by Guy Haley
At one side of the room was a regicide table of ancient origin. Upon a single curled leg a round board sat, its surface inset with wooden squares to make the playing surface. The wood was so old the whites had darkened and the blacks mellowed, until they were nearly the same shades of brown. A game halfway through was set on the board. Ivory pieces aged to a mellow cream were on the defensive, half their pieces off the playing surface already. A nearly full set of ebony was arrayed against them. Over the heads of their servants the black king and the white king looked directly at one another. Horus ducked down to get a better view. The attack was deeply flawed. The defence had many holes. Grains of dust and debris littered the board. Ash drifted onto it from the fires outside. It was when one of these grey smuts settled next to the black king that he saw that the piece rested in a puddle of blood.
He shook his head at the symbolism. Unsubtle.
He stood up, picked up a thrall piece on a whim and moved it to block a white keep.
The base clicked onto the ancient wood with a soft finality.
‘I have tested your walls, father. My armies stand ready to begin their attack. Why do you still resist? You can see the end, I know you can. Your resistance is pointless. You damn humanity. Release them. Let me save them.’
There came no reply.
Horus stood back from the game.
‘Your move, father,’ he said quietly.
The Vengeful Spirit, Terran near orbit, 15th of Quartus
The air was foul in Horus’ nameless sanctum where Abaddon watched over his father.
As always, Layak and his tongueless servants had followed him there, giving him no moment of peace.
‘He spends too much time in his meditations,’ said the First Captain.
Horus’ eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. His mouth gaped. He looked an imbecile, or dead. Abaddon was glad few others saw the Warmaster like this. He wished he did not see it himself, but he could not stop looking.
‘How do you think that Angron walks on Terra?’ said Layak mildly. ‘He will not be the first child of the warp to do so. The Emperor’s might dwindles because Horus confronts Him in the warp. Without these attacks your father makes upon the Terran despot, our allies would never break through.’
‘Erebus would have claimed those triumphs for himself,’ said Abaddon.
‘I am not Erebus,’ said Layak. ‘The First Apostle served himself first and the gods second. That is why the Warmaster banished him. He and Lorgar were faithless in the end.’
‘What about you, Layak? Do you keep faith?’ he said dismissively.
A burst of angry heat radiated from the Apostle. ‘I serve only the gods,’ said Layak, ‘for what use is mortal power in the face of eternity?’
Abaddon stared at the Warmaster.
‘The price of this is too high. We can bring the Emperor down without the Neverborn. I do not like what these sorcerous journeys are doing to my father, and I hold you responsible.’
‘Kill me, and it will make no difference. It is too late to change the Warmaster’s path,’ said Layak. ‘The deal has been struck. The daemonic legions wait to add their might to yours. There is no going back on that.’
‘We could have obliterated this world.’
‘Then you would have lost. The Emperor is no ordinary foe,’ said Layak. ‘Slay His body, and He will persist. He must be destroyed, face to face, in body and in spirit.’
‘Then we should have tried it on our own,’ Abaddon said. ‘If Horus continues with this harassment of the False Emperor, he risks himself. Do not underestimate the power of the Emperor, Layak. I do not. Do your masters?’
Layak did not answer Abaddon’s question. ‘There are pressures upon our labours,’ he said instead. ‘They must be completed quickly, or the war will be lost.’
Abaddon looked at the masked priest. ‘Such as? Guilliman is nothing. I will break him. I will break them all, these loyal sons. These primarchs. They are weak.’
Layak’s six eyes flared. ‘Do you believe that Guilliman’s advance is the only limit on our time?’
‘Layak, I have no liking for you. You are useful, and Horus has decreed that you are not to be harmed, but I would require little excuse to overlook both these protections you enjoy.’
‘I will say what needs to be said, threats or not. I serve the gods. My life means nothing.’
Abaddon’s fists flexed. ‘Then if you are so faithful, I dare you to speak, and we will see what affection the gods hold you in.’
‘You have seen it,’ Layak said steadily. ‘You can sense it. Horus is failing. He is too strong to defeat, but it may be that he is too weak to claim victory. The Pantheon gift him with great ability, but the favour of the gods carries a steep price.’
‘Speak clearly,’ Abaddon said.
‘Horus’ soul is bright with divine might, but it burns. Mighty as his being is, it is finite. He is not invincible in this world or the other. If we delay too long, he will be devoured by the power he commands.’
Abaddon did not want to recognise it. He could not, but he knew, looking at his father’s blank face, that what Layak said was true.
‘How long does he have?’
‘Long enough, perhaps,’ said Layak. ‘His will is strong.’
‘But if it is not strong enough? If he fails now, if his soul burns out before the task is done, what will happen?’
‘Then, my lord, what happens will be what has always happened before.’ Layak looked at Abaddon. ‘There shall come another champion of Chaos.’
The birth of a book always starts with a question.
Here we are at the moment the traitors set foot upon the soil of our blighted future Earth, where, with malice aforethought, they bring down all the works of the Emperor, and doom humanity to a slow decline.
Events do not come much more momentous than this.
But how does it happen?
I’m going to talk a bit about how writers use questions to shape the novels they write.
Writing a book like this is rife with technical challenges: it’s the second in a series; it has to conform to the story as it already exists; it has to fit the part of the story assigned to this particular novel; the events depicted are immense in scale; there are multitudes of characters to choose from; and never forgetting, of course, it has to function as a story, with a beginning, middle and an end in its own right.
The list might seem restrictive, but an author always has the freedom to choose which parts are accentuated. To make these choices, we must interrogate our subject. I regard the Heresy as future history. It has happened already. I, as a future historian, must try to uncover why. Like any good historian, I do so by asking a lot of questions.
Questions and answers
There is a timeline. There has to be a timeline. Without it, writers of a multipart series like this are lost. The story of the Siege was set long ago in publications that are so old they’re becoming mythical themselves. You all know the story. We have to make sure we deliver it.
A lot of meetings went into the Siege of Terra. In the very first of those meetings, the timeline was scrutinised. The number of books was decided upon, and what parts of the timeline would be covered in each novel, all by asking questions.
Big questions begin the process. Their answers beget more questions. I was assigned to book two. Thereafter, the questions I asked were mainly directed to that part of the Siege. Here’s the bit of the timeline that was given over to what became The Lost and the Damned. The three-digit numbers are from the Imperial thousandths dating system:
120 Apocalypse Rains Down
On ‘the thirteenth of Secundus’, bombardment of Terra begins (Battle of Britain in close orbit)
Defenders are shielded, but most of the continent is blasted into a wasteland
? The Righteous Heed the Call
&nb
sp; Imperial Army reinforcements arrive at the Palace ready to repel the invasion forces
243?
Two months of bombing? Traitor Legions spear-tip, drop pod deployment across the region (500 miles?)
The first line of the book obviously had to be the evocative, ‘On the thirteenth day of Secundus’. No questions there. First lines are hard. I was glad to be handed this one.
Thereafter we go from something very specific to three amorphous events. At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much to base a novel on; on the other hand, there don’t seem to be many restrictions, either. But on both counts this is deceptive, because into those loosely defined entries could fit the experiences of dozens of characters, all of whom are converging on a fixed point in space and time, and some of whom absolutely must feature.
Now the questions really begin. Who to choose to tell our story? How do we avoid having a novel that is two months of bombing and talking? Where did the reinforcements come from? How do they get through without being blown up? Questions demand answers, and answers fill novels.
In another, later meeting, we decided it might be an idea to set the scene for the readers. The Horus Heresy is popular, but not everybody has read everything, and we anticipated people might well jump into the story here. Hence another question to add to this first crop: how do we bring people up to speed without falling into a trap of endless exposition?
Through human eyes
I decided early on that we should show at least part of the conflict through human eyes, an idea that tied in neatly with the arrival of our Imperial Army reinforcements. They had to come from elsewhere on Terra. They could not arrive after the bombardment commenced because they’d all die, so it seemed the reinforcements in question would likely be among the very last personnel sent to the Palace. I decided to make them conscripts. Thus Katsuhiro was created to be one of our main points of view. I also wanted to do something with John French’s Alpha Legion operatives from Praetorian of Dorn, simply because they were such great characters.
Other questions were then posed. Where would they fight? How can we get some action into the story early on? How is a siege such as this prosecuted and how is it defended against?
Castles and cities of old often had subsidiary outworks around the walls. Now so has the Palace. Katsuhiro and his comrades would fight on the outworks to blunt the initial attacks. We know for a fact that Horus doesn’t commit his legionaries until two months after his initial attack. I reasoned both sides wanted to reserve their Space Marines, who, though numbering in the hundreds of thousands, are not infinite. Initially, the action had to be between the millions of lower quality troops each side commands.
By this point, the novel’s structure was beginning to come together.
The power of Eight
This is a war of magic. The Horus Heresy wears the clothes of science fiction, but it has a fantasy heart. Horus’ strategy is as much dictated by esoteric factors as it is by mundane considerations. Two further questions about the early siege helped uncover what these factors were: where were the daemons and why didn’t the Traitor primarchs set down on Terra from the outset? Could the reasons for these two things be related? Maybe, we group-thought in our meetings, the Emperor was keeping out the Neverborn by force of will, and in doing so preventing His daemonically corrupted sons landing. Hence eight principal avenues of attack, arranged symbolically in a wheel of Chaos around the Palace. Now I had two strategic goals for Horus to achieve: break the Emperor’s psychic wards around Terra, and bring down the aegis to allow his troops to land inside the Palace itself.
A suggestion that I cover all eight places of attack intrigued me, but I decided against it. Space in the book dictated that I concentrate on one specific area of the Palace walls. We now move beyond purely asking questions and start to look at the logistics of storytelling. How much time one has, how much space and, crucially, how to deliver a satisfactory narrative that encompasses all the avowed aims of the book.
How and why
Why don’t they nuke the site from orbit? is usually the very first question I ask myself when writing a Warhammer 40,000 novel. Horus needs to face the Emperor. He can’t simply blow Terra up – we know that because he didn’t, and by asking more questions we decided why. That will be answered later in the Siege.
How one would lay siege to such a fortress as the Imperial Palace provided the next question to help shape this book. The Palace aegis must be potent to nullify bombardment by the biggest fleet in history. Whatever protected the Palace would probably employ advanced technology. If so, how could it be overcome? More questions.
‘Be patient, brother,’ said Perturabo. ‘You will have your escalade. The shields cannot be broken. They cannot be starved of power. But they can be weakened.’
An orbital vid-capture of a section of the Palace defences sprang up. The walls cut across the landscape neat as a draughtsman’s marks. The Palace-city’s giant buildings were models behind. The flattened coins of explosions displaced by void shielding blinked all over the defences, not touching the ground beneath.
‘This sequence depicts a rare failure. Within the bombardment pattern I concealed several distinct targeting cycles to test various aspects of the aegis: modulation, raising speed, power absorption and displacement, displacement response time, displacement triggering velocity and others.’
‘I provided all this information!’ protested Kelbor-Hal.
‘Consolidated datasets fall into false, idealistic patterns. Direct, practical experimentation is the only way I can be sure.’
Finding a name
Horus’ initial landings to attack the outworks is a cynical exercise in judging strength. It inspired me to include human perspectives on the traitor side as well, including that of a beastman in a deliberate call back to the old Epic game. Through these wretches the title of the book, elusive before, finally presented itself. The Lost and the Damned fit well. It is the name of the first of two seminal books on Chaos published in the late 1980s. The second, Slaves to Darkness, has already been used in the Heresy series. The Lost and the Damned are Horus’ lowly cannon fodder, but everyone else in the Siege is lost or damned in some way too.
The attack on the aegis seemed a good place for the ‘Battle of Britain’ element. In a slight change to the timeline, this couldn’t be in orbit, because Horus must already have taken Terra’s high anchors in order to begin the bombing. We can assume such a battle took place before this book commenced. I imagine, given the size of the Warmaster’s fleet, it was over very quickly.
Depicting the air war gave the combat scenes some variety and allowed us another human character to experience the war through.
Transhumans and post-humans
As you refine your story, the questions become smaller, the answers giving finer detail. How were the defence lines laid out? What did Ashul and Myzmadra hope to achieve there? What weaknesses could be exploited?
However, a story of this nature is not formed entirely by questions and answers. It is directive-led, from the publisher in their outline, and the author at every level in fulfilling the commission. I decided to look through human eyes, but this is a war of Space Marines. Telling the whole thing from the point of view of terrified algae farmers and bureaucrats wouldn’t have hit that target at all.
For my primary transhumans I chose Abaddon of the Sons of Horus, Raldoron of the Blood Angels, Gendor Skraivok of the Night Lords and Khârn of the World Eaters.
Raldoron I’ve always liked. Only three of the loyal Legions are present in the Palace in any great numbers. Sanguinius’ story arc suggested I choose them. Abaddon is our eyes and ears within the traitor fleet. His story arc is perhaps the most important of all in the long term, and it was decided in our meetings we needed to follow his tale.
‘I will be first upon Terra!’ roared Angron. ‘You are not worthy! It is my honour! Khorne demands it! The
Blood God decrees it! You shall burn in lakes of fire for your temerity!’
Skraivok and Khârn’s inclusion were less consciously decided. They came about because of another question, one about the primarchs. The primarchs are the mythic element, the gods of our grand tragedy. Each one generated numerous questions, each answer gave more grist to the mill, but this one was particularly important:
What, while Horus is waiting in orbit, would Angron do?
He’s not going to sit about now, is he?
On primarchs
Angron’s god and his temper demand he have the honour of landing on Terra first, but his general and his father deny him. Therefore, Angron needed to be contained until he could be unleashed. We saw him unchained on the hull of the Conqueror in The Solar War, so we know he is no longer locked up. He’d not likely go back into his prison; besides, by this time he is too powerful to restrain.
Lucoryphus was on the walls. After all this time, he was on the Palace walls. Their attack had taken the defenders by surprise. There were no other of the Warmaster’s forces on the battlement, only the blue and red of Night Lords battleplate was visible, both colours close to black in the fire and murk. He looked up at the spires of the Imperial Palace, bathed in light and glorious despite their embattled state.
Lucoryphus’ hearts pounded with the scale of his achievement.
He raised his arms and shouted at the sky. ‘Mino premiesh a minos murantiath!’ he cried in Nostraman, the words as liquid as the rain. ‘We are first on the wall!’
Skraivok presented himself as an answer. I’ve always liked him. I created him as an opposite to Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s sober, heroic Night Lords. He’s at the other end of the scale, deliberately over the top, a villain who relishes his role as a villain. He deserved his comeuppance. Including Skraivok allowed me to delay Angron, conclude Skraivok’s story to my own satisfaction, and answer a question that arose from Aaron’s Night Lords trilogy that needed answering here: Did Lucoryphus of the Bleeding Eye really get to the wall top first?