Atharva hurled the clade warrior away, slamming him into the wall of the temple with a crunching crack of breaking bones. The pariah slumped to the ground, his body a twisted mass of limbs bent at impossible angles for a living being.
Atharva wrenched the blade from his body and stared into the blackened hood of the Vacant Angel.
‘Just you and me,’ said Atharva as the ghostly form of the angel descended towards him.
Kai knew there was no way Atharva could fight such a terrible apparition, yet he stood firm, putting himself between the Vacant Angel and the mortals at his back. The creature spread its arms, but before it could sweep Atharva into its monstrous embrace, it loosed a piercing shriek of pain. The creature threw back its head and let out a howl of abject agony as portions of its ragged form bled into the air like flares from the surface of a star.
Kai watched as the creature unravelled, its outline wavering and blurring as it was forced back to the realm from whence it had come. He could see no cause for the angel’s dissolution until he cast his gaze towards the temple doors and saw a group of lithe figures armoured in gold and silver pushing into the temple.
They wore helms that obscured the lower half of their faces, and each of them was an albino with a white topknot trailing from the crown of their shaven skulls. White spotted hides were draped across their shoulders, where long bladed swords with wide quillons were sheathed.
They advanced into the temple without words, bearing long spears with crystal blades extended before them. Their supple movements marked them as women, and like hunters driving a dangerous beast back to its lair, they formed a perfect semi-circle around the Vacant Angel.
Its screaming was never ending, but its form was little more than a scrap of dirty, yellowed light as its power was stripped away. Soon, even that was gone, and its keening lament was at an end as the power that sustained it was stripped away.
‘The silent sisterhood,’ said Roxanne.
Kai had known who these women were, but it was the giant in golden armour who entered the temple behind them that captured all his attention.
‘Lord Dorn,’ said Atharva.
TWENTY-FIVE
The Only Victory
My Last Hunt
Legacy
TO SEE A primarch with his own eyes was a last gift to Kai, and it took all his composure not to throw himself to his knees before the lord and master of the Imperial Fists. With the ending of the Vacant Angel, silence filled the temple as Rogal Dorn marched down the nave. Clad in his war plate of burnished red gold, the primarch dominated the space, a living gravity well to which every eye was drawn.
‘Stand down, Atharva of the Thousand Sons,’ said Dorn, his voice as hard and unyielding as the stone of the mountains. ‘It is over.’
‘Nothing is ever over, Rogal Dorn,’ said Atharva. ‘You of all people should know that.’
The gold-armoured sisters accompanying Dorn flinched at Atharva’s use of his given name, but of course said nothing. More people entered the temple, armsmen clad in looped bands of black and bearing an amethyst crest upon their left breast. At their head marched a beautiful woman whose face he had last seen while a prisoner beneath the mountains. There, she had been an illusion, but Kai had no doubt that this Aeliana Septmia Verduchina Castana was the real thing.
Roxanne let out a soft breath at the sight of her family’s representative and snapped her head in the direction of a young boy held tight to the matronly women that huddled in the shelter of the statue with them. She knelt beside him and opened his tightly clenched fist to reveal a silver ring set with an amethyst that blinked with a soft purple glow.
The boy’s eyes were rimed with tears.
‘You said it was a magic ring,’ he said.
‘And so it is,’ said Roxanne with a rueful sigh, taking hold of Kai’s hand as they stood together to face Rogal Dorn and his allies. Among them, Kai saw Adept Hiriko and Athena Diyos. Though he knew she must have helped his pursuers, he was glad to have this last chance to see her again.
‘Give us the astropath,’ ordered Rogal Dorn, and Kai had to stop himself from taking an involuntary step forward.
Atharva shook his head. ‘He is not yours to command.’
Dorn laughed, though Kai heard uncertainty in the sound.
‘Of course he is,’ said Dorn, drawing a vast pistol of chased gold and ebony. ‘I am the Emperor’s chosen champion. Everything on Terra is mine to command.’
Atharva looked over his shoulder and gave Kai a nod of respect.
‘Not everything,’ he said as Rogal Dorn’s weapon fired with a deafening roar.
Anger touched Kai as he watched Atharva fall, the back of his head a smouldering ruin of blackened meat and skull fragments. The warrior of the Thousand Sons toppled to the temple floor, dead before he hit the ground.
Kai gripped Roxanne’s hand tightly, trying not to show how afraid he was. His gaze moved from Lord Dorn to Adept Hiriko and Athena Diyos, and he knew he would not be able to keep them from learning what he knew. He was not strong enough to resist their interrogation, and he dearly wished he could unlearn what he knew.
What he knew would destroy them, its truth too terrible for them to bear, and in that moment Kai knew he could not allow them to take him. Some things were too dark, too impossible and too dreadful to be known. A slow smile crept across his face as he remembered the words of his regicide opponent.
Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning.
Quite whose victory he was winning Kai wasn’t sure, but he knew that the Imperium could not stand against the armies of Horus Lupercal if they dragged the truth out of him. Atharva had failed in his bid to bring him to the Warmaster, and now the fate of millions rested on Kai’s shoulders.
This was his moment, his last chance to take control of his destiny and serve the Emperor with the only thing that was his to give.
‘Roxanne,’ he said evenly. ‘I need you to do something for me.’
THE BATTLE IS over, but Nagasena does not yet know who has emerged victorious. The renegade Space Marines are all dead, and the building is secure, but too much has been lost for him to think of this hunt as anything but a failure. He kneels beside the broken body of Kartono, grieving for his fallen companion. His bondsman is a broken thing, his body shattered in every place, and Nagasena does not know how it is possible he is dead.
They had been together for so long, he had never considered the possibility a foe could end him, let along one empowered by the warp. How Atharva could have stood to touch Ulis Kartono, let alone best him like that is a question that will forever go unanswered, and Nagasena is a man who hates to leave matters unresolved.
He wipes a tear from his eye and watches as the House Castana armsmen secure the building, moving with admirable speed and thoroughness to ensure no one is left alive. A striking woman in a dress of amethyst directs their operations, and when Nagasena sees the elaborate headpiece that covers her forehead, he knows she must be Aeliana Castana.
Kai Zulane stands next to the last survivors of this massacre, a heavyset woman with two young boys held tight to her, and a pretty girl with a blue bandanna tied around her forehead. Her features share a clear similarity to Aeliana Castana, and Nagasena realises he has seen her face before. She is Roxanne Larysa Joyanni Castana, the other survivor of the Argo, and Nagasena senses a confluence of events that speak of a universal order at work.
The warrior women of the Silent Sisterhood have already withdrawn and Lord Dorn kneels over the bodies of the World Eaters, a look of consternation on his handsome, patrician features. Maxim Golovko hovers nearby, basking in the primarch’s magnificence like a devotee.