Contents

Cover

Lorgar: Bearer of the Word – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

1 1 1

Sands the colour of rust, ash and old sweat stretched out to the haze-blurred horizon. Even in the baking heat some life clung on – scrubs of thorny bushes and trees, cacti and brightly flowered succulents rose in the shadows of pillar-like rocks, sustained within the meandering wadi and drawing sustenance from the deep remains of lost oases. There was movement everywhere if one knew where to look. Scorpions and sun beetles skittered over the scorching sands and flies buzzed lazily from cactus to cactus. Far above, in the wisps of cloud that scudded across a pale-blue sky, immense sand vultures with four-metre wingspans circled in the cool upper airs, eyes as powerful as magnoculars scanning the ground for any morsel.

Dust devils skirted across the dunes, erasing the tracks around the camp, piling fresh drifts against the sides of thirteen large tents made of fabric striped red and blue, black and gold, grey and white. Sunshades held up on strong poles shielded against the unrelenting Long Noon blaze, keeping the worst from the backs of prized bipedal sunstrider mounts and much more heavily set sternback sled-beasts. Their short hair stained red by the dust, the animals panted in the heat despite the shade, eyes closed against the glare coming off the nearby dunes.

More huge parasols were set up on the leeward side of the camp, and beneath them clustered the Declined. Old and young, they huddled about their solar stoves cooking patties made from grey cactus flour flavoured with treasured drops of honeyspider milk. They talked quietly and nursed their canteens – perilously low now that they were two and a half days out from the last oasis – debating the best course to take at wake-rise of Duskeve, when the dropping temperatures made travel practical again.

They fingered talismans and fetishes of small bird and mammal bones, intricately carved with verses passed down from ancient generations. The eldest dozed, clasping prayer-sticks across their chests, the faint whistles and whines from the pierced bones changing as their chests rose and fell in the constant but weak breeze. Around them infants dug in the sand for wadi-nappers and desert whelks, though in their minds they imagined they were opening up one of the Lost Vaults to unearth archeotech treasures from the time of the Last Wandering. They picked over pebbles and small fossils, dividing them into piles of varying shininess, size and other criteria only small children would understand.

The older children dared each other to stand in the sun for as long as possible, timing their efforts with small sandglasses, ignoring the warnings of their parents who spoke of some uncle or aunt who had died from a skin-curdling sunrash or been consumed by swarms of tumours.

The youngest adults attended to the shrine. The centre of the camp was dominated by four large poles, each made up of separate totems carved in the many likenesses of the four Powers. Though they were Declined, forbidden entry into any of the great cities, they nevertheless paid homage to the gods of their ancestors as best they could. Offerings of small sacrifices burned in incense bowls at the base of each pole, their scented wisps drifting out across the camp, carrying the prayers of the faithful into the air. The ward-priests kept the small fires burning, moving from one to the next in constant work, wafting air, rearranging kindling, adding sprinkles of more incense where required.

Now and then one of the nomads would rouse in the stupefying heat, struck by a sudden thought or need. They would scribble their prayer on a scrap of papyrus and pass it to one of the totem-attendees. Murmured incantations would accompany the flare of burning papyrus, their meaning lost to antiquity, but their importance sustained over a hundred generations.

1 1 2

Fan Morgai, leader of the tribe, gathered his family to a brief council. He pointed to the darker shimmer on the horizon, which a stranger to the deserts might have mistaken for a mountain. The nomads knew better – the mound whose peak was just visible in the distance was no natural formation but the remains of a city of their ancestors, long dead sands claimed by the desert.

‘Two more rest-eves, with good walking,’ he told them, waving the fabric map that was his most prized heirloom. The symbols were all but faded from view, but he knew how to read the topography, taught by his mother and grandfather as soon as he was old enough to learn his letters.

‘A prayer in a hole,’ muttered Stanzia, his eldest sister. ‘You think the gods will guide us to a Lost Vault?’

‘No,’ Fan Morgai said with a sad shake of the head. ‘I think that this is the City of Mirrors. See the clouds above it. Rain, my boys and girls. Rain soon.’

‘The wadi at Fushas is said to be flooded again,’ said his youngest cousin, Fabri Tal. ‘Only a wake-rise’s walk away, no more.’

‘The wrong way,’ argued Kora, Fabri Tal’s elder brother, who had already expressed his favour for the plan of Fan Morgai. ‘And who said this? A drunken soothsayer at Maiporis? He would tell you anything for a sip of j’kahs.’

‘He had one of the old books,’ protested Fabri Tal, ‘and he cast the bones upon its pages right in front of me, I saw. A wind symbol and the sun. Fresh beginnings, he told me.’

‘And you spared him a sip of your liquor for the good news,’ said Fan Morgai. He was about to continue but a shrill call drew all their attention to the shaded watchpost on stilts erected at the windward side of the camp. Others were standing, shielding their eyes against the glare.

‘Go, Alannat, swap with Benjor,’ Fan Morgai told his young sister, and she dashed off into the light, sweeping her headscarf about her face to shield against the sun for the moments it took her to reach the watchpost.

Benjor dropped down and ran back to the elder, his looking-tube glinting in his hand. He gestured for Fan Morgai to meet him between the two nearest tents and pointed into the wind, a little to edgewards.

‘Caravan!’ he blurted, thrusting the seeing device to Fan Morgai. ‘Caravan!’

The tribal leader lifted the telescope to his eye. Retinal detectors clicked and whirred as they adjusted the liquid lens, bringing the horizon into sharper focus. He swept right a little, towards the far distant coast, and caught a blur of darkness against the dunes, no more than a kilometre away.

‘Caravan, out here?’ He looked at Stanzia and they shared a glance of concern. They both looked to the main tent that housed the chief’s family.

‘Say nothing to the strangers,’ she told him and he agreed with a nod.

‘Make ready, get your weapons,’ he told the others. ‘But do nothing to provoke them and let me do the talking.’

1 1 3

The largest vehicle crested a broad dune like a breaching whale, its huge flanks rearing up over the sands amid a plume of dust and smoke. A dozen small funnels trailed oily fumes from their gargoyle caps. Thick wooden tracks churned the sand as it achieved the summit, the sand plough upon its front furrowing aside dirt and grit into twin banks on either side.

Details were scant, the caravan just a vague darkness in the haze, but as the vehicle approached the other shapes around it resolved into better focus. Two-crew four-wheelers ran as outriders, their roofs and spoilers glinting with solar collecting plates, balloon tyres carrying them over the shifting desert.

With them came actual riders, mounted on sunstriders decked in faded ribbons and pennants, the streamer of a black-and-red prayer flag curling from the back of each scout. Their faces were hidden by thick scarves and glare goggles, their riding robes tattered and dirty. Their steeds had also seen better days, flanks scarred by sandstorms, hair matted, tails docked short in the style of the inner waste tribes.

Other vehicles followed, forming an entourage for the temple-rig – carts pulled by threesomes of dromedores, and sunstrider chariots, two of them, each hauling chains and weighted flags through the sand to obscure the trail left by the caravan.

The shrine wagon could now be seen more clearly, a turret above its driver’s cab topped by numerous flared speakers flanking a pulpit, large reflectors casting a brightness onto the decking behind, where dozens of armed men and women waited. As the great sheet above the deck flapped and bulged in the winds, spear-tips and mauls, arrows and slingstaves glinted in occasional flashes of sunshine. Beyond the stacks of the traction engine the large wagon heaped up into a type of aft castle, upon which two spear-launchers were mounted. Here mast-like poles were joined to the exhaust piles by black and red bunting, missing in places, giving the impression of gap-toothed grins.

From the summit glinted a golden icon, of a book aflame. A symbol of allegiance and faith, a testament to one of the proselytising creeds of the old cities. The Covenant of Vharadesh.

1 1 4

The glimmer of eyepieces sparkled along the deck of the shrine wagon as the occupants turned their attention to the cluster of tents sighted in the distance. Orders were barked down the speaker tubes and the engines of the mobile chapel grumbled in response to the coaxing and curses of the crew below, hauling the unyielding vehicle onto a new course into the broad sand basin beyond the ridge.

Nairo darted between the caravan guards, scooping a ladle from his bucket to slop grease onto the exposed cogs of the running gear below the main platform. Around him the sellswords at the gunwales readied their windbows and dart guns, and loosened cudgels in their belts. A few aimed kicks at the ageing slave; others directed only curses at the man winding his way in a half-crouch between them.

He was clad only in a loincloth and headband, his whip-marked back and shoulders an exposed maze of sun-darkened skin and white scar tissue, turned leathery and cracked by years of exposure. It was, Powers be praised, a miracle Nairo had not been cursed with the tumours like so many of those he had grown up with – his advanced age was something of a talisman among the other slaves. Six Colchisian years he had survived; thirty as the adepts of Terra would later reckon such a time span.

His head was shaved bald, tattooed on the right side with a simple version of the Book of the Word, symbol of the Covenant who ostensibly owned him.

He passed fierce Cthollic mercenaries, their porcelain masks flat over their faces, decorated with cruel visages drawn from the vision-journeys of intoxicant-fuelled coming-of-age rituals. They wielded serrated spears, their jerkins adorned with discs of refractive material that gleamed white in the high sun.

Next to them the Archer Brethren – sea warriors now confined to land, their windbows resting on the side of the wagon. Fierce of expression, the men heavily bearded, the women with braids tied under their chins in imitation of the favoured facial hair.

Witchwalkers of Carthass, dispossessed by the loss of their homes, swallowed by the great earth-tumults of a year earlier. An entire great city disappeared into the sand and waters, destroyed, so it was claimed by the Covenant, for their sinful ways. This handful of survivors caked their bodies in ochre paint out of shame, its colour visible between their segmented plastrons, vambraces and greaves.

And more, from other cities and none, all of them converts. Not a single warrior was a native of the Covenant; none were born of Vharadesh, the Holy City. This simple fact made them more fervent followers, with the vigour of those whose existence now depended upon the Truth of the Word to give their lives meaning. Their adopted creed made them as zealous as their master.

Of him, of the Bearer of the Word, there was no sign, though warning had been sent to the caravan’s master that a Declined camp had been sighted. Nairo cast glances at the hatchway that led to the master’s chambers in the bowels of the temple-rig, but there was no movement to be seen.

1 1 5

Castora, the herald-slave, scuttled into view from the smaller entrance further aft and quickly ascended the ladder to the pulpit as the mobile shrine ground to a halt a hundred metres from the outskirts of the camp. With a scratch and amplified crackle, the address system sprang into life at her instigation.

Movement stirred in the camp as the nomads assembled at the edge of the shade cast by their covers. Nairo could see the glint of weapons – spears for the most part, nothing advanced – but the arrangement of the Declined suggested curiosity more than hostility. They could be seen talking to each other, casual in their attitude.

An automated clarion wailed several distorted notes from the prayer-hailers, cutting through the rasping wind.

‘Rejoice, those who have fallen from the gaze of the Powers,’ announced Castora. She spoke waterwords, the common language of the traders and missionaries who moved between cities. Nairo could see her face, resigned to her task though she tried her best to summon as much enthusiasm as she could for the audience. ‘Celebrate the beneficence of the Powers, for this day they have guided to you the Bearer of the Word. Fear not, for he brings only counsel and wisdom for those who wish to heed it. No longer must you dwell in the wilderness of ignorance. The Bearer of the Word shall set you back upon the path to the Truth, and through his indulgences you shall know again the Will of the Powers.’

The sound of a foot upon the steps drew Nairo’s eye back to the open grate. As Castora continued her speech, lauding the benefits of the Truth and the righteousness of the Bearer of the Word, the master emerged. He was young, three and a half years by the measure of Colchis’ long orbit, but his brow already carried the deep furrows that would permanently twist them in later life. Gaunt he was, but not yet possessed of the lines of care and age that would mark his older years. He was garbed in dirty tatters of dark grey robes marked by sigils of the Powers and designs of the constellations of the Empyrean Above – the very same clothes that had been literally ripped from his back when he had been cast out of Vharadesh. His flesh was thin, his existence in the desolation honing his body to wiry muscle and little else. Already his skin was marked with the scars of exposure, dark from the sun and scratched from the wind-borne sands.

Castora withdrew as he reached the bottom of the pulpit ladder, slipping over the edge like a fleeing serpent to allow the master to ascend without obstruction. With characteristic energy he hauled himself up to the addressing platform while the clarions sounded their grating call again.

‘Heed the Bearer of the Word,’ he declared, raising his arms above his head. ‘Witness the Truth from my lips and remember the name of Kor Phaeron!’

Click here to buy Lorgar: Bearer of the Word.

This book would not have been possible without First Chaplain
Ant Reynolds and Keeper of the Faith Kor Ph-Aaron.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017.
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Mikhail Savier.

Lorgar: Bearer of the Word © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Lorgar: Bearer of the Word, The Horus Heresy Primarchs, 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.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-732-0

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.

See Black Library on the internet at
blacklibrary.com

Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at
games-workshop.com

eBook license

This license is made between:

Games Workshop Limited t/a Black Library, Willow Road, Lenton, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, United Kingdom (“Black Library”); and

(2) the purchaser of an e-book product from Black Library website (“You/you/Your/your”)

(jointly, “the parties”)

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.