False Gods (8 page)

Abaddon roared in anger and Loken grabbed his arms, holding him at bay as Karkasy squealed in terror and bolted from the yurt. Abaddon pushed Loken back, the first captain’s massive strength easily greater than his; Loken tumbled away, but he had achieved his objective in redirecting Abaddon’s wrath.

‘You would raise arms against a brother, Loken?’ bellowed Abaddon.

‘I just saved you from making a big mistake, Ezekyle,’ replied Loken as he climbed to his feet. He could see that Abaddon’s blood was up and knew that he must tread warily. Aximand had told him of Abaddon’s berserk rages during the desperate extraction of the commander from the Extranus, and his temper was becoming more and more unpredictable.

‘A mistake? What are you talking about?’

‘Killing Ignace,’ said Loken. ‘Think what would have happened if you’d killed him. The Warmaster would have had your head for that. Imagine the repercussions if an Astartes murdered a remembrancer in cold blood.’

Abaddon furiously paced the interior of the yurt like a caged animal, but Loken could see that his words had penetrated the red mist of his friend’s anger.

‘Damn it, Loken… Damn it,’ hissed Abaddon.

‘What was Ignace talking about, Ezekyle? Was it a lodge medal that passed between you and Erebus?’

Abaddon looked directly at Loken and said, ‘I can’t say.’

‘Then it was.’

‘I. Can’t. Say.’

‘Damn you, Ezekyle. Secrets and hidden things, my brother, I can’t abide them. This is exactly why I can’t return to the warrior lodge. Aximand and Torgaddon have both asked me to, but I won’t, not now. Tell me: is Erebus part of the lodge now? Was he always part of it or did you bring him in on the journey here?’

‘You heard Serghar’s words at the meeting. You know I can’t speak of what happens within the circles of the lodge.’

Loken stepped in close to Abaddon, chest plate to chest plate, and said, ‘You’ll tell me now, Ezekyle. I smell something rank here and I swear if you lie to me I’ll know.’

‘You think to bully me, little one?’ laughed Abaddon, but Loken saw the lie in his bluster.

‘Yes, Ezekyle, I do. Now tell me.’

Abaddon’s eyes flickered to the entrance of the yurt.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you, but what I say goes no further.’

Loken nodded and Abaddon said, ‘We did not bring Erebus into the lodge.’

‘No?’ asked Loken, his disbelief plain.

‘No,’ repeated Abaddon. ‘It was Erebus who brought us in.’

E
REBUS
,
BROTHER
A
STARTES
, First Chaplain of the Word Bearers…

Trusted counsellor of the Warmaster…

Liar.

No matter how much he tried to blot the word out with his battle meditation it kept coming back to haunt him. In response, Euphrati Keeler’s words, from the last time they had spoken, swirled around his head, over and over.

She had stared him down and asked, ‘If you saw the rot, a hint of corruption, would you step out of your regimented life and stand against it?’

Keeler had been suggesting the impossible, and he had denied that anything like what she was suggesting could ever take place. Yet here he was entertaining the possibility that a brother Astartes – someone the Warmaster valued and trusted – was lying to them for reasons unknown.

Loken had tried to find Kyril Sindermann to broach the subject with him, but the iterator was nowhere to be found and so Loken had returned to the training halls despondent. The smiling killer, Luc Sedirae, was cleaning the dismantled parts of his bolter; the ‘twins’, Moy and Marr, were conducting a sword drill; and Loken’s oldest friend, Nero Vipus, sat on the benches polishing his breastplate, working out the scars earned on Murder.

Sedirae and Vipus nodded in acknowledgement as he entered.

‘Garvi,’ said Vipus. ‘Something on your mind?’

‘No, why?’

‘You look a little strung out, that’s all.’

‘I’m fine,’ snapped Loken.

‘Fine, fine,’ muttered Vipus. ‘What did I do?’

‘I’m sorry, Nero,’ Loken said. ‘I’m just…’

‘I know, Garvi. The whole company’s the same. They can’t wait to get in theatre and be the first to get to grips with that bastard, Temba. Luc’s already bet me he’ll be the one to take his head.’

Loken nodded noncommittally and said, ‘Have either of you seen First Captain Abaddon?’

‘No, not since we got back,’ replied Sedirae without looking up from his work. ‘That remembrancer, the black girl, she was looking for you though.’

‘Oliton?’

‘Aye, that’s her. Said she’d come back in an hour or so.’

‘Thank you, Luc,’ said Loken, turning back to Vipus, ‘and again, I’m sorry I snapped at you, Nero.’

‘Don’t worry,’ laughed Vipus. ‘I’m a big boy now and my skin’s thick enough to withstand your bad moods.’

Loken smiled at his friend and opened his arming cage, stripping off his armour and carefully peeling away the thick, mimetic polymers of his sub-suit body glove until he was naked but for a pair of fatigues. He lifted his sword and stepped towards the training cage, activating the weapon as the iron-grey hemispheres lifted aside and the tubular combat servitor descended from the centre of the dome’s top.

‘Combat drill Epsilon nine,’ he said. ‘Maximum lethality.’

The combat machine hummed to life, long blade limbs unfolding from its sides in a manner that reminded him of the winged clades of Murder. Spikes and whirring edges sprouted from the contraption’s body and Loken swivelled his neck and arms in readiness for the coming fight.

He needed a clear head if he was to think through all that had happened, and there was no better way to achieve purity of thought than through combat. The battle machine began a soft countdown and Loken dropped into a fighting crouch as his thoughts once again turned to the First Chaplain of the Word Bearers.

Liar…

I
T
HAD
BEEN
ON
the fifteenth day since leaving interex space, and a week before reaching Davin, that Loken finally had the chance to speak with Erebus alone. He awaited the First Chaplain of the Word Bearers in the forward observation deck of the
Vengeful Spirit
, watching smudges of black light and brilliant darkness slide past the great, armoured viewing bay.

‘Captain Loken?’

Loken turned, seeing Erebus’s open, serious face. His shaved, tattooed skull gleamed in the swirling vortices of coloured light shining through the glass of the observation bay, rendering his armour with the patina of an artist’s palette.

‘First chaplain,’ replied Loken, bowing low.

‘Please, my given name is Erebus; I would be honoured if you would call me by it. We have no need of such formality here.’

Loken nodded as Erebus joined him in front of the great, multicoloured vista laid out before them.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Erebus.

‘I used to think so,’ nodded Loken. ‘But in truth I can’t look on it now without dread.’

‘Dread? Why so?’ asked Erebus, placing his hand on Loken’s shoulder. ‘The warp is simply the medium through which our ships travel. Did not the Emperor, beloved by all, reveal the ways and means by which we might make use of it?’

‘Yes, he did,’ agreed Loken, glancing at the tattooed script on Erebus’s skull, though the words were in a language he did not understand.

‘They are the pronouncements of the Emperor as interpreted in the
Book of Lorgar
and rendered in the language of Colchis,’ said Erebus, answering Loken’s unasked question. ‘They are as much a weapon as my bolter and blade.’

Seeing Loken’s incomprehension, Erebus said, ‘On the battlefield I must be a figure of awe and majesty, and by bearing the Word of the Emperor upon my very flesh, I cow the xeno and unbeliever before me.’

‘Unbeliever?’

‘A poor choice of word,’ shrugged Erebus dismissively, ‘perhaps misanthrope would be a better term, but I suspect that you did not ask me here to admire the view or my scripture.’

Loken smiled and said, ‘No, you’re right, I didn’t. I asked to speak to you because I know the Word Bearers to be a Legion with many scholars among their ranks. You have sought out many worlds that were said to be seats of learning and knowledge and brought them to compliance.’

‘True,’ agreed Erebus slowly. ‘Though we destroyed much of that knowledge as profane in the fires of war.’

‘But you are wise in matters esoteric and I desired your counsel on a… a matter I thought best spoken of privately.’

‘Now I am intrigued,’ said Erebus. ‘What is on your mind?’

Loken pointed towards the pulsing, spectral light of the warp on the other side of the observation bay’s glass. Clouds of many colours and spirals of darkness spun and twisted like blooms of ink in water, constantly churning in a maelstrom of light and shadow. No coherent forms existed in the mysterious otherworld beyond the ship, which, but for the power of the Geller field, would destroy the Warmaster’s vessel in the blink of an eye.

‘The warp allows us to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other, but we don’t really understand it at all, do we?’ asked Loken. ‘What do we really know about the things that lurk in its depths? What do we know of Chaos?’

‘Chaos?’ repeated Erebus, and Loken detected a moment of hesitation before the Word Bearer answered. ‘What do you mean by that term?’

‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Loken. ‘It was something Mithras Tull said to me back on Xenobia.’

‘Mithras Tull? I don’t know the name.’

‘He was one of Jephta Naud’s subordinate commanders,’ explained Loken. ‘I was speaking to him when everything went to hell.’

‘What did he say, Captain Loken? Exactly.’

Loken’s eyes narrowed at the first chaplain’s tone and he said, ‘Tull spoke of Chaos as though it were a distinct force, a primal presence in the warp. He said that it was the source of the most malevolent corruption imaginable and that it would outlive us all and dance on our ashes.’

‘He used a colourful turn of phrase.’

‘That he did, but I believe he was serious,’ said Loken, gazing out into the depths of the warp.

‘Trust me: Loken; the warp is nothing more than mindless energy churning in constant turmoil. That is all there is to it. Or is there something else that makes you believe his words?’

Loken thought of the slavering creature that had taken the flesh of Xavyer Jubal in the water fane under the mountains of Sixty-Three Nineteen. That had not been mindless warp energy given form. Loken had seen a monstrous, thirsting intelligence lurking within the horrid deformity that Jubal had become.

Erebus was staring at him expectantly and as much as the Word Bearer had been welcomed within the ranks of the Sons of Horus, Loken wasn’t yet ready to share the horror beneath the Whisperheads with an outsider.

Hurriedly he said, ‘I read of battles between the tribes of men on old Terra, before the coming of the Emperor, and they were said to use powers that were—’

‘Was this in
The Chronicles of Ursh
?’ asked Erebus.

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘I too have read it and I know of the passages to which you refer.’

‘Then you also know that there was talk of dark, primordial gods and invocations to them.’

Erebus smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, and it is the work of outrageous taletellers and incorrigible demagogues to make their farragoes as exciting as possible, is it not?
The Chronicles of Ursh
is not the only text of that nature. Many such books were written before Unification and each writer filled page after page with the most outrageous, blood-soaked terrors in order to outdo his contemporaries, resulting in some works of… dubious value.’

‘You don’t think there’s anything to it then?’

‘Not at all,’ said Erebus.

‘Tull said that the Immaterium, as he called it, was the root of sorcery and magic.’

‘Sorcery and magic?’ laughed Erebus before locking his gaze with Loken. ‘He lied to you, my friend. He was a fraterniser with xenos breeds and an abomination in the sight of the Emperor. You know the word of an enemy cannot be trusted. After all, did the interex not falsely accuse us of stealing one of the kinebrach’s swords from the Hall of Devices? Even after the Warmaster himself vouchsafed that we did not?’

Loken said nothing as ingrained bonds of brotherhood warred with the evidence of his own senses.

Everything Erebus was saying reinforced his long held beliefs in the utter falsehood of sorcery, spirits and daemons.

Yet he could not ignore what his instincts screamed at him:
that Erebus was lying to him and the threat of Chaos was horribly real
.

Mithras Tull had become an enemy and Erebus was a brother Astartes, and Loken was astonished to find that he more readily believed the warrior of the interex.

‘As you have described it to me, there is no such thing as Chaos,’ promised Erebus.

Loken nodded in agreement, but despaired as he realised that no one, not even the interex, had said exactly what kind of weapon had been stolen from the Hall of Devices.

‘D
ID
YOU
HEAR
?’ asked Ignace Karkasy, pouring yet another glass of wine. ‘She’s got full access… to the Warmaster! It’s disgraceful. Here’s us, breaking our backs to create art worthy of the name, in the hope of catching the eye of someone important enough to matter, and she bloody swans in without so much as a by your leave and gets an audience with the Warmaster!’

‘I heard she has connections,’ nodded Wenduin, a petite woman with red hair and an hourglass figure that ship scuttlebutt had down as a firecracker between the sheets. Karkasy had gravitated towards her as soon as he had realised she was hanging on his every bitter word. He’d forgotten exactly what it was she did, though he vaguely remembered something about ‘compositions of harmonic light and shade’ – whatever that meant.

Honestly, he thought, they’ll let anyone be a remembrancer these days.

The Retreat was, as usual, thick with remembrancers: poets, dramatists, artists and composers, which had made for a bohemian atmosphere, while off-duty Army officers, naval ratings and crew were there for the civilians to impress with tales of books published, opening night ovations and scurrilous backstage hedonistic excess.