Horus Rising by Dan Abnett Page B

your brother Astartes?’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘No matter the cost?’
    ‘No matter the cost.’
    ‘Your oath is taken, Garviel. Welcome into the Mournival. Tarik? Illuminate us.’
    Torgaddon pulled a vapour flare from his belt and fired it off into the night sky. It burst in a bright umbrella of light, white and harsh.
    As the sparks of it rained slowly down onto the waters, the four warriors hugged and whooped, clasping hands and slapping backs. Torgaddon, Aximand and Abaddon took turns to embrace Loken.
    ‘You’re one of us now,’ Torgaddon whispered as he drew Loken close. ‘I am,’ said Loken.
    L ATER, ON THE islet, by the light of the lanterns, they branded Loken’s helm above the right eye with the crescent mark of the new moon. This was his badge of office. Aximand’s helm bore the brand of the half moon, Torgaddon’s the gibbous, and Abaddon’s the full. The four stage cycle of a moon was shared between their wargear. So the Mournival was denoted.
    They sat on the islet, talking and joking, until the sun rose again.
    T HEY WERE PLAYING cards on the lawn by the light of chemical lanterns. The simple game Mersadie had proposed had long been eclipsed by a punitive betting game suggested by one of the soldiers. Then the iterator, Memed, had joined them, and taken great pains to teach them an old version of cups.
    Memed shuffled and dealt the cards with marvellous dexterity. One of the soldiers whistled mockingly. ‘A real card hand we have here,’ the officer remarked.
    ‘This is an old game,’ Memed said, ‘which I’m sure you will enjoy. It dates back a long way, its origins lost in the very beginnings of Old Night. I have researched it, and I understand it was popular amongst the peoples of Ancient Merica, and also the tribes of the Franc.’
    He let them play a few dummy hands until they had the way of it, but Mersadie found it hard to remember what spread won over what. In the seventh turn, believing she had the game’s measure at last, she discarded a hand which she believed inferior to the cards Memed was holding.
    ‘No, no,’ he smiled. ‘You win.’
    ‘But you have four of a kind again.’
    He laid out her cards. ‘Even so, you see?’
    She shook her head. ‘It’s all too confusing.’
    ‘The suits correspond,’ he said, as if beginning a lecture, ‘to the layers of society back then. Swords stand for the warrior aristocracy; cups, or chalices, for the ancient priesthood; diamonds, or coins, for the merchant classes; and baton clubs for the worker caste…’
    Some of the soldiers grumbled.
    ‘Stop iterating to us,’ Mersadie said.
    ‘Sorry,’ Memed grinned. ‘Anyway, you win. I have four alike, but you have ace, monarch, empress and knave. A mournival.’
    ‘What did you just say?’ Mersadie Oliton asked, sitting up.
    ‘Mournival,’ Memed replied, reshuffling the old, square-cut cards. ‘It’s the old Franc word for the four royal cards. A winning hand.’
    Behind them, away beyond a high wall of hedge invisible in the still night, a flare suddenly banged off and lit the sky white.
    ‘A winning hand,’ Mersadie murmured. Coincidence, and something she privately believed in, called fate, had just opened the future up to her.
    It looked very inviting indeed.

FIVE
    Peeter Egon Momus
    Lectio Divinitatus
    Malcontent
    P EETER E GON M OMUS was doing them a great honour. Peeter Egon Momus was deigning to share with them his visions for the new High City. Peeter Egon Momus, architect designate for the 63rd Expedition, was unveiling his preparatory ideas for the transformation of the conquered city into a permanent memorial to glory and compliance.
    The trouble was, Peeter Egon Momus was just a figure in the distance and largely inaudible. In the gathered audience, in the dusty heat, Ignace Karkasy shifted impatiently and craned his neck to see.
    The assembly had been gathered in a city square north of the palace. It was just after midday, and the sun was at its zenith, scorching