Twisted - Guy Haley Read online

  Qwilltzuk-Ikar stopped dead, roaring furiously.

  The Davinites gibbered with terror, scrabbling at doors that would not open.

  Rakshel backed away. Still holding out one hand to restrain the daemon, Maloghurst caught the ambassador about the neck and hauled him off his feet.

  ‘You were a fool to underestimate me, Davinite,’ he growled. ‘Squad Gryben! Reveal yourselves.’

  All around the gallery, reality warped. Fifteen Sons of Horus stood with their bolters trained upon the daemon and the panicking cultists.

  ‘How could you think this ridiculous scheme would work, Rakshel?’ said Maloghurst. ‘Summoning a daemon to trouble me day and night, then intending to have it claim me on the pretext of your aid? How could a degenerate mortal like you outwit a Son of Horus? Your scheme depends upon fear, Rakshel.’ Maloghurst pulled the ambassador in closer. ‘And we know no fear.’

  Rakshel drew in a rattling breath, unable to respond.

  ‘A cripple I might be among my kind, but I exceed you in every regard,’ said Maloghurst.

  Qwiltzuk-Ikar screamed, chattering dire threats in every language ever spoken. Maloghurst clawed his right hand and squeezed the air, and the daemon squealed in agony. He returned his attention to Rakshel.

  ‘I deny your request for an audience with the Warmaster one final time. With your death.’

  Slowly, Maloghurst squeezed Rakshel’s throat shut. The Davinite thrashed madly at the arm holding him, windmilling legs kicking pathetically at his tormentor’s side. Maloghurst grimaced with pleasure as Rakshel’s last breath turned into a death rattle.

  ‘Gryben, open fire!’ he shouted.

  All sound was obliterated beneath the thunder of fifteen bolters firing simultaneously.

  Davinites exploded. Their limbs slithered across the frost-coated metal. Gore splashed, drenching Maloghurst and Rakshel. The daemon screeched, furious to be denied its part in the slaughter.

  Gryben’s squad turned their weapons upon Qwiltzuk-Ikar. It writhed as round after round disappeared into it. Explosions sent bursts of black ichor slashing out to mix with the red. It whipped back and forth. Its limbs were parted from its body, landing on the floor where they sublimated into noisome vapour.

  The barrage was too much, and it fell. Qwiltzuk-Ikar’s warp-formed body snapped and writhed upon deck plating slick with frozen blood. Half of Gryben’s squad had descended from the maintenance gallery and were advancing upon it, pumping it full of mass-reactive rounds, pausing only to change their empty magazines.

  It attempted to get up, the unnatural vitality of the warp pulling its broken body back together, but its reforming limbs were shot out from under it again and again. It collapsed and did not rise.

  Maloghurst threw down Rakshel’s corpse. ‘Enough!’ he shouted.

  The din of bolter fire ceased. The reverberations took an age to die. There was not a living thing left in the room that was not a legionary. He limped over to the daemon, and pinned its neck in place with his foot. Eyes swam beneath the surface of night-black skin, opening at random across its long face. Shadowy tendrils waved out over every wound, seeking their fellows to grasp and pull, knitting the hurts together. They were growing feebler and feebler.

  ‘I do not account myself a great sorcerer, Neverborn. But I am fortunate to have a master who is willing to share a portion of his knowledge.’ Maloghurst held out his hand. A bolt pistol was pressed into it. ‘In several of the very diverse sources I have read, it is written that whenever a fiend is dispatched from the material realm, it spends one hundred years and a day in torment before it might come forth again.’

  Maloghurst racked a bolt into the pistol’s chamber. A cold amusement entered his eyes as he aimed the gun at the creature. Qwiltzuk-Ikar was diminishing, shrinking in size and potency, its body streaming away in smoke. It was once the size of a man, now only a child. Only the head remained undiminished, large and freakish upon the nub of its body.

  ‘We will bargain!’ hissed the fiend. ‘You shall have powers undreamed. You shall no longer be known as the Twisted, but the Mighty! I can heal you. I can make you whole.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ said Maloghurst. ‘I value the sobriquet and the state of my body equally. Why would I wish to enslave you in exchange for more? You would be close to Horus, which was your aim. I am not like these simpletons, to believe the promises of daemonkind. Spend the next one hundred years and a day considering this – you wish to master us, but it is we who shall master you.’

  A round from Maloghurst’s gun pulped its head, and black ooze spread around it. The stench of mud dragged from noisome waters enveloped them all, and then it was gone.

  The Davinite corpses were stuck with combat blades, and turned over by careless, crushing boots.

  ‘They are all dead, my lord,’ said Gryben.

  Maloghurst nodded his approval. He haltingly retrieved his cane and then, better supported, headed swiftly for the loading gates. He chose the same one through which Tsepha had entered. It was fitting. There was power in even the smallest gesture.

  ‘Send this thing back to warp,’ he ordered.

  A legionary with a flamer stepped forward and the others fell back, carrying the pieces of Maloghurst’s stripped battleplate. The warrior waited for his fellows to leave, then filled the room with fire. He retreated out of the bay and Maloghurst thumbed the door shut.

  After letting it burn for a full minute, he opened the launch tube’s doors and vented the hangar into space.

  Maloghurst threw a cloth bundle upon the table. It came unwrapped, scattering a score of daggers across the surface. No two were alike: knapped stone, sharpened scrap and finely-forged antiques were all among their number. Each one glistened with forbidden power.

  ‘The blades of the traitors, sire.’

  ‘It is done?’

  ‘It is done.’

  Horus stared at them. Always awesome, the power that the Warmaster held surrounded him with an aura of godly might. He was made to be an exemplar of humanity, but he had transcended the state of man completely. He would exceed the ambitions of the Emperor a thousand times over. For one long moment, Maloghurst was gripped by the unshakeable certainty that should the two meet again, father and son, then the Emperor would bend his knee to Horus and beg for forgiveness.

  The sensation lasted as long as Maloghurst could endure to look upon the face of his primarch. Since Horus’s following of the Fulgurine Road, that was not long. For decades Maloghurst had been one of the few who could treat with Lupercal on something approaching equal terms. Those days were past.

  ‘What was its name?’ asked Horus.

  ‘The Davinite called it Qwiltzuk-Ikar. In all probability this was one of its nomina major, possibly a name of essence. Enough, once I had it, to bend it to my will. It was a petty thing, its plans to influence you far beyond its ability.’

  ‘Threats from the Neverborn must be dealt with as surely as those posed by mortals, insignificant or not.’ Horus picked up a short knife in his hand and turned it over. ‘You employed a ritual of concealment.’

  ‘Good against mortal and immortal alike, sire.’

  ‘You are a swift study.’

  ‘My ability is nothing compared to yours, sire.’

  ‘Of course not, Mal,’ said Horus. He smiled. ‘But it is sufficient. Have the name recorded. Let all who truck with the warp in our service know of it, and be forbidden from treating with Qwiltzuk-Ikar.’

  ‘The denizens of the empyrean will learn to respect you.’

  ‘The White Scars. The Sigillite. Garviel Loken… and now this. The attempts made upon my life by my father’s lackeys are tiresome enough. I will not have the Neverborn acting against me also. I am my own master.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  Horus set the knife down, and picked up another. He made a dismissive noise at its qual
ity. ‘I am sorry for the humiliation you had to endure, Mal.’

  Maloghurst’s words stuck in his throat. Two more attempts were required before he could voice them. The resplendence of Horus unmanned him.

  ‘There is no humiliation. Never in serving you.’

  ‘That is what I expect you to say, Mal, but it does no harm for me to let you know that your service is valued.’

  Maloghurst leaned upon his cane and bowed slightly. The pride at his master’s words was almost enough to overcome his sorrow at the distance growing between them.

  But not quite.

  ‘Thank you, sire.’

  Horus’s attention drifted from the blade in his hand. ‘Is there something wrong, Mal?’

  ‘No, my lord. With your permission, I will return to my duties.’

  ‘You have it, as always.’

  Maloghurst turned painfully and departed the stateroom, the rap of his cane on the stone echoing away down the corridor.

  About the Author

  Guy Haley is the author of Space Marine Battles: Death of Integrity, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Valedor and Baneblade, and the novellas The Eternal Crusader, The Last Days of Ector and ‘Broken Sword’, for Damocles. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

  Chagrined by his defeat at the hands of Jaghatai Khan, Mortarion abandons the pursuit of the White Scars and instead leads the Death Guard in a spiteful, punitive rampage across the systems of the Prosperine empire.

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  First published in Blades of the Traitor in 2015.

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