False Gods

Old Night was drawing to a close and, thanks to heroes like the Warmaster, the first rays of a new dawn were breaking on the horizon.

All that was under threat now, and Aximand knew he had made the right choice in allowing the others to take Horus to Davin. The Lodge of the Serpent would heal the Warmaster, and if that involved powers he might once have condemned, then so be it.

The die was cast and all he had left to cling to was his faith that the Warmaster would be restored to them. He smiled as he remembered something the Warmaster had

said to him on the subject of faith. The Warmaster had typically delivered his words of wisdom at a wholly inappropriate time – right before they had leapt from the belly of a screaming Stormbird into the green skin city on Ullanor.

'When you have come to the edge of all mat you know and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen,’ the Warmaster had told him.

'And what are they?' he had asked.

'That there will be something solid to stand on or you'll be taught to fly,’ laughed Horus as he jumped.

The memory made the tears come all the harder as the huge iron gate of the embarkation deck rumbled closed behind them and the Astartes marched towards the War-master's waiting Stormbird.

TWELVE

Agitprop

Brothers in suspicion

Serpent and moon

Slipping across the page like a snake, the nib of Ignace Karkasy's pen moved as though it had a mind of its own. For all the conscious thought he was putting into the words, it might as well have. The muse was well and truly upon him, his stream of consciousness flowing into a river of blood as he retold the diabolical events on the embarkation deck. The meter played in his head like a symphony, every stanza of every canto slipping into place as if there could be no other possible arrangement of verse.

Even in his heyday of Ocean Poems or Reflections and Odes he had not felt this inspired. In fact, now that he looked back on them, he hated them for their frippery, their unconscionable navel gazing and irrelevance to the galaxy at large. These words, these thoughts that now poured from him, this was what mattered, and he cursed that it had taken him this long to discover it.

The truth was what mattered. Captain Loken had told him as much, but he hadn't heard him, not really. The

verses he'd written since Loken had begun his sponsor­ship of him were paltry things, unworthy of the man who had won the Ethiopic Laureate, but that was chang­ing now.

After the bloodbath on the embarkation deck, he'd returned to his quarters, grabbed a bottle of Terran wine and made his way to the observation deck. Find­ing it thronged with wailing lunatics, he'd repaired to the Retreat, knowing that it would be empty.

The words had poured out of him in a flood of righteous indignation, his metaphors bold and his lyric unflinching from the awful brutality he'd wit­nessed. He'd already used up three pages of the Bondsman, his fingers blotted with ink and his poet's soul on fire.

'Everything I've done before this was prologue,’ he whispered as he wrote.

Karkasy paused in his work as he pondered the dilemma: the truth was useless if no one could hear it. The facilities set aside for the remembrancers included a presswork where they could submit their work for large-scale circulation. It was common knowledge that much of what that passed through it was vetted and censored, and so few made use of it. Karkasy certainly couldn't, considering the content of his new poetry.

A slow smile spread across his jowly features and he reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper – one of Euphrati Keeler's Lectitio Divinitatus pamphlets – and spread it out flat on the table before him with the heel of his palm.

The ink was smeared and the paper reeked of ammonia, clearly the work of a cheap mechanical bulk-printer of some kind. If Euphrati could get the use of one, then so could he.

***

Loken permitted Tybalt Marr to torch the body of Eugan Temba before they left the bridge. His fellow cap­tain, streaked with gore and filth, played the burning breath of a flame unit over the monstrous corpse until nothing but ashen bone remained. It was small satisfac­tion for the death of a brother, not nearly enough, but it would have to do. Leaving behind the smouldering remains, they retraced their footsteps back through the Glory of Terra.

The light was fading on Davin's moon by the time they reached the outside, the planet above a pale yellow orb hanging low in the dusky sky. Loken carried the anathame in its gleaming wooden casket, and his war­riors followed him from the wreck without any words spoken.

A great rumbling vibration gripped the moon as a trio of towering columns of light and smoke climbed towards the heavens from the Imperial deployment zone where this whole misadventure had started. Loken watched the incredible spectacle of the war machines of the Legio Mortis returning to their armoured berths in orbit, and silently thanked their crews for their aid in the fight against the dead things.

Soon all that was visible of the Titans' carriers was a diffuse glow on the horizon, and only the lap of water and the low growling of the waiting Thunderhawk's engines disturbed the silence. The desolate mudflats were empty for kilometres around, and as Loken made his way down the slope of rubble, he felt like the loneli­est man in the galaxy.

Some kilometres away, he could see specks of blue light following the Titan carriers as Army transports fer­ried the last remaining soldiers back to their bulk transporters.

'We'll soon be done here, eh?' said Torgaddon.

'I suppose,’ agreed Loken. The sooner the better,’

'How do you suppose that thing got here?'

Loken didn't have to ask what his brother meant, and shook his head, unwilling to share his suspicions with Torgaddon yet. As much as he loved him, Tarik had a big mouth, and Loken didn't want to put his quarry to flight.

'I don't know, Tarik,’ said Loken as they reached the ground and made their way towards the Thunderhawk's lowered assault ramp. 'I don't think we'll ever know.'

'Come on, Garvi, it's me!' laughed Torgaddon. 'You're so straight up and down, and that makes you a really ter­rible liar. I know you've got some idea of what happened. So come on, spill it.'

'I can't, Tarik, I'm sorry,' said Loken. 'Not yet anyway. Trust me. I know what I'm doing.'

'Do you really?'

'I'm not sure,’ admitted Loken. 'I think so. Throne, I wish the Warmaster were here to ask,’

'Well he's not,’ stated Torgaddon, 'so you're stuck with me,’

Loken stepped onto the ramp, grateful to be off the marshy surface of the moon, and turned to face Torgad­don. You're right, I should tell you, and I will, soon. I just need to figure some things out first,’

'Look, I'm not stupid, Garvi,’ said Torgaddon, leaning in close so that none of the others could hear. 'I know the only way this thing could have got here is if some­one in the expedition brought it. It