Nemesis

There was rumour and supposition aboard the Vengeful Spirit, down on the lower decks where the human serfs and servitors toiled. Men spoke of strange things afoot on the levels where the Astartes walked, of changes, of apparitions and peculiarities in parts of the vessel. Tobeld heard whispers of the so-called lodges where these changes took place. He listened to stories of rites made on the surfaces of conquered worlds, things that sickened him as much with their nauseating similarity to crude idolatry as with their hints of inhumanity and horror. The men who spoke of these things often vanished soon after, leaving nothing but fear in their wakes.

He concentrated on the weapon, listening for the wind to drop. Horus was there, no more than a dozen steps away, inside the pavilion with his inner circle – Maloghurst, Abaddon and the rest of them – engaging in whatever ritual had brought them to this place. Close now, closer than ever before. Tobeld prepared himself, forcing away the pain in his throat, his joints. Entering the command tent, he would introduce the weapon to the jug of wine at Horus’s side, fill the cups of the Warmaster and his senior battle-brothers. One sip would be enough to infect them… and he hoped it would be enough to kill, although Tobeld held no doubt he would not live to see his mission succeed. His faith in his art would have to be enough.

Time, then. He stepped out from underneath the Stormbird’s wing; and a voice said ‘Is that it?’

A reply, firm and cold, returned from somewhere close at hand in the smoke-haze. ‘Aye.’

Tobeld tried to turn on his heel, but he was already leaving the ground, taken off his feet by a shadow that dwarfed him, a towering man-form in steel-grey armour holding a fistful of his robes. Leering out of the gloom came a hard face that was all angles and barely restrained menace. A patchwork of scarification was the setting for eyes that were wide with black mirth, eyes that bored into him. ‘Where are you going, little man?’ He marvelled at the thought that someone so large had been able to approach him in utter silence.

‘Lord, I…’ It was hard to talk. Tobeld’s throat was as dry as the winds, and the grip the Astartes had on him pulled the material of the robes tight about his neck. He struggled for breath – but he did not struggle too much, for fear the turncoat might think he was making some futile attempt to defend himself and respond in kind.

‘Hush, hush’, said the other voice. A second figure, if anything larger and more lethal in aspect than the first, stepped from the smoke. Tobeld’s eyes instantly fell to the intricate etching and jewelled medallions adorning the other Astartes’s chest, symbols of high rank and seals of loyalty among the Sons of Horus Legion. He knew this warrior immediately, the laughing face and the shock-blond hair, without need to survey the rank sigils upon him, though. Luc Sedirae, Captain of the 13th Company.

‘Let’s not make a song and dance of this,’ Sedirae went on. His right hand flexed absently; he wore no gauntlet upon it, showing to the world where the limb had been lost and replaced by an augmetic in polished brass and anodised black steel. The hand had been taken from him in battle with the Raven Guard at Isstvan, so it was said, and the captain wore the wound proudly, as if it were a badge of honour.

Tobeld’s gaze flicked back to the warrior holding him, finding the symbols of the 13th Company on the other Astartes. Belatedly, he recognised him as Devram Korda, one of Sedirae’s seconds; not that such knowledge would do him any good. He tried again to speak. ‘Lords, I am only doing my duty as–’

But the words seemed to curdle in his throat and Tobeld choked on them, emitting a wet gasp instead.

From behind Korda, following the path that Tobeld had taken around the parked craft, a third Astartes emerged from beneath the shadows cast by the drop-ship. The assassin knew this one, too. Armour the colour of old, dried blood, an aspect like a storm captured in the confines of a man’s face, eyes he could not bring himself to meet. Erebus.

‘His duty,’ said the First Chaplain of the Word Bearers, musing on the thought. ‘That is not a lie.’ Erebus’s voice was soft and almost gentle, raised only slightly above the low keen of the Gyges winds.

Tobeld blinked and felt a tide of terror growing to fill him. He rose on it, caught by the icy certainty of the moment. Erebus knew what he was. Somehow, Erebus had always known. All his careful subterfuges, every piece of flawless tradecraft he had employed – the Word Bearer walked towards him now with a swagger that told the assassin it had counted for nothing.

‘My duty is to serve the Warmaster!’ he blurted, desperate to stall for time, for a moment more of life.

‘Quietly,’ warned Erebus, silencing him before he could say more. The Word Bearer threw a glance towards the command tent. ‘Nothing will be gained by disturbing Great Horus. He will be… displeased.’