He had to stop him, or at least alert others that there was a viper in the nest. Lorz had been their vox-operator, and the caster set was in the driver’s compartment of Calth’s Light. Lerato began crawling towards the side door, the sound of heavy footsteps approaching and the powerful reek of chemicals lending his agonised movements extra speed.
An armoured boot stamped down on his ankle, crushing it to fragments without effort.
‘Now, now,’ said the beast, kneeling down to flip him onto his back. ‘They’ll find you soon enough, mortal, but I need a bit more time to get aboard one of these ships before then.’
‘You won’t succeed,’ said Lerato, through clenched teeth and a dizzying haze of unendurable agony. ‘They’ll find you and kill you.’
The beast grinned, and Lerato had never seen anything so hideous in all his life.
‘If you only knew how many times I’ve heard in the last six months,’ said the beast.
Lerato spat blood in the beast’s face, but instead of anger, he saw grim amusement and a towering ego. The beast wiped the blood from his face with his arm, a glittering silver limb the surface of which swam like mercury trapped in glass. The blood vanished, drawn within the arm like water absorbed by a sponge.
‘You know, it was depressingly easy getting to this place,’ said the beast. ‘All I had to do was watch and learn where your predictable little routines made you vulnerable. I just let you see what you wanted to see, and watch as you danced like good little puppets towards somewhere far, far away from here. Who’d have thought that Cadaras Grendel would actually prove to be useful for something after all?’
‘We beat you,’ snarled Lerato. ‘Just like we’ll beat anyone else stupid enough to attack Ultramar.’
‘You and your big blue friends might have beaten M’kar’s rag-tag army,’ said the beast with a conversational nod, ‘but one day someone is going to punish you for sticking to Guilliman’s dogma like slaves.’
‘Who are you?’ hissed Lerato, as the last of his life bled out of him.
‘I’m the beast,’ said the Iron Warrior. ‘But you can call me Honsou.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill worked for over six years as a Games Developer in Games Workshop’s Design Studio before taking the plunge to become a full-time writer. Graham’s written a host of SF and Fantasy novels and comics, as well as a number of side projects that keep him busy and (mostly) out of trouble. His Horus Heresy novel, A Thousand Sons, was a New York Times bestseller and his Time of Legends novel, Empire, won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award. Graham lives and works in Nottingham and you can keep up to date with where he’ll be and what he’s working on by visiting his website.
Join the ranks of the 4th Company at www.graham-mcneill.com
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
© Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration by Stefan Kopinski.
Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2011, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-85787-561-7
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
See the Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com
Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
www.games-workshop.com
eBook license
This license is made between:
Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and
(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)
(jointly, “the parties”)
These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:
* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:
o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;
o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and
* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.
* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:
o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;
o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;
o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;
o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.
* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.
* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.
* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.
* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.
* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.
* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.
* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.
The Beast of Calth Page 6