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Endurance – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Endurance

By Chris Wraight

They are coming again now, stumbling out of the sulphurous night with their demented grins and their glowing eyes. Lystra is a hive world, populated by billions. Contact has been lost with most of it, indicating that the majority have been turned or are turning, and so the crowds are endless.

Brother Sarrien does not use his bolter. The last ammunition for it ran out three weeks ago, and it has been stowed reverently in the Thunderhawk Votive IX, which will lift off, piloted by serfs, when the last wall is broken. He fights on the walls with his power sword and his gauntlets, slaying like a warrior-king of his old home world. His limbs are heavy and flooded with lactic acid, and it feels like powering through deep water.

He is positioned at the jutting salient of a long, south-facing bastion. This is manned by the hastily amalgamated regiments of the surviving Lystran Proximal Guard, who are exhausted down to their marrow. Far off, chem-works are burning, making the horizon smoulder and the freezing air taste like gall. The spires at their backs glow with a million points of fading, flickering light.

He chants as he fights. If he were fighting with his own squad he would have been roaring war cries or calling out tactical movements, creating the auditory hell that daunts the enemy and propels his battle-brothers to greater feats, but his battle-brothers are all far away with their own contests, and so he chants now, in the manner of a Chaplain, to inspire the Guard.

‘Stand fast, for Him on the Throne!’ he shouts, smashing his fist through the neck of a grasping stumbler.

That is the word they use to describe them: ‘stumblers’. The euphemism hides the horror of it. It says nothing of their rictus faces and their awkward splayed limbs, their grey flesh hanging from yellow bones and the hot glow behind their bloodshot eyes. They are climbing up the high walls now, hoisting themselves atop piles of their own dead, limping blindly into the path of lascannon stations. Once they crest the parapet’s edge they start killing, grinning the whole time.

‘Remember your vows!’ Sarrien chants, swinging the bloodied stump of one stumbler-corpse into another, sending both sailing over the edge. ‘Endure! Remain steadfast!’

The defenders would have collapsed by now, if he had not been there to keep them fighting. They are staring into the twisted faces of those that were once men and women. Perhaps, every so often, they come up against those they knew, and have to cut them down. Killing one of them is not difficult, for they make no effort to evade the las-fire. Killing hundreds is back-breaking, and every time a mistake is made and one gets through the gap, then the slaughter is prodigious.

‘Keep on your feet!’ Sarrien shouts, breaking the spine of a stumbler, kicking out to upend another, slicing his blade around to take out two more. His hearts are thudding out of sequence – they are becoming dangerously swollen. He is perspiring too much despite his dehydration. His hands are bleeding freely within his armour – the product of fighting the long retreat for weeks without respite. ‘Stay firm! Endure!’

The world of Lystra will fall. All but the blindest of the blind see that now, and even the baseline troops are beginning to disbelieve their commissars. Sergeant Cleon of Sarrien’s squad knows it too, but he will not order evacuation. The orders remain the same as they were when first given – hold the line, make the enemy pay the maximal price. Distant minds on peaceful worlds have determined that it is worth the sacrifice of a single squad of Imperial Talons to keep Lystra out of the enemy’s hands for another month or two, perhaps longer.

Orders, orders. Discipline. Resolve.

For now, the defenders respond to his injunction. The walls are held. The lascannon turrets spit metronomically into the seething dark. Lystra Primaris remains inviolate, an island of purity within the gloom.

But they keep coming, more and more of them. Their deranged smiles become maddening to witness.

He hates them. He hates what they are doing to him. He hates that he will be ended by one of them – a foe without honour or stature – and not some champion worthy of his attention.

Sarrien’s voice becomes hoarse.

‘Remember your vows!’ he cries again.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mark Holmes.

Endurance © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Endurance, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-843-3

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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