Contents

Cover

Ashes of Prospero – Extract

A Black Library Publication

eBook license

Chapter 1

WOES OF FENRIS

The ring of a staff on stone floors echoed through the still corridors of the Fang. Each impact resounded like a siege hammer, filling the emptiness with a sharp noise. A fastness fashioned from the bedrock of a mountain, the fortress-monastery had housed tens of thousands of Space Wolves in its past. Now it was home to relatively few. Feast-halls that had rung to thunderous voices raised in celebration of victory, and the occasional low laments of defeat, swallowed the noise with their vastness. Hundreds of banners were hung from the high rafters and friezes adorned the walls, deadening the sound of metal on rock. Trenchers and tables, each a hundred metres long, awaited banqueters that would never return. Benches and the high chairs of the Wolf Lords, polished by ten millennia of accommodating the greatest heroes of the Imperium, now sat unused.

The arrival passed now-empty dorm chambers where the Sons of Russ had rested in preparation for battle for ten thousand years. The only testament to their previous occupation was the scratched runes on cot posts and bare walls: boasts of achievements past and yet-to-be; lines of sagas not completed; jokes both subtle and crude, of foes and masters alike; dedications to the Allfather, God-Emperor of Mankind, and to Russ, and the Great Wolves that had succeeded him. All carved in angular Fenrisian runes, marking each chamber as a predator marks its territory.

Not only the interior was near-empty. His mind’s eye lifted to unseen deserted ramparts where icewinds howled across naked stone, eating away at defences that had not been breached since they had been laid down at the dawning of the Imperium of Man. Gun turrets growled and whirred, moving to the neural impulses of half-sentient servitors slaved to their cannons, unthinking soul-carcasses oblivious to the desolation around them. Kilometres-long walls scarred the towering slopes of the Fang’s outer skin, cutting dark lines across the snow-wreathed flanks of the hollow mountain.

The crash of the staff was accompanied by the tread of soft-booted feet – a step surprisingly light given the size of the man that took them. He was broad-shouldered, as were all Space Marines, and a head and a half taller than any normal man. His calves were bound tight with thongs about leggings of tanned hide. His furred coat and the shaggy auburn beard hanging lank from his chin and cheeks steamed, the ice rime slowly fading as he made his way along processionals and galleries, leaving a course of drips and wet footprints in his wake.

His face was square-jawed, the nose large, nostrils flared like a bull’s. Eyes the colour of slate speckled with green stared directly ahead from beneath thick brows, knotted together in concern. The tips of his upper incisors protruded into his bottom lip, the length of his fangs an indication of his extended years.

The staff was black, carved with runework that glowed like forgefire. Its head was the polished skull of a blizzard-wolf, his personal totem. On his shoulder sat a black-feathered bird. One eye glittered with augmetics, and wires protruded from its flesh in testament to its altered nature. Nightwing – the Rune Priest’s psyber-familiar, oracle and extension of his senses and thoughts. The lumen-light glittered in its normal eye, reflected from the beady ebon surface like shooting stars against a black sky.

His solitary progress brought him to the great doors of the King’s Hall. They were barred – the huge barriers of high mountain ash were bound with gilded plasteel, reinforced with rivets each the size of a man’s clenched fist. Silver runes had been hammered into the wood, with a simple challenge:

Friends welcomed for ever. Foes cursed for eternity.

Two guards stood by the ornate iron handles – a pair of broad rings, each fashioned in the likeness of the world drake swallowing its tail. The door wardens were clad in the monstrously bulky plate of Tactical Dreadnought armour, two warriors from the Great Wolf’s own guard. The armour was painted in the blue-grey of the Chapter, marked by icons of their Great Company, squad and personal adornments. Each wore several talismans and wolf tails; some were signatures of their past deeds, others awards and trophies of their victories.

They were veterans famed among the Chapter and the returning Rune Priest knew them well. To the right, Alrik Doomseeker, his paired claws raised but not active, expression hidden within his helm. On the other side was Sven Halfhelm, thunder hammer lifted to bar further passage, a cruciform storm shield held across his body. He wore no helm, and an old scar that ran across his right eye from cheek to forehead was pale against tanned skin.

‘I request audience with the Great Wolf,’ said the visitor. His voice was quiet but powerful, spoken with assured authority.

‘Then speak the ally-words and you shall pass,’ replied Alrik.

‘Aett-skald.’ He whispered the code, gaze moving from one guardian to the other. ‘Such knowledge could easily be plucked from the mind of another. Logan needs better security if he thinks a simple password could prevent a foe from entering his inner halls.’

‘An issue we have raised with the Great Wolf, for sure,’ said Sven, withdrawing his hammer with a wheeze of armour servos. ‘But who save for the Rune Priests could guard against the daemons again? We have missed you, Lord of Runes. I hope your journey into the ice was fruitful.’

Alrik turned and signalled to a cluster of lenses that stared down from the lintel above the gate. The sentry devices clicked and whirred as the servitor bound within the gateway accessed its protocols and studied the new arrival for its own clarification. Several seconds passed before the heavy clank of locks turning announced that all had been found in order.

The doors swung inwards with a grinding of gears, revealing the King’s Hall in all its glory. The visitor watched Alrik step within and announce his arrival through the amplifier of his war-plate.

‘A Lord of the Fang returns, Great Wolf. The Tempest that Walks. Njal Stormcaller!’

A blizzard raged along the slopes of the fjord, the snow flurries almost horizontal as gales drove them into the valley. Unheeding of the storm, Arjac, known as Rockfist to his brothers, forged through the drifts. His already considerable frame had been grown into the superhuman physique of a Space Marine by the Canis Helix gene-seed. Clad in a suit of Tactical Dreadnought armour – bulky war-plate designed to withstand plasma blasts and the freezing void of space – he did not even notice the driving ice and wind that would have swept away the strongest of normal men.

He followed a near-invisible track down towards the northern shoreline, winding his way between snow-covered boulders, picking past ice crevasses that could devour battle tanks. Lumpen shapes marred the snow to either side. Here and there, a rictus face or outstretched hand broke the pale blanket. He passed dead by the score, frozen where they had fallen. Some of them had been slain by exposure to the elements as they crawled homewards, but most had been killed by violence. Their guts hung open and arteries had spilled the last of their life into the uncaring snow.

Fitful gusts of smoke drifted up from the fjord and Arjac saw charred timbers jutting from the ice that had trapped the waters: remnants of pyreships, several dozen of them. Those that still gave off a smog could not have been lit long before the storm had hit, their flames tamped by the blizzard. He could see them not far from the vague boundary between land and water, held on giant sleds because no keel could break the ice. Bodies had been stacked like firewood on the decks, young and old, men and women.

A large settlement of longhouses clustered along the banks of the river at the fjord’s head, but only a few dozen fur-wrapped figures waited at the harbour, the last inhabitants of Elsinholm.

The snows had relented by the time Arjac had descended to the town. He passed empty longhalls, their roofs made of kraken skin, their walls frozen daub and stones between bones of the gigantic beasts of the deep. Signs of the kraken hunt were everywhere, from the discarded flensing pikes frozen to racks by the quaysides, to the huge dragway into the centre of the town where a monstrous catch would be taken and divided up between the townsfolk.

A call signalled that one of the mourners at the iceside had spotted him and seconds later the people from the harbour surged up the frozen mud of the street, calling thanks to the gods and the Sky Warriors.

Decorum returned as they neared Arjac. The crowd slowed, their enthusiasm suddenly curtailed, most stopping some distance away while a handful dared approach closer. The people looked haggard – most of them were in their old age, though there were a few younger men and women scattered throughout. Their faces were pinched from cold and hunger. They eyed the Space Wolves Terminator with a mixture of hope and desperation.

One of them – obviously the town elder, whom he had been told by the Great Wolf was called Rangvaldr – broke from the group and approached, making signs of welcome with a three-fingered hand. The top of the aettjarl’s head barely reached the wolf symbol on Arjac’s plastron, but he raised his chin to meet the gigantic warrior eye to eye. There was no lack of spirit in his gaze.

‘Bless the Sons of the Wolf King. Our message was heard,’ said the chieftain.

‘The Great Wolf hears and sees all that happens in his domain.’ Arjac tilted his head towards the pyreboats and then glanced back to the path of corpses above the town. ‘How many?’

‘Three hundred and four,’ Rangvaldr said with a mournful look. ‘From the invasion. We had not even found them all before this latest calamity, which has taken forty-two more.’

‘Your message spoke of a beast from the highlands descending to attack your people.’

‘Aye, a drake of ice and fury. It comes upon us at night. We have few enough to fight as it is, and none to crew a ship when the thaw comes. The light is its only dread, but the long nights draw closer. If this beast takes any more of us…’

‘Where are the others?’ an older woman called out from the crowd. Her scrawny fingers gripped a ragged shawl about head and shoulders.

‘Why do you not ride a metal sky-chariot?’ asked another, perhaps a daughter by their similar features. Auburn curls hung out of her fur-lined hood and a fresh cut marred her tanned cheek.

‘Hush now, Magnhild,’ said Rangvaldr, glaring at the older woman. He turned his annoyance on the younger of the pair. ‘Stow your questions, Tyra.’

‘No,’ said the daughter. She strode up the street, but her gaze did not fall upon Arjac. When she addressed him, her eyes seemed locked to the bearclaw icon upon his left greave. ‘Warrior, we are grateful that you have come, but we need protection. When will the Great Wolf send the others?’

‘There are no others,’ said Arjac. The townsfolk greeted this statement with deepening frowns and sharp intakes of breath but raised no spoken complaint. ‘The Sons of Russ are sorely beset and the Allfather’s servants call us from across the heavenly bridge.’

‘We gave our sons and daughters to the war against the wyrdkine and the felhird, and a beast of that battle plagues us still,’ called Magnhild. ‘All we asked is that the Great Wolf send us warriors to guard us from this long shadow of war.’

‘This is Foehammer,’ said Arjac, presenting his oversized thunder hammer. Crackling power engulfed the head as his thumb touched the activation stud. ‘Its lightest touch shatters fortresses.’ He lifted his similarly massive storm shield. Its boss, wrought as a cruciform Terminator honour with a skull at its centre, shimmered with a blue sheen. ‘This is the anvil shield. It wards away blasts that can cleave mountains.’

He took a step forward, towering over Tyra.

‘Look at me, child,’ he said quietly.

His confidence was like a stoked hearth that thawed the bone-chill. Tyra’s timidity evaporated like the ice in his beard. Hesitantly, she raised her head, her eyes a startling green like bright emeralds in her sun-kissed face. Arjac smiled, his elongated incisors denting his bottom lip.

‘You need to slay a beast,’ he said, turning his attention to the rest of them. ‘So the Great Wolf sent me.’

Click here to buy Ashes of Prospero.

For Josh. One of the kindest and most hard-working people I know. May you find your path and never give up on your dreams. With love, Ellie.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Neil Roberts.

Ashes of Prospero © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Ashes of Prospero, 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: 978-1-78572-875-4

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.