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Prologue

The pain engine embedded in his brain grew silent. Slowly, his awareness returned.

A counter blinked in the upper right of his vision.

Two hours, thirty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds. That’s how much time he had lost to the cortical implants.

For now, the beast was sated. For now, it slumbered, retracting its claws from the meat of his mind.

His body ached from injuries he didn’t remember receiving. His arms were leaden from kills that he didn’t remember making.

He reached up and removed his helmet. The stink of blood filled his nostrils.

Two hours, thirty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds ago this had been a living, breathing world. Now it was a wasteland of death.

He stood in the middle of a sea of corpses, a vast ocean that spread out as far as the eye could see. In the distance were the ruins of a once-great city. Smoke rose from its sundered walls.

Other World Eaters picked their way through the sea of the dead, stripping weapons and armour from fallen brothers, claiming skulls and cutting the threads of those that still lived. All of them were liberally coated with gore.

Overhead, the warships of the Legion hung in low orbit, like carrion-eaters awaiting their turn to feed.

For a few moments he was able to think clearly, without the Butcher’s Nails screaming in his head, stabbing into his brain, urging him to do their bidding.

‘We cannot continue like this,’ he said.

‘Like what?’ growled a voice from behind.

Dreagher glanced around. A legionary garbed in rad-scarred black armour was down on one knee nearby, cutting at dead flesh. Chunks of meat and hair clung to the razor wire wrapped around the Destroyer’s pauldrons and shoulder plates. Ruokh.

Blood of the primarch. Had he been so lost in the Nails that he’d been fighting alongside that berserker?

‘Killing every world we come upon,’ Dreagher said. ‘We’re bleeding the Legion dry.’

Ruokh stood, having finished his grisly task. He held a human head by its hair, blood leaking slowly from the ragged stump of its neck. He regarded Dreagher with the hostile lenses of his Sarum-pattern helmet. The Destroyer said nothing.

‘Angron is gone. Horus is dead,’ said Dreagher. ‘Is this all there is for us now? Endless butchery, our numbers slowly whittling away, until we are all lost to the Nails, or dead? Is that to be our fate?’

‘You think too much,’ said Ruokh. ‘This is what we do. This is what we are.’

‘There has to be something more.’

Ruokh turned away, shaking his head.

‘Khârn,’ said Dreagher. ‘We need Khârn.’

Ruokh laughed. It was an ugly sound. Bitter and harsh.

‘The Legion would follow Khârn,’ he said, ‘But he is lost to us. He is not coming back.’

‘He has to,’ said Dreagher. ‘Or else the Legion is already dead.’

Khârn; even then it was a name that evoked fear, awe and respect, even amongst his own genhanced, hyper-augmented brethren, the fraternity of killers, psychotics and berserkers that made up the XII Legion.

Perhaps fear is the wrong word. ‘They shall know no fear’, as the rhetoric goes. Caution. Unease. Discomfort. Wariness. These words are perhaps more fitting, certainly less likely to incur a killing rage.

His was not a name that evoked hatred, though, at least not among his own Legion. Not yet. Nor was distrust a word that the legionaries of the XII would have associated with him, or at least any more distrust than any of the Legion had for another.

He had, of course, already been called traitor – they all had – but only by those now being dubbed ‘loyalists’. He’d not yet been called that by his own, not then.

No, that would come later.

He was a figure of contradiction, of course, both before and after Terra, as were all the best of them. He was broken, as were they all.

Too long the Nails had been grinding into their minds. They’d been caught in the death-grip of those hateful implants too long. They’d been dragged too far down the crimson spiral. There was no coming back.

What they were before had been largely obliterated, and what remained was but a shadow; fragments and splintered glimpses of who they could have been before they willingly destroyed themselves in emulation of the primarch. They didn’t know it, though. Not back then.

But even if they did, would they have made another choice? Perhaps. Some of them.

The best of them – and Khârn was, at least for a time, counted as the very best – were the most confounding. They were the most torn, the most tragic. The most contradictory. Khârn epitomised that more than any.

Khârn the Equerry, the most rational of the Legion. The cool head to balance Angron’s rage. The diplomat. The wise.

Khârn the Bloody, the most berserk of them all when the Nails took hold, which they did with increased regularity after Angron’s… change. All of the Legion were devolving before then, but after Nuceria their inexorable descent spiralled into a plummeting free fall.

Now, after the fact, it is easy to regard Khârn as the worst of them all, the chief sinner, but it is certainly true, then if not now, that he was also the chief sufferer.

Perhaps he was the wisest, even then, even in the grip of his blackest madness. Perhaps he foresaw what the Legion would become and sought to end it.

But then… perhaps not. It’s possible that I read too much into the actions of a madman. Perhaps I construct a façade of rationality as something to cling to, a buoy in a raging storm, unwilling to accept the alternative – that he truly had no reason for what he did.

Before Skalathrax he was Khârn, captain of the Eighth Assault Company, equerry of the daemon-primarch Angron. Afterwards, he was the Betrayer, most hated of the World Eaters, even among his own.

First onto the walls of the Emperor’s Palace, he was, and last to leave – or at least so it is now being said.

I do not know the truth of that. I was not there to see it.

What I did see was the aftermath.

– Hhal Maven, Seneschal Senioris, 17th Company

Chapter 1

So this, then, is Khârn, enthroned like a warrior king of a bygone age, the gifts and offerings of lesser beings piled before him.

The helms of noted enemies. Weapons pried from the grasp of bested foes. Ornate standards taken from worlds left in ruin by the fury of the Legion. The acid-cleaned skulls of the mightiest enemy champions. Offerings to appease, to honour, and, perhaps, to beg favour.

His massive arms are bare, as ever, criss-crossed with the scars of the past. His wounds – or at least the wounds of his flesh – have healed, though they have left their mark. His chest too is bare. Every scar has a story. Without exception, every being that inflicted those injuries is dead, killed by his own hands.

Those murderous hands, thick-knuckled, deadly and dripping with blood – metaphorically if not literally – are, for now, at rest, palm down upon the throne’s armrests.

The immense war-axe, Gorechild, is before him. It takes pride of place. The Legion’s artificers have restored it, doing their best to replace its missing and blunted mica-dragon teeth. It is as much a touchstone to the Legion as Khârn himself. Many covet it, though none yet dare to claim it while Khârn breathes, despite his condition.

His frame: immense, heavily muscled yet lean. He is a giant to unaugmented mortals. Among his own, he is no taller nor heavier than any other. It was never his physical presence that made him stand out among his brothers. His fire came from within.

His downcast face: narrow, stern, serious. It is, for the moment, mercifully free of the pain, suppressed rage and facial tics that personify the Legion now courtesy of their neural aggressor-implants.

That peace is an anomaly.

Even at rest, the warriors of the Legion were tortured. Pain stabbed into their cortices like vile knives whenever they were not doing the bidding of those cruel devices, driving in deep, grinding and twisting, eroding any joy to be had beyond the act of killing. Only bloodshed relieved the merciless assault, and even then, never for long.

Only in death do the devices relent.

That then, Apothecary Khurgan surmised, was why Khârn’s face was not twisted by pain like his brethren.

He’d died on Terra, after all.

Dreagher stalked back and forth like a beast driven to madness by enforced confinement.

His breath was rapid and shallow, and the servos of his gauntlets whined as he clenched and unclenched his hands. His scarred, short-shaven head was bare, and his mouth was twisted into a scowl. His teeth were grinding. His brow was creased, and the eyes below narrow, their irises contracted to pin-points. The muscles around his left eye twitched, lifting his lip to expose file-sharpened teeth.

The Nails were torturing him today.

Over the years he’d come to regard them as a living entity, a parasite nestled in the back of his skull. It enhanced and fed off his hate, gorging itself on the aggression it encouraged and the thrill of the kills it shared with him. Its segmented arachnid legs pressed deep into his brain, and when angered, it would clench them, punishing him. When sated it would slumber, the pressure in his mind easing, giving him a moment of blessed respite. Right now, it was ravenous.

Still pacing, Dreagher ground his knuckles into his temples, screwing his eyes tightly shut. An animal growl rumbled from deep in his chest. The headache was a corkscrew pain in his cortex, a throbbing agony that made him nauseous and his vision contract.

Kill, the Nails said to him with each painful pulse.

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

He slammed one of his fists into a wall, buckling the sheet metal plating.

Once, all the ills of the warriors of the XII – the blood-letting, the uncontrollable, psychotic rages, the butchering of innocents and the utter lack of conscience that followed – could perhaps have been blamed on the aggressor engines. No, warriors was the wrong word – its fighters. Once, the Nails could have been blamed for all of it.

But now? No. Now, something far darker and more powerful held the Legion in its death-grip. And that grip was tightening with every turn of the universe.

Focus, he told himself, ceasing his relentless pacing, and attempting to forcibly slow his breathing. It did little good. The beat of his primary heart continued to race, like the pounding of war drums.

‘Enough,’ he snarled, eyes flicking open. They were bloodshot, and his gaze flitted around the round room without taking anything in, seeking… what? An escape? An enemy?

Where was he? How had he come to be here?

The last thing he could recall was sharpening his falax blades in his arming chamber, then… nothing.

Worse than not knowing how he came to be here was the niggling unease; what had he done in the time that he had lost?

He looked at his hands. His gauntlets were free of blood. That was good. That was something.

There was an antiseptic smell in his nostrils.

His vision stabilised and he began to discern his surroundings. Life-support systems and cogitator units wheezed and chimed. Vitae-sacs dripped their life-giving fluids. Data screens scrolled with information. Cells lit with bright fluorescent glow-globes, each hermetically sealed by armourglass.

He was within the apothecarion secundus, one of the medicae-wards on the rear decks of the Defiant. The area was a sealed, secure environment. Gene-code locked. He didn’t remember coming here.

Medicae support servitors shuffled to and fro, checking the blinking machines and scanning the streams of data-tape being spat out at intervals from the mouths of other servitors hard-wired into the cogitators’ processor-banks. They all appeared ignorant, oblivious or uncaring of his presence.

How long had he been here? He had no way of knowing.

Surgical mech-apparatus with articulated, multi-jointed arms replete with hooked blades, digi-lasers, suture-staplers and scalpels were folded in upon themselves on the ceiling.

Set into two of the walls were nutrient-rich restoration tanks with plexglas fronts. An unconscious legionary floated in suspension within one of the tanks. Kholak of the Second Battalion. His veins were pierced with tubes and a respirator was strapped across his face like a grotesque xenos parasite. He twitched and jerked in his induced healing coma. His wounds were recovering well.

A lone servo-skull swung in near Dreagher, probes and needles jutting from below its upper jaw. Its grav-suspensor buzzed loudly, making him twitch. He swatted it away.

While the apothecarion secundus did, when needed, still serve as an overflow for the ship’s primary medicae hall, and it remained the chief recovery ward for the echelon, the room no longer felt like a medicae ward.

No. It felt like a shrine.

Dreagher glared at the comatose figure seated within the central isolation cell, bright fluorescence shining down on him.

‘Wake up,’ he snarled. ‘Come back to us. Your Legion needs you.’

With a final glare, he turned and strode from the room.

The crowd roared at the muffled smack of fists striking flesh and the sharp twig-like crack of breaking ribs.

The faces of the onlookers were twisted and bestial as they watched the pair of combatants circle one another. They stamped their feet and beat their fists against the metal sheeting of the barricade separating them from the combatants, making the underdeck vault, deep within the bowels of the Defiant, shudder and boom.

Alone amongst the savage, braying crowd, Maven was silent, a slight smile playing upon his lean, hard face. He could see in the dance on the sand below that Skoral would win.

He breathed deeply the hot animal stink of human sweat. It was not a pleasant smell, but nor was it overtly repellent. It was the smell of brotherhood, of shared adversity. It was a warrior smell.

He stood with his arms folded. His muscles were raw and beginning to ache, but that was nothing to what he’d feel tomorrow. His knuckles were grazed and bloody, and he could already feel them swelling. He’d taken a beating tonight.

His eyes, granite grey and intense, stared unblinking at the two adversaries bleeding in the pit below.

The first, Skoral; a broad-shouldered woman with tattooed arms as thick as Maven’s thighs and a heart as big as an oroxen’s.

Thick ropes of blood dripped from her lower lip, and ugly welts marred her flesh. Her hair was shaved to the scalp on the left side of her head. One eye was swollen shut, the skin around it bulging and purple. She was still smiling, though. She was loving this. Her teeth were tinged red with her own blood and there were several gaps in her grin where five minutes ago there had been none.

The second, some low-deck munitions loader; a brute of a man, middling in years with the body of an ogryn and a face that few mothers would love. He was breathing hard and blood was running freely down the side of his face from a gash above his left eye. His hands were like rockcrete mitts. His eyes were glassy and his neck muscles wound as taut as springs; he was spiking, Maven realised. Sump-cooked aggressor-stimms most likely. He stalked around the confines of the pit, contemptuously turning his back on Skoral, and lifted his arms into the air, revving up the crowd.

The fool, thought Maven. That’s only going to piss her off.

Both the fighters were big. Not legionary big, of course, but certainly big for mortal humans. They’d both undergone gene-therapy, enhancing their bulk, strength and reflexes beyond what was normal. There was nothing unusual in that.

Skoral went for him as his back was turned, but that had been anticipated. He turned swiftly – he was surprisingly quick – and swung a murderous hook at her head. She ducked under it and hit him with an uppercut to the chin that snapped his head back, hard.

He wasn’t done, though, not by a long shot. There was a flurry of blows, a scuffling grapple as each fighter tried and failed to get a dominant grip. They separated, and as they did, Skoral’s opponent landed a meaty fist square in the side of her head.

Maven winced and the crowd roared with renewed intensity. Skoral staggered, lurching drunkenly, and the big loader went after her. It wouldn’t be long now. He’d seen this routine before.

The massive loader cannoned a blow at Skoral’s face, putting all his strength and weight behind it, looking to end the fight in one blow. Too late he realised he’d been suckered.

Stepping outside the big fighter’s swinging arm, she grabbed him by the wrist, twisting it painfully, and pulled him forward, simultaneously slamming her open hand into his shoulder. The joint popped, dislocating. She drove him down, continuing to use his own momentum against him, and slammed him face-first into the sheet metal pit wall behind her.

There was a collective intake of breath at the force of the impact, which tore the sheet panel loose, wrenching it violently out of shape. The big fighter was on his knees, supporting himself with his good arm. The other hung limp at his side.

Skoral stepped back away from him, her chest rising and falling heavily. Sweat and splatters of blood marred her grey singlet top.

To the loader’s credit, he managed to push himself to his feet, turning unsteadily towards Skoral once more. He was tough, Maven had to give him that. His face was a mess of blood and snot. His nose, already broken from an earlier strike, was now smeared across his face. He spat out a handful of teeth. Skoral shook her head.

‘Should’ve stayed down,’ Maven heard her grunt, still grinning.

‘M’not gettin’ shamed by some medicae whore,’ spat the big man. Skoral’s smile disappeared and Maven shuddered. That was not clever.

The big man went for her then, swinging wildly, but the end was a foregone conclusion. By the time Skoral stepped away from him her knuckles were dripping and the hulking loader was unconscious, lying in a pool of his own blood.

Finished, her demolition of her opponent complete, Skoral walked from the pit.

New combatants were entering even as the still-unconscious fighter was being dragged away. Maven pushed his way through the press of bodies.

He found her in a side-chamber. The burly loader was conscious now, though the blood on the ground showed where he’d been roughly dragged from the pit and unceremoniously dumped on the floor. Skoral had set his dislocated shoulder – which must have been agonising – and was stitching up the cut to his head. She wasn’t being overly gentle either, stabbing in with the hooked needle and yanking the thick thread through.

Her skin was liberally covered in angular, totemic tattoos. Maven’s gaze lingered for a moment on the Gothic numerals inked on the meat of Skoral’s shoulder, in the midst of those tribalistic markings. Ninth Company. He bore a similar brand upon his left pectoral, though his declared him as bonded to the 17th – his master Argus Brond’s company.

Glancing up at him, Skoral inclined her head in greeting before turning back to her work.

‘You hit hard, woman,’ said the loader, grimacing as Skoral drew the thread through his skin. ‘You’d be a good breeder.’

Skoral snorted, and glanced up at Maven, who was leaning back against the wall, a wry smile on his face. She winked at him.

‘Is that a proposition?’ she grunted.

‘Might be,’ said the man. ‘You’re ugly as sin itself but you’re strong. I could do worse.’

‘You really know how to make a woman feel special,’ said Skoral. She yanked hard on the thread, making the man flinch. ‘And while the notion of pumping out your idiot spawn is oh-so-appealing, I’ll have to decline your proposal. But good luck to you. I’m sure you’ll make some sump-swine a fine husband.’

‘I’ll take that as a no, then,’ said the thickset loader.

‘Not if you were the last seed-bearing specimen of manhood in the void,’ said Skoral, with a grin.

Her former adversary grunted and shrugged.

‘Fair enough,’ he said. He saw Maven standing in the doorway and nodded his thick jaw in his direction. ‘You lie with that? Is that it? I could break him over my knee.’

Maven grinned, folding his arms across his chest.

‘Pfff,’ scoffed Skoral. She bit the thread, cutting it, and tied it off. ‘Him? He’s nothing but skin and bone. I can’t see him satisfying me.’

‘With the creds I won on your fight tonight, I might just marry her, though,’ Maven said to the man.

‘You bet on her against me?’ said the loader, sounding a little hurt.

‘You would’ve done so yourself if you had any sense,’ said Maven. ‘You’ll know for next time.’

Skoral punched the loader in his bad shoulder, making him grimace. ‘Go. Get out of here before I beat you senseless for the second time today.’

‘Well, if you change your mind…’ he said as he rose.

‘Go,’ said Skoral, pointing the way out, a hint of a smile on her lips.

The big man rose and shuffled from the room, looking sheepish.

‘A charming individual,’ said Maven.

Skoral winced as she sank onto a bench, nursing her bruised and bloodied hands in a chilled gel-pack.

‘He’s harmless,’ she said. ‘He’s honest at least. There’re worse men on this ship.’

‘That there are,’ said Maven, taking a seat opposite her.

While she was a big woman – easily a head taller than most unaugmented men – she was effortlessly comfortable in her own skin, and had a constant string of admirers. She would never be described as a beauty, not by any means, but there was an earthy appeal about her, a proud vitality that was certainly attractive. She was no demure high-born lady – she was crude, rough and could out-drink any man – but in the hard, short and brutal lives of those on the ship, her manner was deeply life-affirming.

‘Why do I feel you’re here to lecture me?’ said Skoral, giving him a glare.

‘You know what I’m going to say?’

‘You could just congratulate me on the win,’ she said. ‘You could thank me for earning you a fat wad of credits.’

‘Yes, you won,’ said Maven. ‘But you could have done so without letting him hit you like that. You’re better than that.’

‘You can talk,’ said Skoral. ‘What the hell happened to you out there tonight? You bet against yourself, didn’t you?’

Maven’s handsome features split in a crooked grin, though he instantly regretted it, groaning slightly. He was going to have some serious bruises come the morning.

‘You could get yourself killed doing that,’ said Skoral. ‘If anyone found out you bet against yourself and took a dive…’

‘No one will find out,’ said Maven. ‘I had intermediaries place the bets.’

‘How much did you win?’

‘A lot,’ said Maven. ‘There’s a game tonight. Knights and Knaves. I play it right, I could make the same again tenfold.’

‘Or you could be found hanging from a sub-deck rafter, your face purple and your britches filled.’

‘Only if I’m stupid,’ said Maven. ‘And I’m not.’

Skoral grunted in frustration. ‘What is it that you want, nursemaid? You came here for something. Spit it out.’

Maven’s face darkened. ‘We need to talk,’ he said, lowering his voice.

‘We’re not talking now?’

‘We need to talk somewhere quiet. Somewhere… not here.’

Skoral looked at him frankly, trying to read him. It never worked.

‘Don’t tell me you are going to proposition me as well?’ she said, giving him a salacious wink.

Maven looked irritated.

‘No,’ he said, unamused.

‘What is it? Tell me.’

‘Not here. Not now,’ he hissed.

A shape appeared in the doorway, blotting out the light. Maven rose hastily to his feet, stepping back and lowering his head in deference. Skoral turned.

One of the Legion stood there, silhouetted against the light behind him. He was truly massive – even the hulking munitions loader would have looked like a child beside him.

The warrior was forced to turn sideways and duck his head to fit through the door frame as he entered the room. He was built to a different scale from the denizens of the ship’s sub-levels – they were made for menials and servants, not legionaries. His armour’s servos whined with each movement. Each step he took made the floor plates shudder.

His shaved scalp was heavily scarred, and cables and plugs jutted from the back of his head. A thick, dark beard covered his huge, square jaw. His skin was the colour of deep mahogany, and by human standards his features were too broad, too thick, and too heavy, as if affected by a form of gigantism. Nevertheless, his head looked perhaps too small for his oversized body.

It was counterintuitive, but Maven always felt the legionaries seemed even less human when they were not wearing their helmets. At least with their helmets on you could imagine something human within.

The World Eater’s armour was a bastard hybrid of different marks, though he clearly favoured the earlier, heavier designs. His armour plates were a mix of the alabaster white and cerulean blue of the old Legion. Those colours were becoming ever more of a rarity.

His heavy armour was in good order, but showed signs of extensive repair. It was austere; the XII Legion was not known for its flamboyance, though various plates – poleyns, pauldrons, greaves – were emblazoned with kill-markings and campaign honours. The Legion’s heraldry – a stylised gaping red maw engulfing a planet – was emblazoned upon his left shoulder plate. On his right: echelon and rank markings.

If Maven hadn’t recognised him by face, those markings would have made the centurion’s identity plain: Dreagher, captain of the Ninth. Or at least what was left of it after Terra.

He glanced down at Maven. His eyes were like the clouded grey moons of Bodt set against the darkness of the void. Madness and unpredictability lurked there.

‘Go away,’ he said, his voice a deep subdural bass rumble.

Maven needed no encouragement.

‘My lord,’ said Skoral, dropping painfully to one knee and lowering her head once Maven had gone.

‘I saw you fight,’ said Dreagher.

Skoral rose to her feet, suppressing a wince. She glanced up at the huge World Eaters captain, attempting to read his demeanour, before looking aside. It was never wise to let your gaze linger for long on one of the Legion. It tended to make them agitated. Things usually died when a World Eater became agitated.

‘You saw?’ she said. The presence of one of the Legion was unusual at the fights, though not unheard of.

‘You fought well.’

Skoral glanced up at him. He wasn’t looking at her. He was scanning the room, his brow creased, taking in its details, or perhaps seeking any potential threat.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ Skoral said, unsure quite how to respond to the uncharacteristic praise.

‘It is a shame you were born female,’ added Dreagher. ‘You would have made a fine legionary.’

That could have been taken a number of ways. Skoral decided to take it as a compliment.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ she said.

Dreagher began pacing. He was uncomfortable here, Skoral realised. The chamber was too close. Too stifling. Normally when she spoke with him it was in his arming chamber, where he seemed more at ease. She saw the World Eater’s breath hasten – a clear danger sign.

Unwilling to risk inciting Dreagher’s anger by speaking, she stood stock-still, waiting for the captain of the Ninth to make his intention known. Why had he come here?

He stopped directly in front of her. Her head was on a level with the middle of his chest. Up close she could see all the repaired scrapes, cuts and nicks in the armour, like battle scars. The throaty purr of his armour made her skin tingle.

Standing close to one of the Legion was to stand in the shadow of death. Her life was a slender thread that he could cut at a whim. There would be no questions. There would be no inquiry. No one would mourn her, except perhaps–

‘That was Brond’s man,’ Dreagher said. This close, the deep bass of his voice seemed to pass through her, making her bones shudder.

‘Yes, lord,’ she said.

‘Do not get sentimentally attached,’ Dreagher said. ‘The 17th are only stationed aboard the Defiant temporarily.’

‘I understand, lord,’ said Skoral.

‘Good,’ he said.

He stood there unmoving. The silence became uncomfortable. Slowly, biting her lip, Skoral lifted her gaze, looking up at the captain of the Ninth.

He appeared lost in thought, looking off into the mid-distance.

‘My lord?’ she ventured, finally.

His gaze settled on her and his brow furrowed.

‘Tend to your wounds. Meet me in my arming chamber once you have done so. I want a condition report on our patient,’ he said.

‘My lord? Has his condition changed since this morning?’

Dreagher looked at her, his expression inscrutable.

‘Why?’ he said.

‘I have already given you today’s condition report, my lord.’

‘I see,’ said Dreagher. ‘Of course.’

Skoral tongued the new gap in her teeth, troubled.

There was no denying it. He was getting worse.

‘I can recheck the patient to see if his condition has changed?’ she said.

Dreagher did not answer. Skoral heard the distinctive click of vox-comm traffic. The World Eater turned away, speaking in a low voice.

She stood and opened the locker where she’d stashed her belongings before her fight. She retrieved her heavy combat jacket, and pulled it on over her sweat and bloodstained singlet. There was a red handprint on the front of the jacket, over her heart – a mark of considerable honour among the Legion’s servants, one that Dreagher himself had allowed her to wear. It had been her proudest moment.

She slipped a heavy bracelet onto her wrist. One of its links pulsed with pale light almost immediately, lighting up from within. She clicked it off, and looked up at Dreagher, her brow furrowed.

‘My lord?’ she said. ‘What is it?’

‘Blood,’ he said.

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Published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover illustration by Nacho Molina.
Internal illustrations by Sam Lamont, John Michelbach and Adrian Smith.

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These are the terms and conditions that apply when you purchase an e-book (“e-book”) from Black Library. The parties agree that in consideration of the fee paid by you, Black Library grants you a license to use the e-book on the following terms:

* 1. Black Library grants to you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free license to use the e-book in the following ways:

o 1.1 to store the e-book on any number of electronic devices and/or storage media (including, by way of example only, personal computers, e-book readers, mobile phones, portable hard drives, USB flash drives, CDs or DVDs) which are personally owned by you;

o 1.2 to access the e-book using an appropriate electronic device and/or through any appropriate storage media; and

* 2. For the avoidance of doubt, you are ONLY licensed to use the e-book as described in paragraph 1 above. You may NOT use or store the e-book in any other way. If you do, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license.

* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 You attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.