The Silent War Page 15

  He nods, looking back down over the sprawling immensity of the Palace. Far below, a towering siege Titan is lifting vast ouslite blocks from the Dhawalagiri elevation, the workmanship too precious to be destroyed or built over. He wonders if that stone will ever see the light of day again.

  ‘Yes, I have something to give you,’ says Nagasena.

  ‘Here?’ replies Amita.

  ‘No,’ says Nagasena. ‘In my private chambers.’

  ‘You couldn’t have summoned me there instead of making me climb all these stairs?’

  ‘My apologies, Amita,’ says Nagasena. ‘I lingered here longer than I intended.’

  ‘That doesn’t make my old bones feel any better.’

  Nagasena smiles. In any other household, Amita’s brusqueness would see her dismissed, but her blunt honesty matches his adherence to the truth over all things.

  ‘Have I been a good master to serve?’ he asks.

  Nagasena likes the fact that she takes the time to think about her answer instead of simply voicing a platitude.

  ‘You have always been courteous and grateful. The staff think you cold, but you are just sorrowful. More so now.’

  Nagasena nods. It is a fair assessment.

  ‘Come with me,’ he says, moving past her to begin the long descent of the tower. Amita follows, and they emerge into the rose garden where he wishes he could have spent more time.

  They follow the hypaethral around the garden and into the well-proportioned chambers of the villa. He cannot call it his home, not any more. Not now that Lord Dorn has charged him with this last hunt.

  He opens the doors to his private chambers, and beckons Amita to enter. She reluctantly follows him within, barely registering the silk hanging scrolls depicting ancient maps of long-forgotten realms: Atlantea, Hyperborea and Dalriada.

  Nagasena makes his way to shelves laden with papers and heavy textbooks. He pulls out a wax-sealed document and sits cross-legged behind his narrow desk. Writing implements are arranged neatly on its polished surface and he beckons Amita to sit as he breaks the seal.

  Nagasena dips a sharpened eagle feather in a pot of ink and signs his name at the bottom of the document. He turns the paper around and holds the quill out to Amita.

  ‘Sign your name next to mine and you will be the owner of this villa,’ he says.

  ‘You’re giving me the villa?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ she asks.

  ‘You have more than earned it.’

  Amita does not reach for the quill.

  ‘You are going on another hunt?’ she asks.

  ‘I am,’ he confirms, placing the quill on the desk.

  He rises smoothly and runs his hand over the wall behind him in a series of complex gestures. It slides back, revealing a deep compartment filled with gleaming armour and racked weapons. It is an armoury worthy of a Legion quartermaster.

  ‘Who is it this time?’

  Nagasena removes a hand-tooled long-las and a silver-chased volkite pistol, weapons capable of harming the man he is to hunt. These are not implements of pursuit and capture, but execution.

  ‘A Luna Wolf.’

  ‘A warrior of the Legions?’

  ‘A warrior of Horus’ Legion,’ clarifies Nagasena.

  He slings the long-las over his shoulder and holsters the pistol before reverently lifting a scabbard of lacquered wood, jade and mother of pearl from a rack of rich cherrywood. The sword’s handle is wound in leather of the palest cream and its blade was crafted with love and an attention to detail that no machine will ever replicate.

  Nagasena knows the weapon as Shoujiki.

  ‘You do not expect to return,’ she says.

  ‘A reasonable expectation,’ he says.

  ‘Who gives you this hunt?’

  ‘Lord Dorn.’

  She nods, knowing Nagasena could not have refused a primarch’s order.

  ‘If I am to die on this hunt, I do not wish to leave loose ends in my wake. The villa is to be yours. This is my wish.’

  Amita pushes the document away. ‘If I am told you are dead, I will sign it, but not before.’

  Nagasena is humbled by her fierce devotion and belts Shoujiki around his waist. His hand settles naturally on the textured grip.

  ‘Sign it,’ he says softly. ‘Even if I kill this man, I do not think I will return.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the mountains have said goodbye,’ says Nagasena.

  Amita nods, accepting his cryptic answer.

  ‘This Luna Wolf, does he have a name?’ she asks.

  ‘His name is Severian,’ says Nagasena.

  The wolf was in the fold, but none of the sheep had seen him or even suspected he was there. The hab-tenement in which Severian made his lair existed in a perpetual state of incremental collapse. Tremors shook the dust from its walls with every hammer blow of titanic machinery on the construction fields before the Palace.

  Two thousand people crowded the building, taking what privacy they could with tarpaulins hung on a complex web of intersecting clotheslines. Severian was a ghost, unseen and unheard over the building’s moans and the crack and snap of the partitioning tarps.

  Three days he had hidden between the walls and in the rotten ceiling spaces of the tenement, listening to the static hiss in his helmet and fighting the urge to keep moving. The hunters expected him to try and break the cordon around the Petitioners’ City. They hoped he would flee the slaughter at the Temple of Woe, but stillness was his cloak now, not action.

  Hundreds of Black Sentinels had flooded the city, sweeping through the despairing streets in search of him.

  He had seen no sign of Imperial Fists or Custodians.

  What could be important enough to keep them from the hunt?

  The mortal soldiers moved through the city like beaters on a game hunt, but it was simplicity itself to evade them.

  These men had never hunted a Luna Wolf before, and they–

  No, not a Luna Wolf, a Son of Horus…

  The Warmaster was no stranger to the value of ego displays, but even he had balked at the renaming of an entire Space Marine Legion in his honour.

  It seemed that his reluctance had now been overcome.

  Severian still thought of himself as a Luna Wolf; the lone predator hunting in the gloaming light of the moon. A Son of Horus would fight his way through this city, but only a Luna Wolf could pass unknown through its streets.

  He still wore the armour he had stripped from the Thunder Warrior’s enforcers. The plates were ill-fitting, fashioned in an age where immediacy was a greater concern than functionality. The helm-vox buzzed with static, bubbling with the ghost voices of long-dead warriors.

  He could tune out the static, but it was harder to ignore the voices of the people around him.

  The subject on everyone’s lips was the Warmaster’s rebellion and the massacre on Isstvan V. Trembling mouths told and retold tales of murder and atrocity. Lies and speculation masqueraded as fact.

  But every taleteller agreed that Horus was a betrayer, a vile and faithless son.

  Severian could not bring himself to believe his primarch had turned against the Emperor. What reason could the Warmaster have to embark upon such a calamitous course? Severian could think of nothing grand enough to warrant betrayal, his mind rejecting every possibility as too petty, too improbable or too mortal to justify a galaxy-wide rebellion.

  Atharva had seemed so certain of Horus’ betrayal, but that was always the way with the Crimson King’s sons. They lived for certainty, but Atharva was dead, a primarch’s bullet in his brain. What did his certitudes count for now?

  Severian heard the crunch of approaching footsteps and slowed his breathing, letting himself merge with the rotting lath and plaster of the ceiling. The footstep
s stopped beneath him; three men carrying plastic drums to be filled with water from the pump. Severian’s ability to remain hidden in plain sight was superlative, an affinity with shadows that came to him as naturally as breathing.

  It was a risk concealing himself in an area frequented by the people that called this block home, but the risks were outweighed by the morsels of information he could gather.

  The first man, thickset and with the build of a metalworker, placed his drum beneath the pump and began working the handle. The water that came out was brackish-looking and gritty.

  The other men took turns at the pump, and their talk was banal and mundane. Inevitably, their discussion turned towards the fighting in the Isstvan System.

  ‘It’s that bastard, Horus,’ said the metalworker. ‘He’s the one that started this. Changing the name of his Legion like that. Too big an ego that one, and no mistake.’

  ‘I reckon you’re right,’ agreed a skeletal man with eyes as big as saucers and whose sweat stank of an addict’s hunger.

  ‘What did the Emperor expect?’ asked a balding man with a hooked nose and a withered right arm. ‘I mean, you give a man that much power and it’s bound to go to his head.’

  The men nodded at the sagacity of their companion.

  The metalworker spoke again. ‘Yeah, you get that many guns and all you want to do is shoot ’em off, right? Look at Isstvan Three, wiped out with virus bombs. Madness.’

  ‘I heard Horus killed three of his brothers single-handed,’ said the addict. ‘Vulkan, Corax and Leman Russ. All dead as dust.’

  ‘The Wolf King weren’t on Isstvan,’ said the balding man. ‘It’s Ferrus Manus that’s dead. They say the Phoenician killed him. Cut his head right off.’

  ‘Nah,’ said the thin man. ‘I don’t reckon anyone could kill that tough old bastard. Got bones of iron, he has. How you gonna cut through that?’

  ‘Horus could do it,’ said the metalworker. ‘Got bad blood in him, ain’t he? Everyone says so. I heard he got poisoned. Some cult got him sick and twisted his mind. Shoura says she heard Horus is one of this cult now, him and all his warriors. Sacrifice women and children, I hear. Throw them into the fires and let them burn in the name of some god or other.’

  The man leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Yeah, no better than savages now, she says. Cannibals they are, eating the flesh of the dead and making trophies from their bones.’

  Severian ground his teeth. To hear his beloved primarch and Legion being slandered with such obvious nonsense was almost more than he could stand. His fingers tightened on the rusting rebars and pipes, and the metal squealed as it buckled beneath his strength. The metalworker looked up, and their eyes met through the sodden ceiling structure.

  Severian willed the man not to see him, focusing every ounce of his determination. The man looked away with a curious expression on his face, as though suddenly bewildered. Severian exhaled softly, seeing his breath feather the air in front of him.

  ‘I heard that said too,’ the balding man agreed. ‘They say Horus has gone mad, that he’s been… you know… possessed.’

  The others laughed.

  ‘Possessed?’ said the addict, his voice reedy and laced with need.

  ‘Y’know, by aliens or something,’ said the metalworker.

  Severian could stand it no longer, and dropped to the floor with a heavy crash. The metalworker and the addict jumped back from the pump in shock, but the balding man turned tail and ran for his life. Severian’s hand shot out and a piece of brickwork, no larger than a pebble, flashed from his palm.

  It struck the balding man like a bullet from a slingshot. The impact spun him around, and he collapsed with an egg-sized lump on the back of his skull. Drool and blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘You killed him,’ breathed the metalworker.

  ‘No,’ said Severian, drawing the serrated knife belted at his hip. ‘Though he deserves death for disrespecting the Warmaster.’

  ‘You’re him, ain’t ya?’ said the addict, wringing his hands and worrying at the nailbeds of his fingers. ‘You’re the one they’re all looking for.’

  Severian ignored him.

  ‘You’re like ignorant children,’ snapped Severian. ‘You know nothing of Lord Horus, the battles he won and the blood he spilled for his father. My Legion waged war across the heavens for two hundred years, conquering the galaxy in the name of humanity. And this is the thanks we get? I should kill you all. You ought to be building statues of the Warmaster and shrines to his deeds. Horus has won the galaxy for you, not the Emperor.’

  The addict crumpled to his knees, weeping and pawing at Severian’s boots. The Luna Wolf kicked him away in disgust, drawing a cry of pain from the man’s lips. The metalworker swallowed hard and looked up at Severian.

  ‘Horus is a traitor,’ said the man. ‘The Emperor said so…’

  Severian’s fist drew back, his arm quivering with tension. One tap and the man’s skull would be in a hundred fragments.

  ‘The Warmaster is the Emperor’s beloved son,’ said Severian through gritted teeth. ‘These things you say… They cannot be true. I would know of it.’

  The metalworker fell to his knees with his hands laced before him as though in prayer. His terror sickened Severian. The emotion was too unknown to him and made Severian want to kill him even more.

  ‘You are what we fought for?’ laughed Severian, the sound as anguished as it was derisive.

  He leaned down and placed the tip of the knife against the man’s chest.

  ‘Your kind doesn’t deserve to inherit the galaxy,’ he said. ‘Your life isn’t worth one drop of Legion blood.’

  ‘Please… don’t… kill me,’ sobbed the man.

  Severian sheathed his knife and looked at the man with the eyes of a god who stared upon his failed creation.

  He turned away in disgust, robbed of certainty and adrift on unknown tides.

  The light was falling away to evening as Severian left the hab-tenement. He moved through narrow streets taken by decay, avoiding the thoroughfares and arteries of the Petitioners’ City. Every junction would have a complement of soldiers stationed at its corners and rooftops.

  His steps were sure and swift. A lone wolf, he owned the silence and made the shadows his own. There were few people abroad in these narrow alleyways, only the occasional footpad or lost soul, and they wisely kept out of his way.

  He did not kill as he went. A body was a trail, but a frightened man kept his own counsel.

  The heavy-handed approach of the soldiers sweeping the streets was working in Severian’s favour. Word of the Black Sentinels’ brutal search tactics had spread quickly, and now no one was admitting to anything.

  They had no clue where he was heading.

  The villa of the Emperor’s Warmason was a shining bauble atop the granite scarp above the Temple of Woe. Severian’s route had taken him in a looping course away from his pursuers and back around to where he had begun, ready to climb that cliff to where the Warmason kept his orbit-capable flyer.

  Vadok Singh, like many of his gene-bred bloodline, favoured elevated positions from which to observe his works and it was from here that Severian would begin his journey back to his Legion.

  To prove the falsehood of the accusations levelled against his primarch or to call him to account for his crimes.

  Severian paused at an irregular confluence of narrow streets of corrugated steel and looted cinderblocks. He pressed himself to the wall as he heard the tramp of booted feet from his left. Muffled voices echoed with a curious metallic quality from the walls, and Severian picked out five speakers. A combat squad, which meant there was likely another one nearby. Severian crouched like a runner awaiting the starting pistol and closed his eyes, letting his hearing take up the sensory slack.

  There, behind him, moving through the building to his rear.r />
  They moved carefully, which meant they knew he was nearby.

  A crackle of vox, a hushed voice calling for backup.

  Moisture dripped from above, and Severian looked up to see a young girl leaning from a scaffolded trellis. Dressed in a simple green shift with a red flower pinned to her breast, she saw him and waved. Severian watched the play of muscles around her mouth and knew she was about to call out to him.

  His hand closed on a sharp-edged rock. He could put it through her skull before she spoke, angling his throw so she would fall back into her dwelling. Instead he lifted a finger to his lips and shook his head.

  He saw panic in her eyes as she retreated into the building, and shook his head in disbelief.

  Legion warriors were avatars of battle, but when had they become figures of fear to human beings? He remembered the cheering multitudes at the expeditionary fields as the marching hosts of Space Marines had left for a life of war. The crowds had laughed and cheered them, but those days were gone.

  Now they were murderous killers, savage weapons that could turn and blood their creators as easily as their foes.

  The spaces between the buildings were hung with wet sheets like the battle flags won by the Legion in its earliest days; the reclamation of the asteroid belt, the taking of the outer planets and the first push out into the wilderness of space beyond the solar system.

  How many more victory banners were now hung in the Museum of Conquest aboard the Vengeful Spirit? What glories had passed Severian by as he rotted on Terra as little more than a ceremonial figurehead of wars he would never fight?

  Severian let out a soft sigh, forcing down the random jumping of his thoughts when there was killing in the offing. He calculated the distance between him and the first man in the approaching squad. Severian counted down until a booted foot and the wavering barrel of a carbine appeared around the corner.

  He swung out, keeping the Black Sentinel’s body between him and the rest of the squad. A pistoning jab crushed the man’s skull. He spun around the falling body, going low and swinging his leg out in a scything sweep that felled the two soldiers behind him. They dropped and Severian slammed his fists against their chests, smashing their ribs down through their lungs and stealing the air from their screams.