Knightsblade Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Prologue

  Act One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Act Two

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Act Three

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  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, bioengineered 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 Danial Tan Draconis – Oath of Flame

  First Knight Jennika Tan Draconis – Fire Defiant

  Herald Markos Dar Draconis – Honourblaze

  Sire Garath Dar Draconis – Iron Drake

  Gatekeeper Lady Suset Dar Draconis – Embersword

  Sire Percivane Dar Draconis – Firestorm

  HOUSE CHIMAEROS

  Alicia Kar Manticos (Consort to the Viscount Tan Chimaeros)

  HOUSE PEGASSON

  Marchioness Lauret Tan Pegasson – Oracle

  Lady Eleanat Dar Pegasson – Sagasitus

  HOUSE MINOTOS

  Grandmarshal Kurt Tan Minotos – Gustev’s Revenge

  Herald Wilhorm Dar Minotos – Merciless

  OTHER NOTABLE CHARACTERS

  THE EXILES

  The Knight of Ashes – formerly known as Luk Tan Chimaeros – Sword of Heroes

  Sire Ranulf Vo-Geiss – Void

  Lady Maia Kastarada – Wrath Inescapable

  Lady Ekhaterina Hespar – Duty Unending

  Sire J’madus Hw’ss – Crimson Death

  Captain Shas – Captain of the former navy cruiser Unbroken

  Commissar Hauptvier

  First Officer Mister Klem

  THE INQUISITION

  Inquisitor Tane Massata

  Captain Raniaraz

  Interrogator Nesh

  Shanema and Shemara – Death Cult Assassins

  Lintiguis Mortens – Autosavant

  Kasrkin Sergeant Kaston

  Astropath Venquist

  D’bu’ko the Jokaero

  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.

  Prologue

  Danial Tan Draconis stood in the gloom of his throne room. He gripped the hilt of his draconblade, willing strength back into his limbs. Every breath came with pain. His wounds gnawed at him. Fatigue threatened to force him to his knees.

  His warriors pressed close with their weapons drawn. They were little more than shadows in the dark. Many were injured. Some wouldn’t see another dawn. Yet they stood resolute, and Danial drew strength from theirs. Militia crouched behind barricades all through the chamber, autoguns and heavy weapons aimed at the doors. Civilians huddled at the rear of the hall. Some brandished improvised arms. Some merely crouched in terror; weeping, shaking and shielding their loved ones with their bodies.

  ‘Feel the draconsfire within you,’ said Danial, his voice firm amidst the rasp of his warriors’ breathing and the scuff of their feet on the flagstones. ‘Even if it is only embers. Find it. Stoke it. We’re all that remains now. Draconis’ last hope. The Emperor expects.’

  A boom echoed through the throne room. The dracon-inscribed doors shuddered from a ferocious impact.

  ‘They’re right outside,’ hissed a voice. Danial couldn’t place whose.

  A second crash rolled like thunder, causing the men and women around him to flinch.

  ‘Emperor preserve us,’ came another voice.

  ‘House Draconis, hold your nerve,’ commanded Danial.

  The doors bowed inwards. From beyond them came monstrous roars.

  At another impact, the doors groaned as their hinges and locks strained. A multitude of feral war cries rose beyond them.

  ‘Warriors of Adrastapol,’ cried Danial. ‘Lords and Ladies of the Draconspire. Ignite!’

  Danial thumbed the rune on his blade’s pommel. As one, his Knights followed suit. With a whooshing snarl t
heir draconblades lit up, fuel reserves burning hot to wreath their swords in fire.

  A last, titanic impact smashed the doors from their hinges, and the monsters came for them.

  Act One

  Luk Kar Chimaeros, the Knight of Ashes, pursued his quarry across the stars. The sorceress Alicia Kar Manticos was ever one step ahead. Alicia had brought ruin upon his Noble House, had led them into damnation and left Luk an outcast. Did she flee his wrath, or did she lure him on towards what she hoped would be his own tragic end? Most likely it was both, for wherever the Knight of Ashes went, his erstwhile stepmother had already departed, leaving destruction and mayhem in her wake.

  Son of the disgraced Viscount Gerraint Tan Chimaeros, Luk had taken the Freeblade oath in order to distance himself from his father’s heresy. Yet the deeds of House Chimaeros hung over Luk like a darkened cloud. Their descent into rebellion and daemon worship, their willing alliance with arch-heretics and witches, their murder of High King Tolwyn Tan Draconis and their attempts to usurp the crown from its rightful owners – these were deeds in which Luk had not been complicit, but by which he was tainted through association.

  Thus, after the conquering armies of Adrastapol returned to their world in triumph, Luk did not tarry long. As his childhood friend, Danial Tan Draconis, ascended to take the mantle of High King and restore order to their fractured lands, Luk departed to begin his hunt. He left upon a fast ship with a small compliment of Sacristans and serviles – all that he would need to keep his Knight, Sword of Heroes, in fighting condition while he tracked down Alicia Kar Manticos and administered the Emperor’s justice.

  Yet the hunt soon proved a more complex and challenging affair than the Knight of Ashes had anticipated. From Ghamdor to the Tyvorian Spiral he went. From there he went on to Undul, Sacramentus and Pydos. Always he found rebellion fermented, dark sorcery unleashed, madness and horror to be confronted. Always his quarry was gone, leaving nought but mocking echoes.

  Along the way, the Knight of Ashes gathered a band of followers, fellow Freeblades alongside whom he fought, and who saw in his hunt for redemption a chance to earn their own. They were heroes all, despite their outcast status, and they did much good together. Still their quarry eluded them.

  At last, on U’latu, Luk found the information that might end his bitter pursuit. An aging gas-prospector spoke of a world of shifting sands and fiery mountains. There dwelt the Oracle of the Silver Eye, whom Luk had long sought.

  Five years sidereal had passed since Luk departed Adrastapol on his quest. Five long, bitter years of frustration, anger and unceasing battle against the machinations of Chaos. Finally, the Knight of Ashes had a chance to end his hunt. Believing that this shadowed figure might hold the key to concluding his pursuit, Luk turned his small fleet for the world of Kandakkha.

  Extracted from the writing of Sendraghorst,

  Sage Strategic of Adrastapol,

  vol XX ‘The Hunt for Redemption’.

  D’atsub drove his heels into his lanka’s flanks. The leathery beast croaked and increased its pace, sand spraying as its hooves dug into the dune. D’atsub hung on to his steed’s harness, wincing as something exploded yards to his left.

  Fire blossomed.

  Grit rained down on him.

  The lanka crested the dune beneath a sky whose fiery clouds boiled like a cursed sunset. More projectiles whizzed around him. The desert stretched away before D’atsub, volcanoes rising amidst the hissing sands like islands in a distant ocean. Directly ahead, the strange stone columns of the Maze rose in profusion. Then D’atsub was hanging on for dear life as his croaking beast took the downslope in loping bounds.

  ‘Pho’mada,’ he gasped into his vox-bead, struggling to hear his own words over the ringing in his ears. ‘Do you receive? They hunt in my tracks.’

  ‘We stand ready, kin-of-my-kin,’ replied Pho’mada through a swirl of static. ‘Lead them into the Maze, to the Circle. We wait.’

  ‘Just draw them in,’ came another voice. The offworlder. ‘We’ll do the rest.’

  ‘There are hundreds,’ said D’atsub. ‘Three clans at least! The Gha’tna have joined them, and brought their iron engines.’

  Pho’mada cursed, and D’atsub heard fear in his voice.

  ‘They have nothing to give us pause,’ said the offworlder, his voice flinty. ‘Don’t deviate from the plan.’

  ‘Too late to do anything else,’ said D’atsub, clinging to his lanka’s neck as the beast neared the base of the dune.

  He heard the throaty growl of engines at his back. Shells fell around him, blasting him with their furnace-like heat, but by the blessings of the Emperor, he remained untouched. His lanka’s hooves bit deep, propelling him into the shadow of the Maze. Graven by millennia of wind-blown sand, the stone columns were twisted and hollow, their strata showing through in rainbows of silicate. They pressed close to one another, forming winding passages and ways.

  D’atsub kicked his steed again and sent it careening between the columns. Bullets and las blasts struck stone, jagged shards whizzing around him. He hauled the lanka between two columns, racing deeper into the forest of towering rock. Left and right the beast weaved, outdistancing his pursuers.

  ‘Not too fast, girl,’ he hissed, fighting to rein the lanka in. ‘We must not lose them.’

  A beam of light speared over his shoulder and gouged a hole in a nearby column, toppling it in a shower of stone.

  ‘Not lost,’ he said, kicking his steed. ‘Go, go!’

  D’atsub’s lanka lunged through a tight bunching of columns and into a wide natural depression. Half a mile or so across, the Circle was hemmed in by stone monoliths. Its bedrock was all but free of sand, and in better days it had seen clan-meets and nomadic bazaars.

  Now, deployed across its mid-point in a thin line, waited D’atsub’s clan.

  The Faithful Sons numbered less than a hundred warriors, many of them old men or boys. A few sat astride lankas, and carried dune-bows. Others wore the Imperial body armour of their fathers’ fathers, while a lucky few clutched antique lasguns and autoguns. Their single, dilapidated Chimera sat in the middle of their battle-line, Pho’mada stood atop its mural-painted hull.

  ‘Weapons!’ shouted D’atsub as his steed pelted towards the clan lines. Pho’mada’s beckoning wave turned into a wide-eyed shout of warning, and D’atsub felt a lurch. His lanka gave a despairing croak and fell – shot from behind. D’atsub had time to cry out before the rock floor rushed up to smash into his face.

  Groggily, he pushed himself onto his hands and knees. Everything was jumbled. His cheek burned like fire and something was in his eyes. He blinked and tried to remember where he was. Dimly, D’atsub heard yelling. Running feet. The rattle of something that could have been drums. Or… gunfire? One arm gave out and he sprawled, looking back the way he had come.

  His eyes widened as he saw the dark mass of the heretics, spilling from between the columns.

  ‘D’atsub!’ Pho’mada’s voice swam through the vox. ‘D’atsub, get up! Move, kin-of-my-kin, or you’ll die!’

  ‘Just… shoot…’ gasped D’atsub, fumbling for his laspistol.

  ‘Gilded throne,’ cursed Pho’mada, before giving the order. With a desultory crackle, the Faithful Sons complied. Lasbolts and bullets whipped over D’atsub to rake the enemy lines. Dark figures in keph’tas and sand-goggles tumbled to the ground, spiked clubs and pistols spilling from their hands. Yet more came behind them, dozens more, screaming praise to their bloody god.

  ‘The iron engines!’ shouted Pho’mada. ‘They come!’

  Behind the swarm of traitor clansmen came dark shapes – lumbering hulks that might once have been Imperial battle-tanks. They rolled on brazen tracks, festooned with spikes and Chaos fetishes. Where they advanced, columns toppled like betting stones. Their guns screamed, and D’atsub cried out as his clan’s battle-line vanished in a string of e
xplosions. The smoke cleared, revealing clansmen staggering in shock amidst the ruined bodies of their dead. The Chimera was on fire, and Pho’mada was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Offworlder!’ shouted D’atsub. ‘Where are you? You swore the Emperor’s oath!’

  ‘I did,’ came the offworlder’s voice across the vox. ‘And my oath is my bond.’

  The ground shook beneath D’atsub, a pounding rhythm that grew by the moment. Titanic footsteps drew closer. From either flank echoed tumbling stone. And then they came. Metal gods, engines of the Emperor, striding into the Circle with murder in their glowing eyes.

  ‘Pho’mada,’ breathed D’atsub. ‘They are everything you claimed…’

  Forty feet tall and more, the ironclad giants had fearsome guns and revving blades for arms. They bore more guns and racks of missiles upon their hulking shoulders, and proud pennants fluttered around them as they marched. In unison, their weapons lit with fury, and D’atsub realised it was now the heretic clansmen’s turn to vanish amidst the fires of retribution.

  ‘Praise the Emperor,’ screamed D’atsub, elation eclipsing his terror. ‘It is a miracle!’ Seizing his chance, the clansman scrambled to his feet and ran for the Imperial lines.

  ‘Knight of Ashes to all Exiles,’ voxed Luk Kar Chimaeros. ‘As we discussed, a simple pincer if you please. Void, Duty Unending, you have their left flank. Crimson Death, Wrath Inescapable, their right.’

  ‘What of you, Knight of Ashes?’ Lady Ekhaterina Hespar’s tone was mocking. ‘Don’t tell me the blade of Adrastapol plans to hang back in terror from these heathen curs?’

  ‘No, Lady Hespar,’ he replied. ‘We don’t all go to such lengths to avoid battle as former Knights of House Hawkshroud. I shall go straight up the centre.’

  ‘You’ll face the consequences of that remark later, Luk,’ she said.

  ‘Promises,’ he replied, but his focus had already shifted to the battle before him. Luk’s cockpit auspex swarmed with target designators. His throne mechanicum sang with power, and the wisdom of his ancestors whispered in his mind. Sword of Heroes rumbled around him, its machine-spirit thirsty for traitor blood.