Contents

Cover

Stormseeker – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Stormseeker

Alec Worley

The huge wolf pelt hung like a rancid curtain. It was ragged and infested with maggots, the whole thing as moist as the day it had been peeled from the flanks of a dead Fenrisian wolf. Anvarr Rustmane unpinned the final rivet and the heavy pelt flopped into his waiting arms, unveiling the bulkhead that housed the sacred engine of his Stormwolf gunship. Pipes and cables pulsed like arteries, their junction box embossed with the emblem of a glowering wolf’s head.

The immense Iron Priest recited a memorial prayer of the Adeptus Mechanicus, folding the stinking pelt as reverently as if it were the banner of a Wolf Lord. As Anvarr had explained to those of his brothers who had grumbled about the smell, the Stormwolf’s machine-spirit had insisted the pelt remained untreated, so the trophy could better permeate the gunship with its feral aura.

The assortment of charms and relics that adorned Anvarr’s battered blue-grey power armour clinked in the darkness, the significance of these mementoes unfathomable to all but the Iron Priest himself. The matted ropes of rust-red hair that ran down his back presented a tapestry of fangs, spikes of bone, cogs, spent bolter casings, lengths of relay wiring tied in elaborate knots. Each braid offered a chronicle of battles past. Anvarr’s mane clattered as he bowed his head before the engine and raised the folded pelt before him, backing away and down the Stormwolf’s hold as he concluded his prayer. The Iron Priest glanced up as he reached the open ramp, and the embossed wolf’s head seemed to glare back at him from the gloom.

Anvarr frowned and handed the pelt to a waiting servitor before emerging onto the busy flight deck of the strike cruiser, the Ragnarök. His battle-brothers surged about him, the boots of their power armour clattering as they hurried between the docked aircraft that loomed like rows of monoliths either side of them. To Anvarr’s preternatural senses, the flight deck reeked of bio-enhanced adrenaline, as dozens of hearts pounded in anticipation of clashing with a hated foe.

Hailing from the Deathwolves Company, Anvarr and his detachment had been stationed in this sector to hunt a pair of elusive dark eldar pirates. The xenos had been raiding the vast mining cities located upon the sun-scorched death world of Vityris. Hardened by generations of crystal-mining beneath the planet’s blistering sun, the colonists had apparently proved to be durable material for the pain-farms of Commorragh, the degenerate stronghold of the dark eldar.

The Deathwolves had hunted for weeks without detecting any sign of their quarry. Then, less than an hour ago, a scout pack had reported that one of these pirates, along with his entire raiding party, had captured a remote research station overlooking a network of canyons. It appeared the xenos were stranded there, although the scouts knew not how. After weeks of frustration, Anvarr was eager to join his pack in combat, but knew the hunt could not commence in earnest just yet.

‘Brother?’ said a voice beside him.

It was Eadric, the youngest of the Iron Priest pilots in Anvarr’s assault wing.

‘This is all I could find,’ he said, presenting a handful of totems: bundles of bones, fangs suspended from strips of leather, and a huge severed paw bearing claws the size of ork cleavers.

‘Trinkets!’ spat Anvarr. ‘The machine-spirit requires a tribute of suitable magnitude! That pelt was torn from the beast’s back after I slew it with my bare hands! Have the Rune Priests nothing else for us?’

‘Nothing that can be prepared without the proper ceremony,’ Eadric said.

‘You’ll have to fly without, Anvarr,’ said another voice.

Anvarr turned, his braids clinking, as he faced his fellow alpha.

Skaldr Frostbiter mag-locked his chainsword and bolt pistol to his belt, the weapons having just received blessings from the Iron Priests Kaarle and Varg. Frostbiter, a Pack Leader of the Wolf Guard, was a fine Space Marine, a blonde-bearded giant whose radiant charisma inspired all those around him, although he smiled far too much for Anvarr’s liking.

‘My Stormwolf’s machine-spirit has just told me the pelt is no longer a worthy tribute,’ Anvarr said. ‘I need a replacement, or else disaster will befall this hunt, I promise you.’

Skaldr exchanged a glance with Eadric.

‘I need a proper totem,’ Anvarr said impatiently. ‘A relic fragment. Anything! Perhaps you have a trophy I might borrow, brother…?’

‘Anvarr, we need to make planetfall within the next fifteen minutes. The Ragnarök has jammed the research station’s comms relay. We must strike before the xenos hear us coming.’

Anvarr stared at him, incredulous.

‘But to fly without tribute is an invitation to disaster,’ he spluttered, his voice rising, spit flecking his beard. ‘An insult to the Omnissiah, neglect of the sacred mechanics of fate itself. To break with ritual is to break with faith, brother…’

Skaldr placed a calming hand on Anvarr’s shoulder.

‘And I have faith that you will honour the Allfather with your skill, Anvarr,’ he said calmly. ‘You are not one for boasts, Rustmane, which is why perhaps you need reminding that you stand among the finest pilots in our Chapter.’

A pack of Blood Claws approached them, reckless wild-haired whelps. They jostled and laughed as they filed into the hold of Anvarr’s Stormwolf.

‘It is time,’ Skaldr said, slapping Anvarr’s pauldron. ‘Fear not, brother,’ he said, departing with yet another smile. ‘Sometimes valour is tribute enough.’

Anvarr kept his curses to himself as he turned to the three Iron Priests under his command.

‘Very well,’ he growled. ‘I doubt compliments alone are honour enough for the Omnissiah, but the Deathwolves have xenos to kill. To your ships then, brothers.’

Eadric, Kaarle and Varg nodded and hurried to their ships as Anvarr looked away and whistled. From across the flight deck loped Cogfang, Anvarr’s cyberwolf. The hulking creature had once been a coal-black Fenrisian Ironpelt, whose pack had fought alongside the Deathwolves on several campaigns. After an invigorating clash with a horde of World Eaters, Anvarr had found the beast dying upon the battlefield, a chainaxe buried in its chest and a dead Traitor Marine still clamped in its jaws. Anvarr had taken his find as a sign from the Omnissiah that he should save the life of this valiant beast. Cogfang’s bionic front leg clanked as he ascended the ramp, saliva trailing from the serrated iron trap that replaced his lower jaw as he followed his grumbling master inside the Stormwolf.

The Blood Claws were cursing and arguing as they locked themselves to the walls of the hold. Anvarr shoved past them. When the Iron Priest reached the bulkhead, Cogfang sat on his haunches, his head almost level with his master’s shoulders. Anvarr produced a clay cup carved with runes and filled it with a pungent measure of mjod from a metal decanter built into Cogfang’s throat. The cyberwolf yawned – a strange metallic whine – and shook itself, rattling the cybernetic cables that wormed through its pelt. Its bionic eye cast a bloody glow over the Iron Priest’s face as he murmured a prayer of contrition, dipping his fingers in the cup and painting runes around the engine bulkhead.

A hush had descended upon the hold and Anvarr felt the eyes of his young passengers upon him. It amused him to think of the stories that circulated around the feast halls on the many occasions he declined to attend, that Anvarr Rustmane communed as much with the voices in his head as with the spirits of the armoury. He concluded his ritual by raising his cup to the engine then tipping what was left of the Fenrisian liquor down his throat. The mjod scorched his tongue and warmed his chest, filling his nose with a perfume of fermented honey and frost-nettle.

He caught the eye of the nearest Blood Claw. Nudged by his fellows, the whelp looked as though he were about to comment but had thought better of it.

‘Mjod is a sacrament, little brother,’ Anvarr said, smiling to himself. ‘It helps me commune with the machine-spirits.’

As he downed another measure from Cogfang’s decanter, his ears twitched at the sound of an amused whisper.

‘Clearly he and the spirits have much to say.’

Anvarr paused as he ascended the ladder into the cockpit, casting his red-rimmed eyes over the two ranks of Blood Claws.

‘Aye, we have much to discuss,’ Anvarr said. ‘Flying this vessel without proper tribute to the machine-spirit is a heinous offence, tantamount to flying under a curse, some might say. Unless I can convince it that you are a cargo worthy of being borne into battle, it may allow a fan blade to snap or a fuel line to leak and we’ll die in flames before we reach the battlefield. And so your names shall go unheard in the sagas to come.’

The Blood Claws were silent.

‘But rest assured, little brothers,’ Anvarr laughed. ‘Should we burn, my guts shall be filled with drink enough to light our passage all the way to hel.’

Anvarr’s yellow eyes flashed like coins as the ramp lifted and darkness enveloped them all.

‘Fangs of Russ!’

Anvarr voxed the Blood Claws in the hold beneath.

‘Save your songs for the feasting halls, damn you!’

The whelps had been singing battle hymns ever since leaving the strike cruiser. Perhaps they were honouring the Stormwolf in their own crude way, but their howling distracted him from reciting his own murmured entreaties to the machine-spirit.

The hurtling Stormwolf emerged into the planet’s atmosphere, and the rippling sheet of fire that covered the canopy gradually disappeared, revealing the gunship’s long, shuddering snout and a piercing sun beyond. Canyons veined the rust-red mesa far below, cracking the landscape as though some waking behemoth strained beneath its surface. The sun gleamed viciously upon lakes of shattered crystal, the remains of countless glass bodies that formed in the upper atmosphere and rained upon the planet’s surface. Anvarr felt the engine behind him growl like a restless beast. He shifted uncomfortably.

The ship trembled and rattled as Anvarr continued his descent, shaking on his pilot’s throne as he absorbed a weight of acceleration that would have crushed the chest of an ordinary man. Atmospheric and positional data scrolled and flickered across the Iron Priest’s vision, the gene-implants in his brain feeding him a constant stream of information from the ship’s sensor array. Four arrowheads bleeped before his eyes in a steady diamond formation. Kaarle and Varg’s Stormfangs flew abeam on Anvarr’s flanks. They each carried a unit of Long Fangs, white-haired veterans all, as prodigious and majestic as the great lascannons they bore into battle. Eadric remained steady on Anvarr’s tail, his Stormwolf carrying another unit of eager young Blood Claws.

‘There’s Skaldr,’ voxed Kaarle.

The Iron Priest looked up to see four golden dots emerging like comets from the clouds ahead. Anvarr voxed the Ragnarök.

‘Drop pods sighted,’ he said.

‘Received, Assault Wing,’ the Ragnarök replied. ‘Drop pods will reach the target in thirty seconds.’

‘Too late, I fear, to save those poor wretches who were manning the research station,’ Kaarle voxed.

‘Indeed,’ Varg said. ‘Any the xenos have left alive will be welcoming death by now. May Russ guide us in granting them vengeance.’

Anvarr continued his dive, leading his assault wing towards a magnificent canyon, slowing to cruising speed as he levelled out high above a river of crystal shards that ran along the floor of the chasm. He leaned on the sticks and the canyon walls rose either side of him, the level mesa disappearing from view. With a blink-click, he dismissed part of his tactical display and snapped a row of switches above his head, activating the sensor relays in the Stormwolf’s prow. Anvarr’s helmet filled with the hot scent of the outside world, the smoky smell of arid rock, the hot tang of seared crystal.

‘Snouts to the wind, brothers,’ he voxed, accelerating slightly ahead of the pack and dipping low enough above the crystal river for his thrusters to carve a glittering spray as he passed. Although initiated in the mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus, Anvarr remained a Space Wolf, his Canis Helix gifting him with the senses of an apex predator. He read the land as it flowed beneath him, detecting every subtle pattern wrought by wind and sun, devouring every secret as he rode the curve of the canyon walls.

As the Space Wolves’ briefing had explained, the surface of this death world was beset with what the mining colonies called ‘shard-devils’. Stirred into life by columns of superheated air, these vast swirling towers guzzled loose rocks and crystal debris and spat them in all directions. Anvarr scanned the trail ahead for the telltale sign of whirling dust that heralded the arrival of such a maelstrom.

The Iron Priest led his pack down a fork in the canyon, following the buffeting wind like a wolf tracking prey. Streamers of smoke appeared ahead, lining the sky atop a sheer canyon wall ahead. As Anvarr slowed, he detected not only the familiar musk of bolter fire, but also the sour oily stench of the xenos. Acting as one, the Space Wolf assault wing angled their thrusters, their ships rising out of the canyon and looming over the smoking research station.

The four empty drop pods surrounded the station like the pinnacles of a castle. Skaldr and his Wolf Guard had broken into the various bunkers and would be deep in the underground tunnels by now, exterminating the cornered xenos with blade and bolter. Occasionally a lithe black figure would spring like a spider from an exit hatch and flee towards the outlying crags, crying out as it stumbled through ankle-deep drifts of razor-sharp crystal debris.

‘Ready yourselves, whelps,’ Anvarr voxed his Blood Claws as the rest of the assault wing fanned into position behind the drop pods.

‘Be grateful the machine-spirit has deemed you worthy of being carried into battle,’ he roared. ‘Now, destroy the xenos filth as your brothers drive them into your arms. Blood your blades and win yourselves honour enough for a ride home!’

The youngsters yelled and whooped in reply. Cogfang howled among them, his cry ringing through the Stormwolf’s hull like an alarm as a red warning rune flashed on Anvarr’s tac-display.

Something was closing in on him from behind, moving at unthinkable speed. The Iron Priest felt the engine judder beneath him, and could have sworn he heard a ghostly laugh.

Click here to buy Stormseeker.

A Black Library Publication

Published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Cover illustration by Dave Greco.

Stormseeker © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2016. Stormseeker, 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: 978-1-78572-348-3

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.

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.