Garro

by James Swallow

  ‘Something has changed,’ said Malcador. ‘I did not see it before, but now I perceive it clearly.’ He tilted the head of the iron staff towards Garro, the flames atop it quietly crackling. ‘There is a part of your spirit that is opaque, Nathaniel. Obscured, even to my insight.’ A faint, brittle smile played upon the Sigillite’s lips. He seemed at once amused and dismayed by the possibility.

  ‘Aye, lord.’ Garro remembered a touch of gentle radiance against his seared skin, of how it passed through him and what that might portend for the unwritten future. ‘That place you cannot see into? That part of me that remains forever closed to you?’

  He broke Malcador’s gaze and turned away from him.

  ‘That is my faith.’

  When his name is spoken, it is often in the context of what he meant to those telling the tale. I have been guilty of this. I often speak of what Nathaniel Garro meant to me.

  But what did we mean to him?

  The legionaries were the creation of the God-Emperor, and they were a part of the Master of Mankind’s great plan. But they were also part of us, of we common humans. Perhaps that was why some of them succumbed so forcefully to the worst of our natures. They magnified all elements of our spirit, the noble and the horrific.

  Garro was the former.

  But there was more to him. What he allowed few to see was the most human part of himself – his doubt. He questioned his place in the universe, as all of us are wont to do at some time in our lives.

  For him, that question came wrapped in the tragedy of Horus Lupercal’s heresy. And when everything he loved was stripped away from him, when Garro’s oath, his brotherhood, his very sense of belonging was made ashes, there was some of him that became lost.

  He came to us to find it again. He sought us out, the Saint and I, to find a path that had meaning.

  It was the question we were asked over and over again in those days. We struggled to understand what had brought his great tragedy to pass, and what our place was in it. And in many ways, he was the first of the legionaries with the courage to admit he did not know the answer.

  For there were many of his kind who simply did not question, who took up arms against their kinsmen because they had been ordered to do so, not through any great enmity or corruption. That came later, at the hands of those among them who were already tainted, who had been so since long before the murder of Isstvan III.

  But Garro was the first to make the leap of faith.

  He was the first who truly dared to believe.

  I am proud to say I saw him at the moments when his spirit was at its most wounded and when he was at the purest height of his selflessness.

  And as to those who have asked me, in the years since then, of the price he paid – what can I say that will carry the full measure of that? I will say with no false modesty that my name is known for my oratory on the matters of the Imperial Truth, but even I find it hard to conjure the right words.

  His path was the path of this conflict.

  A journey from a place of bright and shining unity, a place where all things were possible, into a shadowed valley of darkness and betrayal. Onwards to a future forged by a god.

  Euphrati was the first Saint of our new Church, but Nathaniel…

  Nathaniel was its first true martyr.

  Sorrow clutches at my heart now as I commit these words to the page. Yet it is strangely tinged with a hope, a thin golden thread of it that cannot be broken. It exists now and will exist into eternity, I am certain of this. It may never pull us entirely from the dark, but it was never meant to. Light cannot flourish anywhere else.

  There are other stories I might recount, of course. Of hells and heroism. Swords and shields, truth and lies, oaths and Legions. Fate. Faith.

  Let me tell you about Nathaniel Garro.

  Afterword

  Many of the stories that we’ve written in the Horus Heresy saga orbit around events that have always been a key part of the mythology, from way back before we even started thinking about a novel series. But one of the neat things about working on this epic canvas has been seeing (and sometimes writing) the new stories that emerged out of the creative flux of the project. Think of major players like Garviel Loken or John Grammaticus. Consider novels like Nemesis or The Unremembered Empire. These and many more came from the growing, shifting, changing landscape of the wider narrative as we were building it, and those characters and stories have gone on to break new ground and become fan favourites.

  And while Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro, master of the Seventh Great Company of the Death Guard, was an existing character from the old Warhammer 40,000 background, what he has become is something much more.

  When I wrote my first Heresy novel The Flight of the Eisenstein, I had no idea that he would take on such a life of his own and eventually become one of the saga’s champions – I figured that I would just build on what had already happened to him in the series, and then another writer would carry on his story.

  Beyond some vague ideas, I had no firm plans for Garro’s future.

  But then I started getting asked about when the next Garro story was coming…

  In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he caught people’s attention. He’s the stuff that true Space Marines are made of: trustworthy and loyal, fierce and uncompromising, and quite often incredibly bad-ass. He’s a great character for the Horus Heresy series because he encapsulates a lot of the themes that make those books so potent. The narrative is all about betrayal and tragedy, and Garro knows those things first-hand, having witnessed his Legion and his primarch Mortarion turn from their oaths to the Emperor of Mankind, to place their banners with Horus Lupercal.

  About the same time as interest for more Garro adventures was in the air, Black Library’s experiments with audio dramas were gathering momentum. I’ve always loved radio plays as both a listener and a writer, and I had been one of the people pushing hard for Black Library to try its hand at audio. So it was a good fit for me to take Nathaniel into another medium with his next adventure in Oath of Moment, and that opened the door for a series of tales showcasing his new role as a ‘Knight Errant’.

  Garro is a man who stands unbroken while all around him the vows of his battle-brothers have been sundered. Like all good heroes, he’s searching for his destiny. The stories assembled in the book that you’ve just read, adapted and recontextualised from audio and novella formats, represent the next phase on that journey.

  But this isn’t the end of his path. Far from it.

  As I said before, the origins of Garro’s story come from old-school Warhammer 40,000 lore, much of it dating back over two decades. He first appears in colour text in one of the original Epic 40,000 rulebooks, and there only as a cursory mention. In this early (now apocryphal) version of events, it’s actually the World Eaters captain Macer Varren who leads the Eisenstein back to Terra. In later editions, Garro takes his rightful place carrying the warning of Horus’ treachery to the Emperor, and it is in an article on the Death Guard for White Dwarf’s Index Astartes years later that his character first takes shape. By my count, there were at least four different interpretations of Garro’s story, his eventual fate and the epic events of the flight of the Eisenstein in the lore, dating back to the first creation of the Horus Heresy mythos – some in which he led the escape from Isstvan III, some in which he was not even present, and others still where he perished or turned to Chaos. I’ve tried to make all of those things true to one degree or another, and some of those fates have yet to play out.

  For me, at the very start a big part of the insight into Garro’s character came from one singular piece of portrait artwork created by John Gravato, for the long out-of-print Horus Heresy card game. More recently, it’s been Neil Roberts who has brought Garro to life on the front of this very volume and in epic artwork on the covers of stories like Shield of Lies and Vow of Faith. He h
as cemented Garro’s grizzled and stoic look in my mind and that of the readership. We’ve also seen Israel Gonzalez sculpt a fantastic miniature as part of Forge World’s Character Series of models, and of course I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the work of voice actor Toby Longworth, the actor who has portrayed Nathaniel Garro in every one of the audio dramas.

  I’m proud to have worked alongside these talented folks, and I feel that each of us have helped to grow ‘Straight-Arrow Garro’ into the popular figure he’s become.

  So if you’ve read this far, I’m hoping that the question playing on your mind right now is: Where does Garro go from here? We’ve seen him challenged over and over, with his honour and loyalty put to the test, and later his faith set through the same trials. Each time he has won through, and each time another piece of his destiny comes into focus. While his story does intertwine with a certain cadre of grey-armoured daemon hunters, his own future lies elsewhere. There are still debts to be paid and scores to be settled with his former Legion.

  Garro’s story has always been one man’s journey through the themes of the Horus Heresy – treachery, catastrophe and heroism in the face of the unthinkable – and I can promise you, he’ll meet it with an unbroken spirit, and Libertas in his hand.

  James Swallow

  February 2016

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Laurie Goulding, Graeme Lyon and Callum Davis for their assistance in the wrangling of this “remastering” of Nathaniel Garro’s audio adventures into prose form, and once more to Neil Roberts for another outstanding piece of cover art.

  About the Author

  James Swallow is best known for being the author of the Horus Heresy novels Fear to Tread and Nemesis, which both reached the New York Times bestseller lists, The Flight of the Eisenstein and a series of audio dramas featuring the character Nathaniel Garro. For Warhammer 40,000, he is best known for his four Blood Angels novels, the audio drama Heart of Rage, and his two Sisters of Battle novels. His short fiction has appeared in Legends of the Space Marines and Tales of Heresy.

  An extract from Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar.

  One empire came to Thoas to crush another.

  The empire of order and light arrived in the form of an armada. If the eyes of the other empire had turned to the void, perhaps they would have witnessed the final approach. They would have seen a swarm of blades. Each blade was a ship thousands of yards long. The greatest of them spanned fifteen miles from stem to stern. It was both sword and mountain chain. From the surface of Thoas, it would have appeared as an elongated star, moving with unalterable purpose with its smaller brothers. A constellation of war filling the night sky.

  But in the second empire, there were no eyes to look upwards, or none to understand what they saw. This was not an empire worthy of the name. Yet it had held a dozen systems. One by one, they had been ripped from its grasping claws. Now the empire unworthy of the name was reduced to its core. Its seat of strength. Its source of contagion.

  It did not see its doom arrive. If it saw, it did not understand. If it understood, it did not care. Such was its nature. That reason alone was enough to warrant its extermination.

  Remark 73.44.liv: The visibility of the leader at significant moments of a campaign carries its own signification. It reinforces his interest not just in the goal, but in those sworn to carry it out. The leader who lacks these interests invites and deserves defeat.

  Roboute Guilliman stood at the lectern of the bridge of the Macragge’s Honour. Below him, in a tiered space the size of an arena, the level of activity had risen in urgency, but proceeded with no loss of calm. Officers performed their tasks with the same efficiency as the servitors. The bridge hummed with the sound of human machinery, gears meshing smoothly, readying for war.

  Guilliman had been at his station five hours already, ever since the translation to the system. He was here to witness and to be witnessed, as was proper. Addendum to 73.44.liv, he thought. Interest cannot be feigned. He would insert the correction to the manuscript later.

  He had watched Thoas grow large in the forward bridge windows. He had seen its details resolve themselves as the layers of augur scans built up the composite picture of the target. The forward elements of the fleet were now at low anchor, awaiting his command for the next stage of reconnaissance.

  ‘Another message from Captain Sirras,’ said Marius Gage.

  ‘Reconfirming that his Scouts are ready?’ Guilliman said.

  The Chapter Master Primus of the XIII Legion grinned. ‘That would be correct.’

  ‘He’s contacting you directly now?’

  ‘We were together on Septus Twelve in the Osiris Cluster.’

  ‘In the hive?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gage. ‘We both made it to the surface in time to see the flares of the fleet burning when the Psybrid ships sprung the ambush.’

  ‘So he presumes this gives him leave to bypass the chain of command?’ Guilliman asked.

  ‘The Twenty-second is still without a Chapter Master,’ Gage reminded him.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ The orks of the Thoas Empire had taken Machon’s head in the final stages of the campaign to purge them from the Aletho system. ‘There will be a new Chapter Master before we land on Thoas. The current lack does not justify Sirras trying to make an improvisational end run around my timing decisions.’

  ‘An official reprimand?’ Gage asked.

  ‘No. But inform him that if he contacts you again, the next voice he hears will be mine.’

  The old warrior nodded. His features were worn by his centuries of campaigning, and had been weathered into wry, intelligent cragginess. He walked a few steps away to vox the captain of the 223rd Company.

  ‘Wait,’ Guilliman said. Remark 73.42.xv: It is the duty of the soldier to accept an order without a rationale being provided, but the absence of a rationale should never be the default condition. ‘Let him know the scans are still being collated. He isn’t waiting on a whim. He’s waiting for a worthwhile target.’

  In the bridge window, another layer of topographical detail was added. The image of Thoas sharpened. Coastlines changed from fractal abstractions to specific geological characterisations. The world was becoming a real place. It was tidally locked by its blue star. Half of the planet burned forever while the other half froze. The Ultramarines fleet was anchored over the region of the terminator, where twilight and dawn would never end.

  Guilliman examined the sphere. He frowned. ‘Magnification of the northern tropic,’ he said.

  The image grew.

  ‘Increase magnification.’

  There.

  A cordillera ran along a north-to-south-west diagonal down the western region of the largest continental mass. To the east, the land was wrinkled with mountains, canyons and plateaus for close to five hundred miles. To the west was a vast plain that reached almost to the coast before it ran up against a narrower, lower chain of peaks. In the western flank of the cordillera, Guilliman saw lines that were too regular. There were structures there, almost as big as the mountains in which they nestled.

  ‘Biomass readings in this sector?’ Guilliman asked.

  ‘A very high concentration of orks, lord,’ the Augur Master reported.

  Given the inviting geography of the plain and the easier slopes of the foothills, that was to be expected. ‘Compared to the other principal land masses?’

  ‘Higher,’ the officer confirmed.

  ‘Are you seeing this?’ Guilliman said to Gage.

  ‘I am. Are those human?’

  ‘Records about Thoas are fragmentary in the extreme. To date I have found only two references to any form of human colonisation.’

  ‘Those are big,’ said Gage. ‘This was more than a colony.’

  Guilliman nodded. ‘It was a civilisation.’ The prospect was pleasing. If there had been human c
olonies in the other systems reclaimed from the orks, all traces had long since vanished. That such signs would appear on this world, where the final battle against the greenskin empire would take place, was a gift of in­estimable value. If the ruins were human. ‘Tell Sirras we have a target for him.’

  ‘Evido Banzor has Scouts ready for a low orbit drop too,’ Gage said. ‘Part of the 166th, under Captain Iasus.’

  ‘Good. Send them both down. I want their eyes on the ork dispositions with particular respect to those structures. The Thoas campaign begins there.’

  ‘“When presented with a choice of beginnings, choose the one with meaning,”’ Gage quoted.

  ‘Remark 45.xxx,’ said Guilliman. ‘Flatterer.’

  ‘Merely a manifest truth,’ Gage said, his eyes on the traces of immense ruins.

  ‘Our captain honours us with his presence,’ said Meton. His voice was a whisper, inaudible except over the vox. The orks were a long way beyond earshot. The visible ones, at least. Meton was observing proper discipline, taking no chances as the squads made their way up towards the ridge.

  ‘Theoretical – our captain is merely eager to get his hands dirty with greenskin gore,’ Sergeant Phocion said.

  ‘Practical – your captain would like you both to shut up,’ said Eleon Iasus. They were both partly correct. There was no compelling necessity for him to have left the Praetorian Trust to accompany the Scouts on their reconnaissance. There was no dereliction of duty either, though. As a sergeant, he had held Phocion’s position for decades. And he had cleared his venture with Chapter Master Banzor. Yes, he wanted the feel of Thoas’ surface under his boots as soon as possible. There was more, though. Theoretical: there is no such thing as superfluous advance knowledge of the battlefield. Practical: where possible, add first-hand experience to intelligence gathered from a distance. He wanted to see the ruins. He wanted to know what would be the epicentre of the campaign.