to be told, then, that it was pointless to get hemmed in. This enemy is not stupid. Hell, it is the least stupid there ever has been. Did you not think Horus could have engineered this?’

  ‘We have discussed this before,’ said Yesugei, calmly.

  ‘Yes, and you did not listen then either.’ Ilya felt her cheeks flush, and forced her choler down. She was angry with herself as much as him. Her limbs felt like lead, her head hammered and her breath came in snatches. ‘After this, he will have to hear. If there is a way, any way, you must take it. When they counsel another raid, another offensive, then you must speak against it. They will listen to you.’

  ‘The Khagan has slowed the enemy.’

  ‘Yes, and at what cost? A third of our fighting strength?’ She shook her head. ‘Where are his brothers? Where is Lord Dorn? Where is Lord Russ? You are doing this alone, and it is killing you.’

  Yesugei looked at her, and there was nothing but benevolent concern in his scarred face. She knew instantly what he was thinking, for he had told her many times before, and it made her want to scream out in frustration.

  We will sacrifice ourselves, if it gives the Throneworld another day, another month, another year. We were made to do this, szu. We were made to die. You find this upsetting.

  But he did not say that.

  ‘It was you, who bring us to Herevail,’ he said. ‘You find this man. That is something. It will lead to something else.’

  Ilya let her fists unclench. She suddenly felt foolish, standing before Yesugei’s implacable reasonableness. Alone of them, he had not degraded. He was just as he had been when she had met him on Ullanor, back when the galaxy was laid open before humanity’s advance and all talk was of triumph.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, weakly, with no further strength to argue. ‘Yes, it may lead to something.’

  Yesugei reached out to her, placed a hand on her upper arm, supporting her. His dark skin cracked in a weak smile. ‘Judge not my brothers too harshly,’ he said. ‘This thing wears at souls. I had my own trial, on Vorkaudar. I failed it. In my dreams, sometimes, I see what I become. This is all of us now. He make them fight, because they need it. If they do not, fury devour them.’

  She leaned against his arm. She was so physically weak now. It had been five years ago when she had set off from the Munitorum sector headquarters, hunting the elusive primarch. It felt like twenty.

  ‘If we can leave this place sooner, we will,’ Yesugei told her. ‘Then we take the prize back to Swordstorm.’

  She nodded. She needed to sleep. She needed, just for a few hours, to forget. Herevail was a hateful charnel-world, just like every world was on the bloody path to the Throne, and the stench of it made her sicker.

  ‘I just hope it was worth it,’ she mumbled, feeling sure that it would not be.

  The cloud-hammer ran ahead of them, belching soot. Above and below it, Klefor’s atmosphere glowed in celestial splendour – a striated mass of fleshy pinks, pale greens and blues. Cirrus flecks spiralled away to the magnetic north – one of the few points of visual reference in a translucent, hazy ever-sky.

  ‘It is very ugly,’ voxed Sanyasa.

  ‘It is,’ Torghun agreed.

  ‘I think we should end it.’

  ‘I think you are right.’

  The cloud-hammer airship was still holding course, giving no sign it had detected them. It was a big one, fifty metres long
with a vane that hung down in the shimmering airs. Its eight air-turbines burned white-hot, keeping its iron-clad bulk aloft on a broken cushion of superheat. Its gunnery blisters cycled idly, scouring the eye-watering infinity of Klefor’s gaseous atmosphere.

  It was still far from its target. Once in place, the cloud-hammer’s hull would split open, revealing the rows of sleek bombs nestling in their racks, ready to be sent whistling down through the kilometres of steadily thickening air before striking far-off solid ground. Such weapons had been deployed remorselessly on Klefor, beating the fortress-cities of the Loyalist Alegorinda Stoneguard close to submission.

  But not this one. It had just a few minutes of active service left before it was suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, to be taken out of commission.

  Seven jetbikes spun out of the glare of the suns, keeping high above the cloud-hammer’s backwash. All were a dirty white, with blunt prows and outsized atmospheric engines. Once within visual range of the behemoth ahead of them, they split up, racing to get ahead of the rear gunners before they could draw a bead.

  The cloud-hammer picked them up and fell away to its left, lumbering awkwardly on swathes of down-draught. Projectile rounds pinged past the incoming jetbikes, aimed from the spherical gun-pods strung along its iron hull-plate.

  ‘Hai!’ shouted Sanyasa, swinging lazily away from a cloud of flak and burning in fast. Holian, Wai-Long and Ozad shot out beyond him, drawing more fire before pulling in close themselves. Inchig and Ahm came along with Torghun on the opposite flank, getting closer with every blurred second.

  ‘Remember what I told you about the engines,’ Torghun voxed, training his helm reticules and syncing with the jetbike’s underslung heavy bolter.

  ‘They are most dangerous,’ Sanyasa replied earnestly, ducking under another incoming burst.

  The cloud-hammer loomed above them as the jetbikes dropped down as one, falling like stones.

  ‘And hence…’ supplied Torghun.