Twisted - Guy Haley Read online

  He must be the ringleader, the accuser. Maloghurst wondered what calculation he had made to call directly upon the ship’s lords. Attracting the attention of the Legion could have gone badly for him. It still might. The hard-eyed man dropped his eyes and pointed to his captive wordlessly.

  ‘You defy the Warmaster,’ Maloghurst said to the man in chains.

  The captive would not look at him, but he did speak. ‘Not defiance, a request. We do not have enough water. We are dying.’ Upon the man’s shoulders were rank stripes. A subordinary indentured officer. This must be his command.

  Maloghurst knew the story. The fleet pushed on and on with little pause, Terra firmly in its sights. There was no time for resupply, no time for repair. Many parts of the ship were left without basic requirements. The couriers’ leader intended to alleviate their suffering; perhaps he had been there, waiting outside Lupercal’s Court yesterday when Maloghurst had declared the audiences at an end. His men, panicked, had thrown themselves upon the Legion’s mercy. They would rather risk the slow death of thirst than anger their masters. Too bad for him.

  Behind his respirator, Maloghurst smiled. True power was invested by fear. Here it was, as plain as the Emperor’s lies. Had the man come to him, it might have been different. But the couriers had acted, and Maloghurst was in no mood for mercy.

  Maloghurst pulled out his sacred dagger and swept it across the man’s throat. Let it feed – it had not been blooded for some while. Bright blood spread a crimson fan across the decking.

  ‘Your concern is heard. There is one less of you. The rest may drink more deeply.’

  A sinuous laugh twisted on the air. Maloghurst turned swiftly to its source. A great shape stood at the farmost left of the couriers, a column composed of dark smoke and a palpable malevolence.

  Maloghurst, it said. Become. Open the way.

  The shape had no visible sensory organs, but it surely stared back at Maloghurst, for he could feel it scrying his very soul. A hand formed momentarily in the smoke. A long finger traced the jaw of a nearby courier. He shuddered, but the man’s dread of the legionaries stopped him from looking up.

  A hand touched his elbow. Maloghurst twitched.

  ‘My lord?’

  His gaze fell to the deck. The blood had gone, as though greedily absorbed by the ship itself.

  The subordinary courier’s men kept their eyes fixed upon the decking. Maloghurst searched the limits of the chamber, but the shadow was nowhere to be found.

  ‘My lord,’ said the Justaerin. Criticism of Maloghurst’s lack of control was implicit in his tone.

  ‘We are done here,’ he muttered. His blade slid back into its sheath with a click, and he pointed to the hard-eyed man. ‘You. You are now in charge of this group.’

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ the man whispered.

  He left the couriers to dispose of their erstwhile commander. The urge to look over his shoulder as he left was almost impossible to defy, but defy it he did.

  A Space Marine was not intended to dream in the manner of mortals. The dreams of normal men were a clumsy way of managing memories and learning. A legionary had no need to manage his memory, for his was as ordered as a well-kept library. His dreams therefore lacked the allegorical nature of mortal dreams, tending to the quotidian: the mastering of new skills, sped up by carefully designed hypnotic shaping.

  But that night, Maloghurst dreamed as mortals dream.

  He was in the abode of fire, and it burned him. The Warmaster stood in impossible company. A sorcerer in an azure parody of the Crimson King’s garb stood to one side. Fulgrim was behind his brother, unchanged from his original form, while sundry other degenerates and warp-beasts clamoured all around. Erebus had returned to them, though his face was now a mask of grim spite. A holographic orb of Terra hung in the air in front of Horus.

  Maloghurst was there, too. He saw himself from outside, as if he viewed the scene through another’s eyes. How old and broken he looked, his ruined face hidden behind his ever-present respirator. The eyes gleamed with a touch of madness. This other Maloghurst wore a patchwork tabard of flayed human skin over his armour.

  Everything was wrong. And the fire, burning hot, pressed around on all sides. Only he, the observing Maloghurst, appeared aware of it. His doppelganger – or was it the true Maloghurst, and he was some other? – appeared entirely ignorant of the heat.

  The others continued their debate unconcerned. Horus laid out his plans for the conquest of Terra. His subordinates, aides and adjutants gave their opinions. Their words were short and to the point. Their comments were elaborations, details. None would gainsay the Warmaster’s flawless strategy. None could.

  Horus looked directly at Maloghurst-the-observer. His face was majestic, alive with fierce intelligence and the grand power of the warp.

  ‘Maloghurst! You have joined us.’ He addressed him as though it were perfectly normal that there were two embodiments of his equerry in attendance.

  ‘My lord…’ said Maloghurst. Confusion muddied his thoughts. A dream. He clung to the certainty of that as hard as he could. ‘I am sorry.’

  His double chittered an idiot chant in a forgotten language. His bloodshot eyes rolled back into his head. Black liquid ran from the edges of his respirator.

  Over Horus’s shoulder, the presence loomed.

  This was no pillar of smoke, but Maloghurst knew it for the thing he had seen in the couriers’ barracks. Long, multiple-jointed fingers stroked the fur of Horus’s cloak. It crooned a song fit for the cradles of dead infants. Maloghurst stepped back.

  The Warmaster fixed his full attention on him. The weight of it was unbearable.

  ‘Is there something wrong, Mal?’

  ‘My lord, I…’

  The creature stared at him. The form of it was oily black, a liquid born of congealed smoke. A hundred eyes looked at him unblinkingly from a long, equine face. Arms that hinted at the nightmares of insects slid over each other in countless profusion.

  Horus laid his hand upon Maloghurst’s shoulder. ‘This is not befitting of my equerry.’

  ‘No, lord.’

  ‘This war taxes us all, Mal.’ Horus’s face was neutral, the blaze of otherworldly power that possessed him burning behind unreadable eyes. He looked at Maloghurst’s cane. ‘Perhaps you should rest.’

  ‘I am fine, my lord,’ said Maloghurst. He stood taller in defiance of his injuries. His gaze kept sliding from Horus’s face to the warp-horror standing behind him. Why did Lupercal not see it? An image of the fat logistician was projected into his mind, glancing fearfully at the Justaerin. He gasped at the invasion.

  ‘And I say you are not fine. Stand down, equerry. Go to the Apothecaries, and have yourself examined. Then return to your quarters. Rest.’

  ‘My lord, I am fit for my duties,’ Maloghurst protested. ‘When have I ever failed you?’

  Horus squeezed Maloghurst’s shoulder, the claws of his talon lightly scraping against the equerry’s war-plate.

  ‘Never, my friend. But then nothing fails, until the time that it does. Your time approaches.’

  ‘My lord–’

  ‘Do as I command!’ said Horus. The change in his expression afforded Maloghurst a glimpse of what lurked behind his eyes. He took a faltering step backwards.

  The daemon laughed silkily. It ran long, black arms around Horus’s neck in a loving embrace.

  Maloghurst looked from face to face around the gathering. Indifference, or hatred in places, greeted him. He retreated before it.

  He ran, the only gait his body would allow him was a ridiculous gallop. The whine of his power amour as it attempted to match and amplify this movement sounded like mocking laughter.

  He found himself in a corridor that he could not possibly reach from Lupercal’s Court. Screaming faces formed in metal that had become as fluid as boiling water. The corridor conv
ulsed, warping out of shape entirely. Maloghurst’s crippled legs gave way under him and he fell. There was no floor to halt him. He plummeted into a hell of unnatural colours. A swirl of dark threads gathered into an oily scum atop the shifting ocean.

  From this, the daemon rose, sucking the blackness into itself. The oil was fed by a thousand dark veins threading the warp, and so reduced only slowly.

  By the time the daemon had absorbed all of the darkness, it was as big as a Battle Titan. By some trick it was suddenly below Maloghurst.

  Come to me, Maloghurst! Be mine… Let us be one…

  Maloghurst plummeted helplessly into its yawning maw.

  He sat bolt upright on his pallet, forgetting the ruin of his body for a moment. The motion sent a jag of pain up his nerves that emerged from his mouth as a harsh grunt. Sweat poured off his skin. His muscles and scars were picked out by curves of dim light issued by the door lock lumen. He looked at his arm, and saw it as the daemon’s oily limb. He recoiled, blinked, and then saw only his hand.

  Of the thousands of articles blindly collected as war trophies aboard the Vengeful Spirit, few had proven to be artefacts of the true faith. Among them were certain objects of power. Maloghurst reached for one of these now.

  Cold, greasy metal met his touch. His hand closed around it, and brought it to his face. A small gargoyle taken from a degenerate human world. The savage inhabitants had not possessed the technology to manufacture even this ugly thing of lead, and so its provenance was unknown. Whatever its true origins, he had found it to be an effective daemon ward. He slid back the hinged lids that covered the coloured glass of its eyes.

  They glowed a warning red.

  ‘Neverborn,’ hissed Maloghurst.

  A foul smell filled the room. He choked, saliva spilling from his wry lips.

  He gulped air flavoured by nothing more than recycling systems and warm metal.

  Rakshel’s lair was deep inside the ship, not far from the grand transit canyon that ran the length of the ship’s keel. These were thrall spaces, and many were long abandoned. Maloghurst passed empty dormitories, refectories full of spilled tin plates caked in decayed organic matter. Spaces where crew serfs no longer lived, their halls emptied by war. The mortal personnel manifest of the Vengeful Spirit ran into the tens of thousands. They swarmed the endless arterial corridors of its interior, as numerous as blood cells. And like blood cells they bled freely into the void whenever the flagship’s hull was breached.

  The whispers were stronger this far below the command deck. Things flickered in the corner of one’s eye. It was better to steer clear of the dark places, even for one as strong as Maloghurst.

  But today he had no choice.

  Strange smells wafted on ventilation draughts – sweet and feculent, too strong to be real and too real to be dismissed. Damage suffered in the Vengeful Spirit’s endless battles was evident all about him. Whole sections were sealed away, bulkhead doors welded shut. Deck plating was buckled. Wrinkled walls spilled congealed waves of sealant foam like lava from volcanic cracks. There were areas where the gravity or lighting was inconstant.

  Maloghurst came to a cavity hollowed from the side of the ship by a nova blast. Sheets of plain metal the size of fortress doors sealed the breach. A swaying catwalk hung from wires anchored to the mess of broken pipes and void-ice above. The tug of artificial gravity there was capricious, coming first from one direction, then another. Maloghurst grabbed the walkway’s guide rail for support and dragged himself across. The cavity glimmered with warning lights. Beneath his feet, huge servitors hauled off tons of tangled, fused debris. Arc-lightning from welding torches played, sparks showering down in yellow rains. Without a sojourn in drydock, damage like this could never be repaired, only contained. There were many such wounds along the Vengeful Spirit’s flanks.

  He left the ragged chamber, exiting through a door into a corridor that perversely bore little sign of damage. A repair crew passed him on the way to their worksite. They were armed, armoured and in great number. A triad of Mechanicum priests led them, red augmetic eyes winking under black cowls. The rearmost of their number led a Thallax unit by warding chains upon whose links glowed runes of containment. Corposant glittered in the machine’s exhaust. A growl grumbled from the smooth faceplate at Maloghurst as he went past. The thing’s organic components were not of mundane origins.

  With this Dark Mechanicum monster in their midst, still the repair team looked about warily. The armsmen that escorted them peered fearfully from behind their glass visors.

  Their fear was not for him. They watched the shadows.

  Among the broken decks and exhausted magazines dwelt the Davinites. Maloghurst smelled their reek a hundred metres before he came to their domain. A musty, animal scent carried on sighing breezes of the ship’s air. The odour of urine, cooking, smoke and faeces associated with any one of humanity’s rough camps pitched since the dawn of time.

  The Davinites cleaved to their roots, moving periodically about the ship. Their current abode was a store emptied of all supplies – one of many. Voided of their original contents by the demands of war, they drew in new occupants, rarely benign.

  The broad blast doors were open. Maloghurst went within. Davinites squatted around open fires burning directly on the deck. Their shelters were of cloth or scavenged steel plating. There had been cities on Davin of well-ordered adobe houses, but the Primordial Truth had come from the plains tribes, and Maloghurst found himself amongst a nomad band encamped in a metal cave.

  His enhanced eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom. There were thirty-one of them, the remainder of the group that had come aboard at Erebus’s invitation. With their patron banished, there were fewer than there had been, but those that remained appeared unchanged by the slow alteration of the Vengeful Spirit. They showed little sign of the deprivation exhibited by the menials, and they behaved as though the ship were altering itself to suit them.

  The Davinites ignored him. They gazed into their fires as silently as stone-age hunters of Old Earth abroad on a monster-haunted night. He made for the largest tent, expecting to find Rakshel inside. He was not disappointed.

  The ambassador was sleeping, a flat-dugged Davinite female nestled into him atop a pile of ragged bedding. The ambassador had always looked ill-kempt but in comparison to his abode, his appearances in Lupercal’s Court were princely.

  Maloghurst jabbed at the makeshift bed with his cane. Rakshel opened one eye then the other. In the dim light, his pupils were even larger than normal.

  ‘You came,’ he said.

  ‘You were expecting me?’ asked Maloghurst. He displayed no surprise. The last few years had inured him to surprises.

  ‘The least of us here could smell the warp-taint upon you. Yes, I expected you.’

  Rakshel sat. The woman awoke and smiled at Rakshel – he nodded to the legionary by the bed. Her drowsiness rapidly left her and she leapt up, wrapping herself in a filthy blanket as she ran.

  Maloghurst watched her go. ‘A fine home you have made yourself, here.’

  Rakshel shrugged, the gesture turned into an extravagant stretch and yawn. ‘I have known hardship and this is as comfortable a place as any. Conditions here are better than for many of your servants, Twisted One. The gods provide their bounty easily to us true followers.’

  Maloghurst laughed. His respirator made it a bark. ‘A fine bounty.’

  Rakshel rested his hairy arms on his knees. ‘You are the one hounded by the Neverborn, not I. I am safe. You are not.’

  ‘I could deny it,’ said Maloghurst. ‘But you are right. I see it in my dreams. I hear its voice when I am awake. A daemon of oil and smoke.’

  ‘It is close then. Best make your peace with it – your torment in the next life might be less.’

  ‘That is not satisfactory.’

  ‘No?’ Rakshel was enjoying himself, and made no attempt to
conceal it.

  ‘You tell me often of your mastery of the warp. Now is the time for your bragging to cease. I need deeds. You will rid me of the Neverborn.’

  Rakshel pursed his lips in thought. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘You shall have deeds, though not mine.’

  Maloghurst leaned on his cane questioningly.

  ‘You will need someone mightier than myself. I will take you to Tsepha. He was an acolyte of Akshub, and is the greatest of us still alive.’

  Rakshel climbed from his bed, unashamed by his nakedness. He held up the flap of his tent and pointed to a fire set some way from the others.

  ‘You will find him there.’

  ‘You will not accompany me?’

  Rakshel gave Maloghurst a wide smile, shook his head, and let the tent flap drop between them.

  Maloghurst picked his way around piles of rubbish and crates repurposed as furniture. The rest of the Davinites ignored him, intent on whatever it was they saw in the dance of the flames.

  There was a lone figure by the furthest fire. A filthy, near-naked standard human boy. He was covered from head to foot in arcane marks carved into his flesh. His hair had come away in clumps.

  Blood-red eyes and a raspy voice gave away the boy’s true nature. ‘The Twisted One comes looking for help. I am honoured.’

  ‘Tsepha? Acolyte of Akshub?’

  ‘I am he,’ said the boy.

  ‘You are not Davinite.’

  ‘Davinite, Terran, Cthonian… What does that matter? All souls are the same in the eyes of the gods. I accepted their truth, and I am undying – I went away, now I return. Before I was Davinite, and now I am Cthonian. How do you like my vessel?’ He held up arms covered in sores. When he smiled, bloody gums showed.

  ‘You were brought back?’

  ‘If you wish to call it that.’ The possessed boy resumed, looking into the fire. He poked at it with a human thighbone. Blue flame licked around the bulb of the femoral head. Shapes moved under his skin, mimicking the play of the flames. ‘You think of your summonings. I am not the same as your Luperci. I am myself alone.’