SABBAT WAR

by Edited by Dan Abnett

  Graham McNeill has written many titles for The Horus Heresy, including the Siege of Terra novellas Sons of the Selenar and Fury of Magnus, the novels The Crimson King and Vengeful Spirit, and the New York Times bestselling A Thousand Sons and The Reflection Crack’d, the latter of which featured in The Primarchs anthology. Graham’s Ultramarines series, featuring Captain Uriel Ventris, is now seven novels long, and has close links to his Iron Warriors stories, the novel Storm of Iron being a perennial favourite with Black Library fans. He has also written the Forges of Mars trilogy, featuring the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the Warhammer Horror novella The Colonel’s Monograph. For Warhammer, he has written the Warhammer Chronicles trilogy The Legend of Sigmar, the second volume of which won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award.

  Robert Rath is a freelance writer from Honolulu who is currently based in Hong Kong. He is the author of the Black Library novel The Infinite and the Divine, and its companion short story ‘War in the Museum’. His other short fiction includes ‘The Freelancer’, ‘The Garden of Mortal Delights’ and the Assassinorum tales ‘Divine Sanction’, ‘Live Wire’ and ‘Iron Sight’.

  Marc Collins is a speculative fiction author living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. He is the writer of the short stories ‘Ghosts of Iron’, ‘Respite’s End’, ‘The Shapers of Scars’ and ‘Champions, All’ for Warhammer 40,000, and ‘Cold Cases’ for Warhammer Crime. When not dreaming of the far future he works in Pathology with the NHS.

  Matthew Farrer is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Crossfire, Legacy and Blind. He has also penned many tales set in the Sabbat Worlds, including the Iron Snakes novel Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint, the novella ‘The Inheritor King’ in the Sabbat Crusade anthology, ‘The Headstone and the Hammerstone Kings’ in Sabbat Worlds and ‘Nineteen-Three Coreward, Resolved’ in Sabbat War. For the Horus Heresy he has written the short stories ‘After Desh’ea’ and ‘Vorax’. He lives and works in Australia.

  Justin D Hill is the author of the Necromunda novel Terminal Overkill, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Cadia Stands and Cadian Honour, the Space Marine Battles novel Storm of Damocles and the short stories ‘Last Step Backwards’, ‘Lost Hope’ and ‘The Battle of Tyrok Fields’, following the adventures of Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed. He has also written ‘Truth Is My Weapon’, and the Warhammer tales ‘Golgfag’s Revenge’ and ‘The Battle of Whitestone’. His novels have won a number of prizes, as well as being Washington Post and Sunday Times Books of the Year. He lives ten miles uphill from York, where he is indoctrinating his four children in the 40K lore.

  Edoardo Albert is a writer and historian specialising in the Dark Ages. He finds that the wars and cultures of the early Medieval period map very well on to the events of the 40th and 41st millenniums. Silent Hunters was his first novel for Black Library. For Warhammer 40,000, he has also written the short stories ‘Green and Grey’, ‘Last Flight’, ‘Born of the Storm’, and the novella Lords of the Storm.

  John French is the author of several Horus Heresy stories including the novels The Solar War, Mortis, Praetorian of Dorn, Tallarn and Slaves to Darkness, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Resurrection, Incarnation and Divination for The Horusian Wars and three tie-in audio dramas – the Scribe Award-winning Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies, as well as Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams and Agent of the Throne: Ashes and Oaths. John has also written the Ahriman series and many short stories.

  Rachel Harrison is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Honourbound, featuring the character Commissar Severina Raine, as well the accompanying short stories ‘Execution’, ‘Trials’, ‘Fire and Thunder’, ‘A Company of Shadows’, and ‘The Darkling Hours’, which won a 2019 Scribe Award in the Best Short Story category. Also for Warhammer 40,000 she has written the novel Mark of Faith, the novella Blood Rite, numerous short stories including ‘The Third War’ and ‘Dishonoured’, the short story ‘Dirty Dealings’ for Necromunda, and the Warhammer Horror audio drama The Way Out.

  An extract from Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint.

  ‘LISTEN!’

  His voice slammed against the tiled walls, rolled through the passageways, broke and rolled back, interleaving itself into echoes all around him.

  ‘I speak of Ithaka, the warriors of Ithaka, the Iron Snakes of Ithaka. The Adeptus Astartes of the Reef Worlds, who proved their valour upon the waters!’

  His eyes were closed as he concentrated on sounds and echoes. His great shoulders bunched and released, his arms opened to embrace the air. His fists unknotted and his hands spread wide.

  ‘Armoured in devotion, armed in purpose, united in service, side by side on the road from the Throne to the stars, march the brothers of Ithaka!’

  He opened his eyes. Over these gloomy subterranean chambers his imagination painted the storm-tossed sea of his home world, the deep and endless sky, the rough rock of the ocean cliffs, the watching faces of his brothers. His Chapter. The tunnels were full of the soft lap and chuckle of water in the town cisterns, but in his mind he could almost hear the sigh and boom of the surf against the cliffs below the Phratry’s fortress, taste the clean, sharp sea-scent in the air.

  ‘Listen and I shall tell you. There came a day when word arrived of war, of desperate need. Word came that the Archenemy walked among the stars again, tales of worlds burning and then worlds extinguished. The sorrows and prayers of the Sabbat Worlds were poured out like the waters of the oceans.

  ‘And as the call sounded, the blood of the Phratry stirred to answer it, as its brothers emerged from their stern counsels to declaim over the ocean’s roar the names that would muster to carry the weight of the undertaking.

  ‘Brother-Captain Cules, who commanded his brothers to glory in the halls of the traitors of the Yandine Drift, undertook this. Brother-

  Captain Priad, whose lightning-wrapped blades had known the blood of the daemon, the ork and the primul, stood by his side. And to their banner came twelve names, a dozen banners, full sixscore warriors of the Phratry, sworn now to take ship from the Reef Stars, and with the might of their arms lift from the Sabbat Worlds the despair and the oppression of war!’

  He had half-consciously taken a step forward and found the modulation of the echoes had changed ever so slightly as he had moved. He began to move in slow half-steps, listening to the way his voice rang through the stone and tile of the tunnels, seeking out the best position.

  ‘And so soon the Archenemy was to feel the coils of the snake, the iron of its armour, the speed of its strike! At Ambold the Snakes of Ithaka fell upon the foe as they laid siege to brave soldiers of the Throne, to break their grip and their back, so that Ambold might again call itself free. Upon Fornax Aleph the foe birthed the warp-dreamed form of the daemon, the enemy beyond, but the jaws of the snake closed upon it and its malevolent breath was dissipated like the foam on the swell of the wave.’

  His voice had sped up, the echoes piling into each other and mashing together, blurring his words. He compensated, shifted position again, changed his cadence.

  ‘And then to Presarius, poor forsaken Presarius, whose darkened forges teemed with the misshapen enemy, spite-ridden, machine-merged, moving beneath their cities like the turbid tide. Like a spear of lightning before the storm, Brother-Captain Cules led the Snakes of Ithaka among the hives of Presarius, and in the darkness beneath the cities the hordes of the enemy closed about them.’

  Then, in among the echoes, directly behind him, there was a gap.

  ‘And so began the Nine Days of Presarius, spent in the deep shadows of the forges and labyrinths, every brother of the Phratry with bolter-breech ringing empty, flamer and plasma all thirsting in vain for fuel, missile and grenade long since dispatched into darkness. And in the darkness before the breaking of the last doors to the Tetradine Stairs the Iron Snakes slew with fist and cleaving blade, chainsword and sea-lance, with their hearts never veering from the fight an
d the victory, as steadfast as the mariner’s compass.’

  Something was directly behind him, out of his field of vision, motionless. Soaking up just enough of the sound that his exquisitely fine-honed hearing could spot the change in the echo layers. Someone was in here with him, silently watching.

  ‘It came about that while the brothers of Ithaka paid honour to their dead among the stones of wretched and ill-starred Presarius, a new banner was brought among their assembly. In amongst the heart of the foe’s ruin the steely snake and the golden aquila stood together, as Captain Cules and Macaroth the Warmaster bowed their heads together in sober conference.

  ‘“I bring you the Warmaster’s salute,” Cules’ words went, when the talk among the commanders was done and he had come back to his brothers, “for he has seen our prowess and resolve, and the ruin that we make of any enemy who stands against us, united in our undertaking. But the tides of war ebb and rise, and so we must chart a new course among its changing currents. The Warmaster is spreading his armies, to drive at the divided Archenemy and find the foe’s weaknesses as a storm surge will race through all the low places of the rocky coast.” And so, the undertaking to the Sabbat Worlds became many undertakings, and the voyage became many voyages, and the Iron Snakes strode onward through the war amid the smoke and the ruin of the Archenemy’s retreat.’

  He still had not turned around, but his picture of his observer was rapidly building. Human proportioned, on the small side, unarmoured. His scent was clean: harsh laundry soap and ablutory scrub. Imperial Guard. Trooper level. His nostrils twitched. A quick under-scent of oiled wood and boot leather. A whiff of islumbine.

  ‘And so now I must speak of Urdesh, great Urdesh draped this way and that in her necklaces of volcanoes among her surging and teeming seas, honoured Urdesh whose bright Mechanicus spires raised their golden peaks above the ashen plains, Urdesh the mighty forge around which the tide of fortune had ceaselessly churned. Urdesh who would witness the reunion of brothers long separated by the twisting currents of war.

  ‘Five banners the Phratry planted on Urdesh’s ashen soil, five hands poured out the water so that Urdesh’s seas and Ithaka’s might be forever joined. Five names were spoken to its smoke-laden winds.

  ‘Priad of Damocles Squad we shall account first into the fray, for it was noble Damocles who broke the teeth of the fortresses upon the Peshelid Sea. Shoulder to shoulder with them in the fury of the landings came the venerated Sergeant Symeon, bearer of bright Akanthe, leading the brothers of Erasmos Squad who had torn open the Styger Gate at Presarius. Hard behind in their steps, across the basalt-black teeth of the Ghentethi islands, came Platonos Squad, merciless as the rieve-shark, guided by the far-piercing visions of Hamiskora the seer and the hunter’s cunning of their Sergeant Iapetos. Kalliopi Squad, the tip of the Phratry’s lance behind their Sergeant Kreios, blood burning as hot as the flames of their jump packs. Andreos Squad, the hammer-handed, the breakers of armour, who marched beneath the banner of Sergeant Londas and left the corpses of enemy tanks burning behind them on the Eotine Walk.’

  His feet were firmly planted now: he had found the acoustic sweet spot, and just the right pitch and projection of his voice. He was almost smiling.

  ‘Five names, and five banners carried to the soil of Urdesh when the Iron Snakes fell upon the enemy among the white light of their starship’s wrath, breaking open the crowns of the atoll citadels and crumbling their walls into the waters.’ His voice rose from declamation to a triumphant shout. ‘The Iron Snake is swift of strike and keen of guile. It coils around the staff of the Saint and its hide shines with the light of the Throne, the light that the Archenemy has learned to fear! And so you must listen, listen as the deeds unfold, the deeds of the liberation of Urdesh!’

  He let the echoes die away and looked down, lowered his arms, relaxed his fingers. He was not out of breath. Three lungs and inhumanly high blood oxygenation would not permit it.

  No sound from behind him. There was a certain cheek to that. Brother Xander, sergeant of Damocles Squad and warrior of the Phratry of the Iron Snakes, turned around.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Sir?’ the boy asked. He was leaning back against the grey-tiled cistern wall by the same entrance Xander had come in by, slender white hands folded.

  ‘We’re not under attack. You’re too calm.’

  The boy considered that, and nodded. ‘You are correct, sir.’

  ‘We’re not launching an attack. I’d have been told.’

  ‘I am not aware of any such, sir.’

  ‘Well then?’ He walked forward, covering the distance in four unhurried steps, watching his visitor carefully. Not tall and burly like the Volpone troops, not compact and blocky like the Pragar. He was wiry, lean and pale, dressed in black fatigues almost devoid of markings. A cameleoline cape was draped at his shoulder and fastened back with a regimental pin Xander didn’t recognise.

  But he did recognise its owner, now that he was bothering to make connections. One of the Beati’s retinue, one of her closest, so constant and quiet he might as well have been her shadow. The one you forgot was there until you almost stepped on him. Xander must have been told his name at some point, but as far as he knew every Space Marine in Damocles Squad just thought of him as ‘the boy’.

  They’d been wrong to, though. Xander’s initial impression had been of a youth barely older than he could dimly remember being when the Iron Snakes recruiters had taken him away, but he realised he had been way off. The trooper was nearly middle-aged, his face lined and a little brush of grey starting to show at his temples. Still, Xander towered over him.

  ‘Enough with the wasting of both our time. What’s the message?’

  The trooper shook his head. Despite his annoyance Xander was rather taken with his calm. Most people began shifting and stammering with a warrior of the Adeptus Astartes looming right over them. It was a useful thing.

  ‘No message. I apologise if I misled you.’

  ‘If there’s no emergency, and no message,’ Xander said, bending forward to stare into the human’s eyes, ‘then why did you seek me out?’

  ‘I see the misunderstanding now, sir. It was this place I sought out, not you. I was waiting for you to finish.’

  To the Space Marine’s annoyed surprise, the trooper pushed off from the wall and walked around him, still with that same odd calm. He took position – in exactly the spot Xander had stood in, he noticed – and brought something out from where it had hung beneath his cape. A set of musical pipes, made from soft hide and elegant dark wood, much worn but kept in beautiful repair. Looking around him as his arm began to work the bellows, the man caught Xander’s stare.

  ‘I like the acoustics in here too,’ he said, and turned away, tucking the pipes under his arm.

  As Xander walked out of the cistern chamber towards the stairs, he could hear the man from Tanith begin to play.

  Priad

  Rhole Cliffs

  There hadn’t been much of a fight for the Rhole Cliffs the last time this stretch of coast had changed hands. The place had never been fought over very hard at all. It had no strategic role on the transport lines from the ocean farms, and it was not part of the web of Adeptus Mechanicus forge-shrines or vast manufactory hubs that stippled Urdesh’s seamed and smoky surface. It was just there, one of those odd corners in the interstices of the landscape’s greater workings where people and homes gradually accreted, and a village grew into a town without anyone really intending it, coasting onward on peaceful inertia.

  There was no particular reason to fight over it, and so thus far nobody had. If one side or the other ever managed to conquer this world for long enough then Rhole Cliffs would be somewhere down the list for places to march through and pacify. But Urdesh had changed hands three times during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, five times in living memory, seven times in a millennium of history. In all that time this had been the little coast-city’s remarkably effective defence: that it was an afterthought.
<
br />   This did Brother-Captain Priad’s humour no good at all.

  He prowled along the cobbled promenade that edged the clifftop, looking out over the rampart. The spacious streets and dignified buildings of the uptown were at his back; before and below him the dense jumble of the lowdown buildings packed the bay between the cliffs and the waterfront. His ceramite boots crunched and grated on the stone, covering two metres at a stride. He was dressed in the armour of his Chapter, a gunmetal grey that matched the overcast sky. On his left shoulder pad, a steel-blue snake coiled across a white field. His head was bare, his thick black hair bound back with selachid skin and pinned with sea-snake bone. Despite his resolve to master his resentment and concentrate on the task at hand, he was glowering like a storm front over open ocean.

  He was tracking the little grey speck that had come swinging in from the bay, looping in over the eastern tip of Rhole Cliffs and then arcing back past him, following the line of the water’s edge. It was hard to pick out from the grey sky behind it, even though he knew its trajectory. The wind whipped in from among the islands, breaking up sounds, but as the speck made another pass, close enough for Priad to see its outline, he could just start to hear its engines.

  The sound was a welcome one, a touch of familiarity, with associations built up over decades of campaigning. The keening of turbofans meant extraction, reinforcement, bombardment. It meant support and comrades, the sign that his battle-brothers were nearby.

  The previous morning it had been a less comforting sign. There had been a burr in the running of the port fan, barely audible even to Adeptus Astartes hearing but clear once Pyrakmon had pointed the sound out to them, and even fed it from his Techmarine’s instrumentation into their audio pickups so they could hear it more clearly. Pyrakmon had spent ten hours working on the engine, and then another one in rituals designed to make peace with the machine for the insult of dismantling it. He was up there in the craft now as Crethon put it through the most punishing manoeuvres their enhanced physiologies would take, making sure nothing might induce the fan to begin misbehaving again.