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  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

  11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR

  12: THE BEHEADING

  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

  Title Page

  Act One – Fire from the Skies

  Act Two – Ashes and Embers

  Act Three – Inferno

  About the Author

  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.

  THE NOBLE HOUSES OF ADRASTAPOL

  HOUSE DRACONIS

  High King Tolwyn Tan Draconis – Fyreheart

  Kingsward Danial Tan Draconis – Oath of Flame

  Gatekeeper Jennika Tan Draconis – Fire Defiant

  Herald Markos Dar Draconis – Honourblaze

  Sire Olric Dar Draconis – Draconsflame

  Sire Daeved Dar Draconis – Pyrefang

  Sire Garath Dar Draconis – Iron Drake

  Sire Sylvest Dar Draconis – Blazeclaw

  Lady Suset Dar Draconis – Embersword

  Sire Percivane Dar Draconis – Firestorm

  HOUSE CHIMAEROS

  Viscount Gerraint Tan Chimaeros – Therianthros

  Sire Luk Tan Chimaeros – Sword of Heroes

  Sire Hectour Dar Manticos – Blade Aggressor

  Alicia Kar Manticos (Consort to the Viscount Tan Chimaeros)

  HOUSE WYVORN

  Archduke Dunkan Tan Wyvorn – Iron God

  HOUSE PEGASSON

  Marchioness Lauret Tan Pegasson – Oracle

  Lady Eleanat Dar Pegasson – Sagasitus

  Lady Tamsane Dar Pegasson – Saggitaire

  HOUSE MINOTOS

  Grandmarshal Gustev Tan Minotos – Thunderhymn

  Sire Federich Dar Minotos – Song of Strength

  Sire Jeremial Dar Minotos – Thunderclap

  Sire Wilhorm Dar Minotos – Merciless

  INTRODUCTORY NOTE ON TITLES OF

  ADRASTAPOLIAN NOBLE HOUSES

  ‘Proudly do the Knightly Households of Adrastapol uphold their customs, codes and forms of address. Though the value of such sacred traditions is beyond question, their labyrinthine complexities can lead to a degree of difficulty when integrating with other Imperial institutions.

  At its most basic, the Adrastapolian form of address prefixes the surname (that of the Noble House) with an honorific that denotes status. Though unusual or localised prefixes proliferate, three key terms should be quickly learned and understood by outsiders wishing to comprehend the station of our Knights at war.

  Tan – This prefix is reserved for those of direct royal descent. The master of each Noble House has the privilege of using the Tan prefix, as does their immediate family. Examples include High King Tolwyn Tan Draconis, and Viscount Gerraint Tan Chimaeros.

  Dar – The most common Knightly prefix. This term translates most simply to ‘of House’ or ‘belonging to House’. Any Knight who has successfully Become earns the right to this form of address. For example, if squire Willem of House Minotos survives his Becoming ritual, he will be formally recognised thenceforth as Willem Dar Minotos.

  Kar – An altogether rarer and less salubrious title, the Kar prefix is applied only to those who have lost their original Noble House. Whether the House itself has been destroyed as an institution, or the Knight or other noble has been exiled from it (see Appendix VII for a full examination of Freeblades and their role in Adrastapolian society), the Kar prefix permanently replaces whatever honorific came before.

  Rarely is this a mark of anything but shame.

  – Extracted from the writings of Sendraghorst,

  Sage Strategic of Adrastapol, vol III,

  A Treatise on the Noble Houses of Adrastapol

  and Militaristic Imperial Integration.

  Act One

  Fire from the Skies

  Prologue

  In a chamber lit by a single candle, a figure knelt in shadow.

  They were not alone. Something malevolent circled, whispering from the shadows. It spoke words of prophecy. Words of blood.

  ‘A world of fire and slaughter,

  A bond of trust betrayed,

  The questing soul is broken,

  And broken is the blade,

  In blackened tower’s shadow,

  The dracon there shall die,

  And from its scattered ashes,

  A queen, instead, shall rise…’

  The figure bowed low, touching its forehead to the cold stone floor.

  ‘So has it been spoken,’ they m
urmured reverently. ‘And so it shall be.’

  Pentakhost burned. The southern districts of the peninsula port danced with hungry flames. The crystalflex windows of hab-stacks and warehouses blackened and cracked. Heavy iron doors blew out with dull booms, leaving ragged, empty doorways that vomited smoke. Charred bodies and scorched vehicles packed the rubble-strewn streets. Most of the dead had been killed days before the fires came, but only now were they afforded the dignity of cremation. Cadaverous plasteel cargo cranes melted in the intense heat, toppling with agonised groans into the polluted waters of the Raerkesh Ocean. Searing bolts of energy had stabbed down from the clouds to annihilate the promethium refinery on the headland. So the wildfires had started, with las light and a flash-flood of blazing fuel that set the wharf-slums burning and chewed its way north from there.

  Once a grubby industrial trade terminus, Pentakhost had been transformed first into a heretic fortress, and now a raging inferno. Despite the intensity of the firestorm sweeping the port, dark figures still crouched upon rooftops and flitted between weathered hab-blocks, staying ahead of the flames. Some were stooped and twisted creatures, swaddled in rags that did little to hide their mutations. Others – the majority – were garbed either as labourers, or as planetary defence militia. Their faces smeared with markings of ash and blood, armour defaced with foul slogans, these traitors screamed their defiance to the skies.

  To their great misfortune, the skies answered.

  – Extracted from the writings of Sendraghorst,

  Sage Strategic of Adrastapol,

  vol XVII ‘The Donatos Uprising’

  Danial Tan Draconis, kingsward of House Draconis and heir to the throne of Adrastapol, willed himself not to throw up. He was strapped firmly into his throne mechanicum at the heart of his Knight Errant, Oath of Flame. His throne’s neural jacks were plugged into his cranial augmetics and its armaplas webbing cradled his body tight. The Knight itself – a forty-foot-tall, roughly humanoid war machine – was mag-locked within its armature, one of a dozen looming metal giants dominating the debarkation deck of the drop keep. Still, Danial was shaken like a ragdoll. The turbulence of the combat drop was savage, the pressure of gravity scarcely less so. And then there was the disorienting sensation of the ghosts within his throne. It was a little like standing alone with his back to a curtain, knowing that just beyond it crowded dozens of whispering strangers who might at any moment reach through to grab his shoulder. There again, it was like staring into a mirror and feeling his reflection looking back through his own eyes. Then it felt like embracing myriad thoughts and dreams, only to endure the jarring dislocation of realising that not one of those mental fragments was his. It was like all those things, but not them. Every effort he made to rationalise the sensation only added to his nausea. Danial battled the sickness with the grim desperation of a drowning man clinging to his last spar of driftwood. If he couldn’t even win the fight with his own biological failings, or master his throne before his first true engagement, how was he to win a real battle on the glorious field of war? Besides, he wasn’t about to give Markos the satisfaction of seeing him fail.

  ‘A bracing plunge, isn’t it, Da?’ Luk’s voice crackled over the vox-net. Exhilarated. Of course he was. Nothing fazed Luk Tan Chimaeros. At least nothing Danial had seen yet.

  ‘It is,’ he managed, biting out the words.

  ‘Hah! That a little drop sickness I hear in your voice, Da?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Danial replied, before pressing one gloved fist to his lips in desperation. His Knight’s machine-spirit responded with a sympathetic churning of internal gears, a slight shudder running through its hull-plates.

  ‘Honoured ward of House Chimaeros,’ came a firm, female voice over the vox. ‘We are about to enter a live warzone. I would ask that you refrain from any further squiresyard banter at my brother’s expense.’

  ‘Apologies, lady’ responded Luk, only slightly mollified. His Knight, Sword of Heroes, inclined its helm with a whine of servomotors. ‘You’re right, Jen. No distractions.’

  ‘Her title,’ came a heavy, gravelly voice over the vox, ‘is Jennika Tan Draconis, Gatekeeper of the Exalted Court. When in panoply I would remind you to address her as such, lad.’ Danial grimaced at the curtness of the exchange. Markos Dar Draconis, herald of the Exalted Court and his father’s first Knight. Not one for tact, or bandied words. Danial knew his friend like a brother; Luk would take that reprimand badly.

  Danial’s train of thought was interrupted as the soft emerald light within his Knight’s cockpit flashed an angry red. A dolorous chime rang through the debarkation deck of the drop keep, carried to the ears of each Knight by the audio-pickups on their warsuits’ hulls. Danial gritted his teeth as the drop keep’s landing thrusters fired in sequence, increasing the pressure further. Ingrained training kicked in, and he began final checks, floods of information flowing through his neural jacks as he communed with Oath of Flame. Runes scrolled across his retinas, and his vision expanded to take in everything that the Knight’s external sensorium arrays could see. To an untrained mind it would have been a violently overwhelming experience, a pseudo-sentient and maddening mechanical violation. For Danial it was a sort of ascension. Adrenaline surged, then focused to a bright point. Nausea fled, along with the feeling of the webbing and straps that encased him. Danial’s body became plasteel and ceramite. His heart beat as a thundering plasma furnace. His senses became auspex readouts and inload shunts. In that moment Danial Tan Draconis became one with his Knight, and knew its hunger for battle.

  The drop keep hit bedrock with a titanic boom, sending a shockwave through Danial’s metal body. Ahead, behind and to both sides, his fellow Knights disengaged the plasteel cages of their armatures. Gas vented in hissing streams and runelocks flashed from amber to green as the huge bipedal war machines shook off their fetters and prepared for war. From the shadows edging the cavernous deck, electrobraziers lit with roaring flames. Muffled by the thick plates of the drop keep’s outer hull, Danial heard an automated fanfare blaring, throaty and glorious. It was accompanied by a staccato thunder that he realised must be the keep’s weapon batteries opening fire. They were shooting at enemy targets, just outside. In moments he would face the foe himself. His heart thumped and threatened to shake his focus, but with an effort of will the young warrior held steady.

  ‘Knights of Adrastapol,’ a regal voice rolled through the vox network, filling Danial with fierce pride. His father, High King Tolwyn Tan Draconis, addressed the assembled hosts. ‘Noble sires of Houses Draconis, Chimaeros, Minotos, Wyvorn and Pegasson. Honoured allies of the Astra Militarum, of Tanhollis and Mubraxis and Cadia. Today we do the Emperor’s bidding. Today, we are the cleansing flame. This world of Donatos has known the insidious touch of the mutant. The heretic. The traitor.’ The High King spat the words with such disgust that Danial’s own hatred for the enemy burned hot. ‘But no more! Today the Knights of Adrastapol will march forth and show these turncoats what becomes of those who shun the light of the Imperium. Honoured sires, for Adrastapol and the Emperor. Let them know no mercy, only death!’

  ‘Only death!’ roared the assembled Knights, their voices carrying across the vox from the debarkation decks of twenty separate drop keeps. Danial’s voice was joined with those of the warriors around him, and he felt stronger in that moment than he ever had before. The ceramite portcullis at the front of the drop keep rattled upwards. The thunder of battle washed over Danial’s Knight. Infernal light spilled inwards, accompanied by a scattered hail of las-bolts and bullets that ricocheted from the red and black armour of his comrades’ steeds.

  ‘In Excelsium Furore,’ cried Sire Tolwyn to his House Draconis comrades.

  ‘Wield the fires within,’ they shouted back, the ancient battle cry of their Knightly House. With that, they willed their machines forward to war.

  Danial watched the Knights in front of him engage their motive systems and advance. Hydraulic tendons flexed. Gears whirred to speed. Spumes o
f smoke and incense boiled from exhaust vents atop armoured carapaces, filling the debarkation deck with churning fumes. The Knights’ helm-lumens shone in the gloom, and Danial was reminded of the mythic dracon that gave their house its name. Suddenly the way before him was clear, Sires Daeved and Garath smoothly walking their Knights forward into battle ahead of him. Danial felt a moment of panic as every lesson he had ever learned fled his mind. For a second his Knight hesitated, shuddering on the spot. Angrily, the young kingsward thrust the feeling aside and engaged his motive actuators. Oath of Flame took a long stride, and then another that carried it to the edge of the assault drawbridge. Another, and he was out into the fiery light of a strange world. A fierce grin spread across his face as he stomped down the drawbridge and into the maelstrom of battle.

  Danial drank in the data feeds and imaging returns of his auspex. The drop keep had landed right on target, demolishing a guildhall as it slammed down amidst the northern commerce district of Pentakhost. Others like it had crashed down to the east and west. They had unfurled their house banners, begun their rolling fanfares and unshrouded their servitor gun-towers, forming a line of towering fortifications that choked off the neck of the peninsula. The traitor foe was trapped between the wildfires and the Knights, just as King Tolwyn and Viscount Gerraint had planned. As Oath of Flame ventured onto the cracked plaza before the guildhall, Danial saw a jumbled skyline silhouetted against the inferno. Smoke rose in thick black pillars that seemed to hold up the lowering clouds like titanic columns.

  Over his Knight’s head fluttered flights of servo-cherubim, the grotesque little creatures winging their way into the sky on grav-impellers and rotor-wings. Released from each drop keep, the cherubs would form a low-altitude sensor-web that would greatly enhance the auspex acuity of the Knights below. The Sacristans called them the Heavenly Host, and were clearly proud of their macabre progeny. The infant servitors made Danial uncomfortable, and sad somehow.

  Ash fell like snow, coating the grubby buildings that crowded in around the plaza and swarmed with enemy contacts, revealed by Danial’s pinging auspex runes. From his high vantage they were tiny, insects scurrying from one ineffectual scrap of cover to the next. Some waved tattered banners bearing unclean sigils, and many were visibly mutated.