by Mark Clapham
Backlist
More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library
The Beast Arises
1: I AM SLAUGHTER
2: PREDATOR, PREY
3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS
4: THE LAST WALL
5: THRONEWORLD
6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR
7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN
8: THE BEAST MUST DIE
9: Watchers in Death
10: The Last Son of Dorn
Space Marine Battles
WAR OF THE FANG
A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang
THE WORLD ENGINE
An Astral Knights novel
DAMNOS
An Ultramarines collection
DAMOCLES
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare
OVERFIEND
Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master
ARMAGEDDON
Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire
Legends of the Dark Millennium
SHAS’O
A Tau Empire collection
ASTRA MILITARUM
An Astra Militarum collection
ULTRAMARINES
An Ultramarines collection
FARSIGHT
A Tau Empire novella
SONS OF CORAX
A Raven Guard collection
SPACE WOLVES
A Space Wolves collection
Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Warhammer 40,000
Illustrations
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Part Two
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Part Three
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
About the Author
An Extract from ‘The Red Path’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
Warhammer 40,000
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Part One
One
‘We live and die for Huron Blackheart!’ shouted Garreon.
As the gathered officers of the Red Corsairs raised their fists and shouted ‘Aye!’, Captain Rotaka shouted as loud as any of them.
For Huron Blackheart they lived, and for Huron Blackheart they waited.
The lord of the Red Corsairs had gathered his commanders for one last feast before the invasion, to remind them of who they served, and the depth of his wrath should they fail him.
They were aboard the Might of Huron, flagship of the Red Corsairs fleet. Three decks below bridge level, the commanders met in an open area vaulted with dripping girders, condensation from life support and coolant tubes running down the walls to form murky pools of liquid.
With all powered functions on ship reduced to the bare minimum as the fleet approached its destination, the light in the chamber came from guttering flames – slaves had dragged in great piles of refuse, placed them in wide bowls, doused them with oil and set them alight. The smoke was foul, the flames spitting and hissing.
The Red Corsairs did not rest on the high ceremony beloved of the hated Imperium and the bloodless loyalists who retained faith in their damnable Corpse-Emperor. Instead there was simply service and reward: they gave unquestioning service to their master, and in return he rewarded them with a share of the spoils, as he saw fit.
Such a gathering of the Red Corsairs senior officers should, by that theory, have been devoid of formality, and indeed for the most part the arrangements were simple: the officers attended, and slaves brought them fine foods and drinks, plundered from a hundred worlds and countless ships.
In practice, although they were traitors to the cause they remained Space Marines, and the physical pleasures of eating and drinking were of limited interest to them. Equally, while they professed an abandonment of their former conventions and an embracing of anarchy, the Red Corsairs were still born soldiers, and any gathering was riven by complex strata of rank and achievement.
There were also newer traditions, traditions which would have been utterly repugnant to the gathered Red Corsairs under their former colours – rituals and ceremonies that had developed since their master embraced the faith of Chaos Undivided.
One such tradition was that involving the Cup of Blessings.
Rotaka had entered the gathering of officers precisely on time. While he followed his master into the service of Chaos, as he would follow him anywhere he was required to, Rotaka took little interest or pleasure in the practice of his adopted faith. He simply served his lord as he had since he had been elevated to the ranks of the Adeptus Astartes, and while his master’s loyalties may have changed, Rotaka’s more narrow loyalties had not.
To follow one’s master into the depths and fight on, that was true service.
He surveyed the room. Even on this, one of his master’s more personal and obsessive campaigns, the full complement of Red Corsairs officers was not present. The Red Corsairs had their stronghold within the Maelstrom along with other h
oldings, and smaller fleets that had been sent out to menace Imperial shipping lanes and were long out of contact with command. They were a warband, not a Chapter, and their reach was vast. It made a true gathering of the captains almost impossible.
Still, many of them were here, including some of their lord’s closest allies.
One such luminary was Garreon the Corpsemaster, Chief Apothecary of the Red Corsairs. Amongst the near-identical ranks of former Astral Claws, Garreon stood out with his sharp, scarred features and impenetrably dark eyes, his greying brown hair falling to his shoulders. He somehow seemed to stand taller than those of identical height as he impassively surveyed the chamber.
His eyes did not meet Rotaka’s, though the latter could not tell whether this was accident or calculated sleight. Rotaka truly didn’t care. Garreon was a formidable opponent and while Rotaka did not wish to cross him, neither did he feel the need to court the Corpsemaster’s favour.
In this he was obviously alone; while Garreon stood apart from the throng, the other officers took turns to step up to him and pay a few words of homage. This sickened Rotaka, although he could not quite place why.
Of the others, Rotaka saw Valthex, the Red Corsairs Chief Techmarine, ignoring everyone around him and checking a data-slate, as was his habit. While the other Red Corsairs had mostly abandoned their helmets, Valthex remained hidden beneath his. He was still carrying the bulk of the unique array of ancient machinery, mounted on the shoulders of his armour. He moved amongst his peers like an oblivious tank, a giant amongst giants.
The rest? Rotaka thought little of them, except in memories of old campaigns. He realised that he was one of the few still adorned as he had been the day after they struck away their old insignia and adopted the red saltire of the Corsairs.
In that chamber he saw hands that had steadily mutated into great, crab-like claws, pauldrons edged with brass trim, an increasing number of modifications and trophies. One Red Corsair had both cheeks pierced with rows of silver thorns, while another wore a hood of gold chains over his head, his misaligned eyes suggesting some severe mutation or injury beneath the glittering mask.
‘Let us drink, brothers,’ said a velveteen voice, cutting through all other noise in the room. Rotaka turned to see who had spoken, and found it hard not to spit on the floor at his use of the word ‘brothers’.
The speaker was Anto, formerly of the disbanded Tiger Claws Chapter, secretly adopted into the Astral Claws under circumstances which even Rotaka was still not fully aware of, decades later. Anto’s expression was unreadable beneath an ornate cylindrical helmet with horizontal, dark eye-slits, but Rotaka imagined it was one of infuriating smugness at his ability to command a crowd.
Anto considered himself a keeper of secrets, above or equal to all except their master, but Rotaka had other opinions. The surviving former Tiger Claws were born traitors and vicious survivors who had, with his master’s blessing, hidden themselves amongst the ranks of the Astral Claws long before Rotaka’s Chapter had rejected the Imperium and become the Red Corsairs. Rotaka had no doubt that, should circumstances favour it, the likes of Anto would abandon the Corsairs as they had all other prior loyalties, and seek to continue their own mysterious practices elsewhere.
Whatever secrets the Tiger Claws brought with them to secure the favour of Rotaka’s master, Anto remained one of the keepers. A sorcerer of considerable power, his power armour was partially concealed beneath a long cloak of dark red fabric, tattered from countless battles. He carried a tall staff of ornate iron, adorned with a spiralling engraving that either resembled or actually was a series of human spines curling round the shaft.
For all Rotaka’s distrust of the former Tiger Claw, he knew it was unwise to snub Anto, especially when he was currently in their master’s favour due to his role, alongside Garreon, in preparing the ground for the current campaign.
So Rotaka joined his fellow officers in forming a single ritualistic circle in the room. Only Garreon and Valthex stood outside the circle, taking a position behind Anto’s shoulders as he prepared to lead the ceremony, holding in his hands an ornate silver chalice. The engravings on the cup seemed to shift when looked at directly, skulls and twisted faces writhing on the surface.
The Cup of Blessings. To drink from the cup was a ritual performed amongst the Red Corsairs before great battles. Not all would drink, and indeed not all battles would see Anto produce the cup first. The criteria for when the cup was used, and by whom, were known only to Anto himself.
Anto spoke words Rotaka could not comprehend and made gestures over the cup, then walked to one corner of the room where a trickle of water poured from a hole in the ceiling and held the cup under it, filling it.
‘What enters the cup matters not,’ said Anto. ‘The cup blesses its contents as it blesses those who drink from it. It transforms liquid as it transforms life.’
Rotaka had heard these words countless times before and suppressed a sneer at Anto’s relentless sense of theatre, keeping his face a mask.
‘The cup chooses who drinks from it,’ said Anto. He walked over to a Red Corsair called Becaro, holding the cup before him as if pulled by some invisible force. Becaro took the cup and poured some of the liquid into his mouth.
The ‘blessings’ bestowed upon those who drank from the cup in these pre-battle rituals were varied in nature. For some, the elixir changed nothing. For others, it brought a temporary gift, a mystical power or ability of use in the coming battle that would fade with time. Others would receive the more permanent blessing of a mutation, warping them into a form more pleasing to their gods.
But for many, it simply brought death. Painful, retching death as the elixir burned through them.
Becaro grunted with pain and doubled over, clutching his stomach. Then he raised his head and released a peal of deep laughter. He lifted his hands to show the others, and as he did so green flame crept from his wrists to consume his gauntlets. He flexed his fingers, flinging sparks of spectral fire.
‘A true blessing,’ enthused Anto. ‘Becaro is most favoured.’
This time Rotaka could not quite suppress his contempt, and felt a twitch of disgust pass across his face. He didn’t care for the tricks of sorcerers.
Anto’s head snapped round to stare straight at Rotaka. He said nothing, but moved his entire body around towards him, and raised the cup. ‘Rotaka, will you drink?’
As surely as Rotaka knew that Anto was a walking curse who brought nothing but betrayal and destruction to those around him, so Anto surely knew that Rotaka’s faith in the gods their master had sworn them to was limited. If the cup truly tested faith to decide who was worthy of a blessing, then it would reject and destroy Rotaka with a single mouthful.
Equally, a straight rejection of Anto’s offer would be a rejection of their shared gods, and the faithful would not hesitate to hack Rotaka down where he stood, regardless of his rank.
Rotaka looked down into the chalice. The water in the cup had turned into a thick elixir of indeterminate colour. There did not seem to be much of the liquid left after Becaro’s long gulp.
‘Will you not sup first, brother?’ Rotaka asked Anto. ‘I would hate for the bearer of the cup to be deprived of the chance to be blessed. Your stewardship makes you worthier than I for its rewards.’
Anto’s helmet made his expression unreadable as he looked back at Rotaka, as if weighing the sincerity of the proposal.
‘I will,’ said Anto. ‘You do me great honour by offering to let me sup before you.’ He turned to the others. ‘Please, favoured Becaro, would you hold the cup and my staff for one moment while I prepare.’
Becaro did so, laughing once more as the flames around his hands licked the staff and cup as he held them. Meanwhile Anto, who Rotaka had not seen remove his helmet in many decades, reached behind his neck and released the clasp that attached it to his power armour.
With a h
iss, the helmet came away, and the sorcerer revealed his true face. If he was self-conscious about his appearance, either due to pride or self-disgust, he did not show it, and neither did those around him react to the change in his appearance over the long years.
The ravages of experimentation with the powers of Chaos were written across Anto’s features. His jaw was lopsided, the teeth on one side of his mouth crooked and over-sized. A diamond shaped patch of skin on one cheek was scaled like that of a lizard, purplish and rough. His scarred scalp was hairless except for patches of dark, wiry fur. Even his ears were tapered, and while one of his eyes was piercingly dark the other was slack-lidded, coloured a milky blue with no visible iris.
‘I accept any blessing the gods may choose to bestow upon me,’ said Anto, taking the cup back from Becaro and lifting it to his lips.
A gulp taken and swallowed, Anto passed the cup to Rotaka, who couldn’t help but glance down and note that there was still a sip’s worth of elixir lingering in the bottom. He had not escaped his fate just yet.
Rotaka looked up, and found Anto holding his gaze, the slack eye more alert than it first appeared. Then Anto’s gaze became glassy; he swayed slightly on the spot and began to cough fiercely.
For a few precious seconds, Rotaka thought that it was he who had been blessed, that the sorcerer was going to die and he could cast aside the hated cup in the confusion.
But Anto’s coughing ended not in death but in a large exhalation of fine purple smoke, and a blissful expression utterly alien to a genetically bred warrior. Whatever he saw in that moment, it was not the chamber they were in.
Then Anto’s eyes snapped back to normal, and his shoulders straightened. As the smoke cleared, he replaced his helmet.
‘A vision,’ he said. ‘A minor blessing, but a welcome one.’ He did not elucidate further.
Rotaka knew that to delay further would be of no use. ‘May I be so fortunate,’ he told Anto, lifting the cup to his lips and draining the last, thin trickle of liquid. He tried to slip it past his tongue, presuming it would taste worse than anything he had ever drunk before, but to his surprise it tasted of… nothing. Less than nothing. An absence of taste. It did not even feel like liquid, but a sense of passing dryness.