"The Horus Heresy: Horus Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Abnett Dan)

FOUR

Summoned Ezekyle by name A winning hand

SHE HAD ASKED what the planet was called, and the crew of the shuttle had answered her Terra', which was hardly useful. Mersadie Olitan had spent the first twenty-eight years of her twenty-nine-year life on Terra, and this wasn't it.

The iterator sent to accompany her was of little better use. A modest, olive-skinned man in his late teens, the iterator's name was Memed, and he was possessed of a fearsome intellect and precocious genius. But the violent sub-orbital passage of the shuttle disagreed with his constitution, and he spent most of the trip unable to answer her questions because he was too occupied retching into a plastek bag.

The shuttle set down on a stretch of formal lawn between rows of spayed and pollarded trees, eight kilometres west of the High City. It was early evening, and stars already glimmered in the violet smudge at the sky's edges. At high altitude, ships passed over, their lights blinking. Mersadie stepped down the shuttle's ramp

onto the grass, breathing in the odd scents and slightly variant atmosphere of the world.

She stopped short. The air, oxygen rich, she imagined, was making her giddy, and that giddiness was further agitated by the thought of where she was. For the first time in her life she was standing on another soil, another world. It seemed to her quite momentous, as if a ceremonial band ought to be playing. She was, as far as she knew, one of the very first of the remembrancers to be granted access to the surface of the conquered world.

She turned to look at the distant city, taking in the panorama and committing it to her memory coils. She blink-clicked her eyes to store certain views digitally, noting that smoke still rose from the cityscape, though the fight had been over months ago.

4Ve are calling it Sixty-Three Nineteen.’ the iterator said, coming down the ramp behind her. Apparently, his queasy constitution had been stabilised by planet-fall. She recoiled delicately from the stink of sick on his breath.

'Sixty-Three Nineteen?' she asked.

'It being the ninteenth world the 63rd Expedition has brought to compliance.’ Memed said, 'though, of course, full compliance is not yet established here. The charter is yet to be ratified. Lord Governor Elect Rakris is having trouble forming a consenting coalition parliament, but Sixty-Three Nineteen will do. The locals call this world Terra, and we can't be having two of those, can we? As far as I see it, that was the root of the problem in the first place...'

'I see.’ said Mersadie, moving away. She touched her hand against the bark of one of the pollarded trees. It felt... real. She smiled to herself and blink-clicked it. Already, the basis of her account, with visual keys, was formulating in her enhanced mind. A personal angle,

that's what she'd take. She'd use the novelty and unfa-miliarity of her first planetfall as a theme around which her remembrance would hang.

'It's a beautiful evening,' the iterator announced, coming to stand beside her. He'd left his sloshing bags of vomit at the foot of the ramp, as if he expected someone to dispose of them for him.

The four army troopers delegated to her protection certainly weren't about to do it. Perspiring in their heavy velvet overcoats and shakos, their rifles slung over their shoulders, they closed up around her.

'Mistress Oliton?' the officer said. 'He's waiting.’

Mersadie nodded and followed them. Her heart was beating hard. This was going to be quite an occasion. A week before, her friend and fellow remembrancer Euphrati Keeler, who had emphatically achieved more than any of the remembrancers so far, had been on hand in the eastern city of Kaentz, observing crusader operations, when Maloghust had been found alive.

The Warmaster's equerry, believed lost when the ships of his embassy had been burned out of orbit, had survived, escaping via drop-pod. Badly injured, he had been nursed and protected by the family of a farmer in the territories outside Kaentz. Keeler had been right there, by chance, to pict record the equerry's recovery from the farmstead. It had been a coup. Her picts, so beautifully composed, had been flashed around the expedition fleet, and savoured by the Imperial retinues. Suddenly, Euphrati Keeler was being talked about. Suddenly, remembrancers weren't such a bad thing after all. With a few, brilliant clicks of her picter, Euphrati had advanced the cause of the remembrancers enormously.

Now Mersadie hoped she could do the same. She had been summoned. She still couldn't quite get over that. She had been summoned to the surface. That fact alone

would have been enough, but it was who had summoned her that really mattered. He had personally authorised her transit permit, and seen to the appointment of a bodyguard and one of Sindermann's best iterators.

She couldn't understand why. Last time they'd met, he'd been so brutal that she'd considered resigning and taking the first conveyance home.

He was standing on a gravel pathway between the tree rows, waiting for her. As she came up, the soldiers around her, she registered simple awe at the sight of him in his full plate. Gleaming white, with a trace of black around the edges. His helm, with its lateral horse-brush crest, was off, hung at his waist. He was a giant, two and a half metres tall.

She sensed the soldiers around her hesitating.

'Wait here.’ she told them, and they dropped back, relieved. A soldier of the Imperial army could be as tough as old boots, but he didn't want to tangle with an Astartes. Especially not one of the Luna Wolves, the mightiest of the mighty, the deadliest of all Legions.

'You too.’ she said to the iterator.

'Oh, right.’ Memed said, coming to a halt.

The summons was personal.’

'I understand.’ he said.

Mersadie walked up to the Luna Wolves captain. He towered over her, so much she had to shield her eyes with her hand against the setting sun to look up at him.

'Remembrancer.’ he said, his voice as deep as an oak-root.

'Captain. Before we start, I'd like to apologise for any offence I may have caused the last time we-'

!lf I'd taken offence, mistress, would I have summoned you here?'

'I suppose not.’

"You suppose right. You raised my hackles with your questions last time, but I admit I was too hard on you.’

'I spoke with unnecessary temerity-'

'It was that temerity that caused me to think of you.’ Loken replied. 'I can't explain further. I won't, but you should know that it was your very speaking out of turn that brought me here. Which is why I decided to have you brought here too. If that's what remembrancers do, you've done your job well.’

Mersadie wasn't sure what to say. She lowered her hand. The last rays of sunlight were in her eyes. 'Do you... do you want me to witness something? To remember something?'

'No.’ he replied curtly. 'What happens now happens privately, but I wanted you to know that, in part, it is because of you. When I return, if I feel it is appropriate, I will convey certain recollections to you. If that is acceptable.’

'I'm honoured, captain. I will await your pleasure.’

Loken nodded.

'Should I come with-' Memed began.

'No.’ said the Luna Wolf.

'Right.’ Memed said quickly, backing off. He went away to study a tree bole.

You asked me the right questions, and so showed me I was asking the right questions too.’ Loken told Mersadie.

'Did I? Did you answer them?'

'No.’ he replied. Wait here, please.’ he said, and walked away towards a box hedge trimmed by the finest topiarists into a thick, green bastion wall. He vanished from sight under a leafy arch.

Mersadie turned to the waiting soldiers.

'Know any games?' she asked.

They shrugged.

She plucked a deck of cards from her coat pocket. 'I've got one to show you.’ she grinned, and sat down on the grass to deal.

The soldiers put down their rifles and grouped around her in the lengthening blue shadows.

'Soldiers love cards.’ Ignace Karkasy had said to her before she left the flagship, right before he'd grinned and handed her the deck.

BEYOND THE HIGH hedge, an ornamental water garden lay in shadowy ruin. The height of the hedge and the neighbouring trees, just now becoming spiky black shapes against the rose sky, screened out what was left of the direct sunlight. The gloom upon the gardens was almost misty.

The garden had once been composed of rectangular ouslite slabs laid like giant flagstones, surrounding a series of square, shallow basins where lilies and bright water flowers had flourished in pebbly sinks fed by some spring or water source. Frail ghost ferns and weeping trees had edged the pools.

During the assault of the High City, shells or airborne munitions had bracketed the area, felling many of the plants and shattering a great number of the blocks. Many of the ouslite slabs had been dislodged, and several of the pools greatly increased in breadth and depth by the addition of deep, gouging craters.

But the hidden spring had continued to feed the place, filling the shell holes, and pouring overflow between dislodged stones.

The whole garden was a shimmering, flat pool in the gloom, out of which tangled branches, broken root balls and asymmetric shards of rock stuck up in miniature archipelagos.

Some of the intact blocks, slabs two metres long and half a metre thick, had been rearranged, and not randomly by the blasts. They had been levered out to form a walkway into the pool area, a stone jetty sunk almost flush with the water's surface.

Loken stepped out onto the causeway and began to follow it. The air smelled damp, and he could hear the clack of amphibians and the hiss of evening flies. Water flowers, their fragile colours almost lost in the closing darkness, drifted on the still water either side of his path.

Loken felt no fear. He was not built to feel it, but he registered a trepidation, an anticipation fliat made his hearts beat. He was, he knew, about to pass a threshold in his life, and he held faith that what lay beyond that threshold would be provident. It also felt right that he was about to take a profound step forward in his career. His world, his life, had changed greatly of late, with the rise of the Warmaster and the consequent alteration of the crusade, and it was only proper that he changed with it. A new phase. A new time.

He paused and looked up at the stars that were beginning to light in the purpling sky. A new time, and a glorious new time at that. Like him, mankind was on a threshold, about to step forward into greatness.

He had gone deep into the ragged sprawl of the water garden, far beyond the lamps of the landing zone behind the hedge, far beyond the lights of the city. The sun had vanished. Blue shadows surrounded him.

The causeway path came to an end. Water gleamed beyond. Ahead, across thirty metres of still pond, a little bank of weeping trees rose up like an atoll, silhouetted against the sky.

He wondered if he should wait. Then he saw a flicker of light amongst the trees across the water, a flutter of yellow flame that went as quickly as it came.

Loken stepped off the causeway into the water. It was shin deep. Ripples, hard black circles, radiated out across the reflective pool. He began to wade out towards the islet, hoping that his feet wouldn't suddenly encounter some unexpected depth of submerged crater and so lend comedy to this solemn moment.

He reached the bank of trees and stood in the shallows, gazing up into the tangled blackness.

'Give us your name.’ a voice called out of the darkness. It spoke the words in Cthonic, his home-tongue, the battle-argot of the Luna Wolves.

'Garviel Loken is my name to give.'

'And what is your honour?'

'I am Captain of the Tenth Company of the Sixteenth Legio Astartes.'

'And who is your sworn master?'

The Warmaster and the Emperor both.'

Silence followed, interrupted only by the splash of frogs and the noise of insects in the waterlogged thickets.

The voice spoke again. Two words. 'Illuminate him.’

There was a brief metallic scrape as the slot of a lantern was pulled open, and yellow flame-light shone out across him. Three figures stood on the tree-lined bank above him, one holding the lantern up.

Aximand. Torgaddon, lifting the lantern. Abaddon.

Like him, they wore their warrior armour, the dancing light catching bright off the curves of the plate. All were bareheaded, their crested helmets hung at their waists.

'Do you vouch that this soul is all he claims to be?' Abaddon asked. It seemed a strange question, as all three of them knew him well enough. Loken understood it was part of the ceremony.

1 so vouch.’ Torgaddon said. 'Increase the light.’

Abaddon and Aximand stepped away, and began to open the slots of a dozen other lanterns hanging from the surrounding boughs. When they had finished, a golden light suffused them all. Torgaddon set his own lamp on the ground.

The trio stepped forward into the water to face Loken. Tarik Torgaddon was the tallest of them, his trickster

grin never leaving his face. 'Loosen up, Garvi.’ he chuckled. 'We don't bite.’

Loken flashed a smile back, but he felt unnerved. Partly, it was the high status of these three men, but he also hadn't expected the induction to be so ritualistic.

Horns Aximand, Captain of Fifth Company, was the youngest and shortest of them, shorter than Loken. He was squat and robust, like a guard dog. His head was shaved smooth, and oiled, so that the lamp-light gleamed off it. Aximand, like many in the younger generations of the Legion, had been named in honour of the commander, but only he used the name openly. His noble face, with wide-set eyes and firm, straight nose, uncannily resembled the visage of the Warmaster, and this had earned him the affectionate name 'Little Horns'. Littie Horus Aximand, the devil-dog in war, the master strategist. He nodded greeting to Loken.

Ezekyle Abaddon, first captain of the Legion, was a towering brute. Somewhere between Loken's height and Torgaddon's, he seemed greater than both due to the cresting top-knot adorning his otherwise shaved scalp. When his helm was off, Abaddon bound his mane of black hair up in a silver sleeve that made it stand proud like a palm tree or a fetish switch on his crown. He, like Torgaddon, had been in the Mournival from its inception. He, like Torgaddon and Aximand both, shared the same aspect of straight nose and wide-spaced eyes so reminiscent of the Warmaster, though only in Aximand were the features an actual likeness. They might have been brothers, actual womb brothers, if they had been sired in the old way. As it was, they were brothers in terms of gene-source and martial fraternity.

Now Loken was to be their brother too.

There was a curious incidence in the Luna Wolves Legion of Astartes bearing a facial resemblance to their primarch. This had been put down to conformities in

the gene-seed, but still, those who echoed Horus in their features were considered especially lucky, and were known by all the men as 'the Sons of Horus'. It was a mark of honour, and it often seemed the case that 'Sons' rose faster and found better favour than the rest. Certainly, Loken knew for a fact, all the previous members of the Mournival had been 'Sons of Horus'. In this respect, he was unique. Loken owed his looks to an inheritance of the pale, craggy bloodline of Cthonia. He was the first non-'Son' to be elected to this elite inner

circle.

Though he knew it couldn't be the case, he felt as if he had achieved this eminence through simple merit, rather than the atavistic whim of physiognomy.

This is a simple act,' Abaddon said, regarding Loken. "You have been vouched for here, and proposed by great men before that. Our lord, and the Lord Dorn have both put your name forward.' 'As have you, sir, so I understand,' Loken said. Abaddon smiled. 'Few match you in soldiering, Garviel. I've had my eye on you, and you proved my interest when you took the palace ahead of me.'

'Luck.'

There's no such thing.’ said Aximand gruffly.

'He only says that because he never has any,' Torgad-

don grinned.

'I only say that because there's no such thing,' Aximand objected. 'Science has shown us this. There is no luck. There is only success or the lack of it.'

'Luck,' said Abaddon. 'Isn't that just a word for modesty? Garviel is too modest to say "Yes, Ezekyle, I bested you, I won the palace, and triumphed where you did not," for he feels that would not become him. And I admire modesty in a man, but the truth is, Garviel, you are here because you are a warrior of superlative talent. We welcome you.'

Thank you, sir.’ Loken said.

'A first lesson, then.’ Abaddon said. 'In the Mournival, we are equals. There is no rank. Before the men, you may refer to me as "sir" or "first captain", but between us, there is no ceremony. I am Ezekyle.’

'Horus.’ said Aximand.

Tarik.’ said Torgaddon.

'I understand.’ Loken answered, 'Ezekyle.’

The rales of our confratern are simple.’ Aximand said, 'and we will get to them, but there is no structure to the duties expected of you. You should prepare yourself to spend more time with the command staff, and function at the Warmaster's side. Have you a proxy in mind to oversee the Tenth in your absence?'

Yes, Horus.’ Loken said.

Vipus?' Torgaddon smiled.

'I would.’ Loken said, 'but the honour should be Jubal's. Seniority and rank.’

Aximand shook his head. 'Second lesson. Go with your heart. If you trust Vipus, make it Vipus. Never compromise. Jubal's a big boy. He'll get over it.’

There will be other duties and obligations, special duties...' Abaddon said. 'Escorts, ceremonies, embassies, planning meetings. Are you sanguine about that? Your life will change.’

'I am sanguine.’ Loken nodded.

Then we should mark you in.’ Abaddon said. He stepped past Loken and waded forward into the shallow lake, away from the light of the lamps. Aximand followed him. Torgaddon touched Loken on the arm and ushered him along as well.

They strode out into the black water and formed a ring. Abaddon bade them stand stock-still until the water ceased to lap and ripple. It became mirror-smooth. The bright reflection of the rising moon wavered on the water between them.

The one fixture that has always witnessed an induction,' Abaddon said. The moon. Symbolic of our Legion name. No one has ever entered the Mournival, except by die light of a moon.'

Loken nodded.

This seems a poor, false one.’ Aximand muttered, looking up at the sky, 'but it will do. The image of the moon must also always be reflected. In the first days of the Mournival, close on two hundred years ago, it was favoured to have the chosen moon's image captured in a scrying dish or polished mirror. We make do now.

Water suffices.'

Loken nodded again. His feeling of being unnerved had returned, sharp and unwelcome. This was a ritual, and it smacked dangerously of the practices of corpse-whisperers and spiritualists. The entire process seemed shot through with superstition and arcane worship, the sort of spiritual unreason Sindermann had taught him

to rail against.

He felt he had to say something before it was too late. 'I am a man of faith,' he said softly, 'and that faith is the truth of the Imperium. I will not bow to any fane or acknowledge any spirit. I own only the empirical clarity of Imperial Truth.'

The other three looked at him.

'I told you he was straight up and down.’ Torgaddon

said.

Abaddon and Aximand laughed.

There are no spirits here, Garviel.’ Abaddon said, resting a hand reassuringly against Loken's arm.

"We're not trying to ensorcel you.’ Aximand chuckled.

This is just an old habit, a practice. The way it has always been done.’ Torgaddon said. "We keep it up for no other reason than it seems to make it matter. It's... pantomime, I suppose.’

'Yes, pantomime.’ agreed Abaddon.

%Ve want this moment to be special to you, Garviel.’ Aximand said. "We want you to remember it. We believe it's important to mark an induction with a sense of ceremony and occasion, so we use the old ways. Perhaps that's just theatrical of us, but we find it reassuring.’

'I understand.’ Loken said.

'Do you?' Abaddon asked. You're going to make a pledge to us. An oath as firm as any oath of moment you have ever undertaken. Man to man. Cold and clear and very, very secular. An oath of brothership, not some occult pact. We stand together in the light of a moon, and swear a bond that only death will break.’

'I understand.’ Loken repeated. He felt foolish. 'I want to take the oath.’

Abaddon nodded. 'Let's mark you, then. Say the names of the others.’

Torgaddon bowed his head and recited nine names. Since the foundation of the Mournival, only twelve men had held the unofficial rank, and three of those were present. Loken would be the thirteenth.

'Keyshen. Minos. Berabaddon. Litus. Syrakul. Der-adaeddon. Karaddon. Janipur. Sejanus.’

'Lost in glory.’ Aximand and Abaddon said as one voice. 'Mourned by the Mournival. Only in death does duty end.’

A bond that only death will break. Loken thought about Abaddon's words. Death was the single expectation of each and every Astartes. Violent death. It was not an if, it was a when. In the service of the Imperium, each of them would eventually sacrifice his life. They were phlegmatic about it. It would happen, it was that simple. One day, tomorrow, next year. It would happen.

There was an irony, of course. To all intents and purposes, and by every measurement known to the gene-scientists and gerontologists, the Astartes, like the primarchs, were immortals. Age would not wither them,

nor bring them down. They would live forever... five thousand years, ten thousand, beyond even that into some unimaginable millennium. Except for the scythe

of war.

Immortal, but not invulnerable. Immortality was a by-product of their Astartes strengths. Yes, they might live forever, but they would never get the chance. Immortality was a by-product of their Astartes strengths, but those strengths had been gene-built for combat. They had been born immortal only to die in war. That was the way of it. Brief, bright lives. Like Hastur Sejanus, the warrior Loken was replacing. Only the beloved Emperor, who had left the warring behind, would truly

live forever.

Loken tried to imagine the future, but the image would not form. Death would wipe them all from history. Not even the great First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon would survive forever. There would be a time when Abaddon no longer waged bloody war across the territories of humanity.

Loken sighed. That would be a sad day indeed. Men would cry out for Abaddon's return, but he would never

come.

He tried to picture the manner of his own death. Fabled, imaginary combats flashed through his mind. He imagined himself at the Emperor's side, fighting some great, last stand against an unknown foe. Pri-march Horus would be there, of course. He had to be. It wouldn't be the same without him. Loken would battle, and die, and perhaps even Horus would die, to save the Emperor at the last.

Glory. Glory, like he'd never known. Such an hour would become so ingrained in the minds of men that it would be the cornerstone of all that came after. A great battle, upon which human culture would be based.

Then, briefly, he imagined another death. Alone, far away from his comrades and his Legion, dying from cruel wounds on some nameless rock, his passing as memorable as smoke.

Loken swallowed hard. Either way, his service was to the Emperor, and his service would be true to the end.

The names are said,' Abaddon intoned, 'and of them, we hail Sejanus, latest to fall.'

'Hail, Sejanus!' Torgaddon and Aximand cried.

'Garviel Loken.’ Abaddon said, looking at Loken. 'We ask you to take Sejanus's place. How say you?'

'I will do this thing gladly.’

'Will you swear an oath to uphold the confratern of the Mournival?'

'I will.’ said Loken.

'Will you accept our brothership and give it back as a brother?'

'I will.’

'Will you be true to the Mournival to the end of your life?'

'I will.’

'Will you serve the Luna Wolves for as long as they bear that proud name?'

'I will.’ said Loken.

'Do you pledge to the commander, who is primarch over us all?' asked Aximand.

'I so pledge.’

'And to the Emperor above all primarchs, everlasting?'

'I so pledge.’

'Do you swear to uphold the truth of the Imperium of Mankind, no matter what evil may assail it?' Torgaddon asked.

'I swear.’ said Loken.

'Do you swear to stand firm against all enemies, alien and domestic?'

This I swear.'

'And in war, kill for the living and kill for the dead?'

'Kill for the living! Kill for the dead!' Abaddon and Aximand echoed.

1 swear.'

'As the moon lights us.’ Abaddon said, 'will you be a true brother to your brother Astartes?'

'I will.'

'No matter the cost?'

'No matter the cost.'

'Your oath is taken, Garviel. Welcome into the Mour-nival. Tarik? Illuminate us.'

Torgaddon pulled a vapour flare from his belt and fired it off into the night sky. It burst in a bright umbrella of light, white and harsh.

As the sparks of it rained slowly down onto the waters, the four warriors hugged and whooped, clasping hands and slapping backs. Torgaddon, Aximand and Abaddon took turns to embrace Loken.

"You're one of us now,' Torgaddon whispered as he drew Loken close. 'I am.’ said Loken.

LATER, ON THE islet, by the light of the lanterns, they branded Loken's helm above the right eye with the crescent mark of the new moon. This was his badge of office. Aximand's helm bore the brand of the half moon, Torgaddon's the gibbous, and Abaddon's the full. The four stage cycle of a moon was shared between their wargear. So the Moumival was denoted.

They sat on the islet, talking and joking, until the sun rose again.

THEY WERE PLAYING cards on the lawn by the light of chemical lanterns. The simple game Mersadie had proposed had long been eclipsed by a punitive betting

game suggested by one of the soldiers. Then the iterator, Memed, had joined them, and taken great pains to teach them an old version of cups.

Memed shuffled and dealt the cards with marvellous dexterity. One of the soldiers whisded mockingly. 'A real card hand we have here.’ the officer remarked.

This is an old game.’ Memed said, 'which I'm sure you will enjoy. It dates back a long way, its origins lost in the very beginnings of Old Night. I have researched it, and I understand it was popular amongst the peoples of Ancient Merica, and also the tribes of the Franc.’

He let them play a few dummy hands until they had the way of it, but Mersadie found it hard to remember what spread won over what. In the seventh turn, believing she had the game's measure at last, she discarded a hand which she believed inferior to the cards Memed was holding.

'No, no.’ he smiled. You win.’

'But you have four of a kind again.’

He laid out her cards. 'Even so, you see?'

She shook her head. 'It's all too confusing.’

The suits correspond.’ he said, as if beginning a lecture, 'to the layers of society back then. Swords stand for the warrior aristocracy; cups, or chalices, for the ancient priesthood; diamonds, or coins, for the merchant classes; and baton clubs for the worker caste...'

Some of the soldiers grumbled.

'Stop iterating to us.’ Mersadie said.

'Sorry.’ Memed grinned. 'Anyway, you win. I have four alike, but you have ace, monarch, empress and knave. A mournival.’

'What did you just say?' Mersadie Oliton asked, sitting up.

'Mournival.’ Memed replied, reshuffling the old, square-cut cards. 'It's the old Franc word for the four royal cards. A winning hand.’

Behind them, away beyond a high wall of hedge invisible in the still night, a flare suddenly banged off and lit the sky white.

'A winning hand.’ Mersadie murmured. Coincidence, and something she privately believed in, called fate, had just opened the future up to her.

It looked very inviting indeed.