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Blood of the Imperium – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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VOLUME I

Sumel. That was the page’s name. He had been a promising rhetorician and an excellent marksman.

Epistolary Ushizar forced his thoughts into order as the neophyte died. He would remember this moment. Sumel’s death cry echoed from the vaulted ceiling of the atrium chamber, deep in the heart of the Tome Keepers’ Chapter fortress. Delicately carved statues looked down on a scene of desecration. Hastily erected barricades lined the south side of the chamber, manned by scores of Chapter-serfs, aspirants, and a handful of Ushizar’s battle-brothers. Behind them was the great passageway which led to the All-vault, the Chapter’s labyrinthine archives.

The stench of warp corruption filled Ushizar’s nostrils.

The abomination’s blade – a thick, ridged spike of bone that sprouted from its left arm – withdrew from Sumel’s torso. The neophyte dropped to the floor, a torrent of blood spilling onto the flagstones around him. His killer turned to face Ushizar on feet twisted into grotesque claws. Warpfire licked around the lenses of its horn-crested helm, and Ushizar could taste its mind even at this distance. It had once been a Space Marine, but was now a morass of malefic beings with barely an agonised whisper of the original soul remaining.

Beside the abomination was another Word Bearer, this one carrying a blackened plasma gun. The weapon’s energy coils sizzled with heat. A pair of black-robed cultists scurried with them, stepping from another of the archways that led north to the cloisters.

In that frozen moment, Ushizar’s mind raced. The warband seemed to be attacking in packs. This group had chased Sumel from the cloisters, catching him within sight of the Tome Keepers’ defensive line.

The Epistolary’s twin hearts pounded. He would make them pay for Sumel’s life.

He abandoned the barricade he had been holding and ran at the Heretic Astartes, his force axe low before him. Soul-lightning crackled around the weapon’s head and wreathed his arms.

The cultists were closest and reacted first, levelling autoguns at Ushizar. These mortals were barely worth his notice. Ushizar blinked away his armour’s warning runes as hard rounds glanced off his pauldrons and breastplate.

He took both of the humans with one swing, high to low. Before the severed pieces of them had hit the stone floor he was moving again, every step taking him nearer to Sumel’s killer. As the traitor with the plasma gun raised his weapon, Ushizar forced a psychic spike into the warrior’s head, staggering him for a moment. The plasma gun fired wide, a bolt of blood-hued energy which scorched the Epistolary’s armour as it passed.

Ushizar brought his axe across in a one-handed lateral swing that caught the traitor below his breastplate, tearing through ceramite and into the corrupted flesh beneath. As it bit deep, the Librarian channelled his anger through the weapon’s psychoconductive filaments into his victim.

The Chaos Space Marine was blasted backwards, acrid smoke trailing from his ravaged form.

Lightning crackled around Ushizar’s head as he stepped forward. The mutated abomination was a handful of paces away now and striding towards him on back-jointed legs.

‘Aganzar, fifth precept,’ came Lieutenant Roshal’s voice over the vox.

Ushizar knew that instruction well. On the jungle world of Aganzar, a Tome Keepers Reiver squad had engaged a vast tyranid beast, drawing it into a defile where the rest of the Sixth Company had laid down overwhelming firepower before the Dreadnought Brother Enos delivered the killing blow. Ushizar drew to a halt, his teeth bared, as a fusillade of bolter fire spat from the line of defenders to his right.

The twisted monster staggered, mass-reactive impacts bursting across its chest and legs. It rocked backwards as a shot clipped its helmet. Before Ushizar could reach it, Lieutenant Roshal was there, leaping from the barricade and sawing his power sword through the monstrosity’s neck.

Two more masked cultists appeared beyond them, immediately turning to retreat back into the cloisters. Ushizar stepped past Roshal, hurling a storm of crackling energy from his outstretched hand. The cultists contorted, corposant streaming around them before they fell to the floor. Steam rose lazily from their corpses as silence descended.

‘Aganzar was an inspired choice of text, lieutenant,’ Ushizar said between heavy breaths. ‘Bringing down that thing will have bolstered our neophytes’ morale.’

‘My thanks, Epistolary. The creature was focused solely on you, so I saw the opportunity.’ Roshal was young for his rank and had a well-earned reputation for daring. Being responsible for the defence of their fortress-monastery during such a dark hour had brought forth a new pragmatism in the lieutenant, Ushizar thought. ‘I am grateful that only two of them pursued that unfortunate page, however,’ Roshal said, ‘or you would have been exposed.’

‘Sumel. His name was Sumel,’ Ushizar said, moving to recover the neophyte’s body. His gene-seed would not be wasted. The page’s arms showed signs of recent surgery – the ports that might have allowed him to one day interface with power armour were now just a mark of his willing sacrifice to the Chapter. ‘He deserved a better legacy than this.’

‘He died serving his Imperium, Ushizar bal Mahru. As the Chapter expects of us all.’

Behind the barricades, their minor victory was received in near silence. Serfs whispered instructions. Pages checked their weapons by rote. This was no time for jubilation.

Ushizar laid Sumel’s body down and followed Roshal to a comms station at the base of a wide pillar. It was masterfully carved with figures depicting heroes of the Chapter, each flanked by mortal luminaries of Istrouma’s past. A sergeant was hunched over the console. His pale skin almost matched the tone of his parchment-hued armour.

‘Report,’ Roshal said.

‘We still cannot raise the astropathic relay,’ the sergeant replied. ‘The apothecarion and the armoury are sealed – so far as we can tell, no attempt has been made to breach them. We lost contact with Squad Barkahl an hour ago – they were engaging traitors in the refectory. Hazeer’s two squads seem to be holding out in the Reclusiam. A few others have joined our defence in the last two hours.’

Ushizar stared at the console, which was showing a graphical interpretation of the areas of the Chapter fortress held by the Word Bearers. ‘How many do we have, Sergeant Makhot?’ he asked.

‘Thirty-eight battle-brothers all told. A similar number of pages and close to a hundred serfs, weapons servitors and household staff.’

‘Too few,’ Roshal said. ‘We cannot retake the cloisters without support. We are fixed here like ink on parchment.’

Ushizar glanced around at the weary defenders, the barricades formed from upturned furniture and storage crates. He could not stand to see his Chapter reduced to this.

‘I cannot recall a time when so few of our brothers defended Istrouma,’ Ushizar said.

‘The traitors attacked only days after the crusade fleet left to engage the Leviathan,’ Roshal replied. ‘This cannot be coincidence.’

Ushizar turned back to the console. A red spiral icon indicated where the Word Bearers had entered the fortress thirty-six hours ago – vid-feeds from the area now showed only interference, but scouting forces had sighted a localised warp breach in the upper cell complex. Best estimates suggested the traitors numbered nearly a hundred Astartes and many more mortal cultists. Since their arrival, they had ignored what would be choice targets for a warband of raiders, such as the apothecarion.

There had to be a logic to their attack.

Ushizar overlaid the Word Bearers’ firefights with the scattered defenders on the map, ordering them chronologically. As he added the data from Barkahl’s and Hazeer’s squads he saw a pattern emerging. The traitors were moving along several different routes through the winding chambers of the fortress, but it appeared many of their warriors were converging upon the atrium chamber, which Roshal’s force defended.

Without thinking, the Librarian looked behind them at the long passageway and the great silver doors at its end.

‘Lumination, the sixth teaching,’ he said.

It was an ancient Istrouman text, but Sergeant Makhot gave Ushizar a knowing look. ‘“The prophet’s soldiers feared Shem and made a wall of their blades, but Shem did not attack. While they wrote their last testaments he stole the scrolls from the temple.”’

‘You know your classics, Makhot bal Kazeer. We were fortunate enough to set our guard before the “temple”. But what do they seek within?’

‘They will pay in blood if they wish to enter the All-vault,’ Roshal said, ‘but without reinforcement we can only delay them. Librarian, you know our Chapter’s archives as well as any. You must find what they have come for, so that we may deny it to them.’

‘Lieutenant, my skills are needed here.’

‘I do not withdraw you from the line lightly, Ushizar. Everything they do is to bring ruin upon the Imperium. Whatever they seek here, we cannot afford to let them take it. And perhaps, if it is a weapon, we can turn it against them.’

Ushizar looked at the meagre line of defenders once more. He would not see some of them again. While he searched the records and relics in the great library, they would fight and die.

‘Can you spare a neophyte to aid me? I have been tutoring Ilum bal Apil in the wonders of our archives and have found him a diligent researcher.’

The two looked across at a dark-skinned page wearing borrowed flak armour over his robes. His arms were thick with grafted muscle and training scars, but his face still showed the youth of an aspirant.

Roshal grunted. ‘We will miss his contribution, brother, but will hold here regardless. I will contact you if the defence becomes… untenable.’

The massive silvered doors of the All-vault closed behind Ushizar, Ilum following at his heels. The first chamber of the great repository was a long hall with decorated domes lining its ceiling. Arches along its sides led to scriptoriums, chapels and reliquary apses.

The Epistolary removed his bloodstained robes, handing them to a robing servitor near the hall’s entrance. Another brush-handed construct scoured his armoured hands clean.

‘The traitors have struck when Istrouma’s defences are weakest,’ Ushizar said, striding towards a cogitator station further along the hall. ‘If we are to discover what they came here for, we must first find out how they knew of our vulnerability.’

Ilum wore a glower of determination. ‘The sons of Lorgar are foul traitors, but they are no fools. Their attack will be part of a more devious plan. Where shall we begin, lord?’

Though still an adolescent, the page was a fine warrior and had performed admirably in the aspirant trials. He would go far, Ushizar thought, if he survived the trials to come.

‘You can begin by calling me Ushizar, brother,’ he replied. ‘First, we will need records of the Chapter’s engagements against the Word Bearers. The battle ledgers will identify these actions. Then we look to the tomes of the fallen brothers who served in them.’

Ilum ran a hand across his cropped scalp as they reached the terminal. ‘There could be hundreds of reports. Dozens from each engagement.’

‘That is why you are here with me.’ Ushizar tapped runes upon the bronze-chased cogitator console. With a chattering noise, a printed list of records and locations began to spill from a slot in the machine.

Ilum took the end of the list as the cogitator cut it off, its work complete. He formed it into a roll in his arms as he followed Ushizar towards the great portal at the hall’s far end.

‘Lord– that is, Ushizar, these records are scattered across eleven stack-wards. Some are marked as beyond my access. I’ve never been this far into the archive halls.’

‘Then there is no better time to learn a little more of our Chapter’s legacy.’ Ushizar glanced at the entries at the top of the list. ‘We will start with the Dominus Locus and make our base of operations there.’

The two stepped onto a wood-panelled transit walkway, which rumbled into life and conveyed them into the darkness.

The Dominus Locus was a pillared, hexagonal room artfully tiled in alabaster and marble. One of its walls opened onto a small scriptorium – a reading and meditation chamber. Four others were corridors that led into the archives. A cogitator station sat at its centre. A small bell embellished with the Chapter’s icon – a starburst upon an open book – hung from a hook nearby. Ushizar rang it to summon an archive servitor.

Ilum stared open-mouthed through one of the doors. ‘My lord… is that really it?’

‘The White Book,’ Ushizar said, placing a hand on Ilum’s shoulder. ‘Let us remind ourselves what we fight for while we await the servitor.’

The two walked along a corridor lined with crystal cases containing armour pieces, scrolls, weapons and ancient tools.

‘This room holds some of our Chapter’s oldest and most treasured relics,’ Ushizar said. He indicated a set of journals in a brass-bound case. ‘These record the lives of the first council of Niveneh. They were presented to Chapter Master Viator when he arrived on Istrouma, before he chose this world as our brotherhood’s home. In the case behind them, those stone tablets are antiquities brought from other worlds in the Istrouman System to honour Viator’s arrival. And here’ – Ushizar gestured towards a long, hanging banner preserved behind glass – ‘is the standard his forces carried when they were simply called Chapter Two-Eight-One.’

Ilum had hurried ahead to the reinforced chamber at the corridor’s end. He stared through the observation window, to where the crackling dome of a stasis field protected an ancient book floating above a suspensor lectern.

‘You can feel the significance of it, can you not?’ Ushizar said. ‘When I was a page myself, I spent much time in the All-vault. I was enamoured of the knowledge it offered, the chance to discover the histories of those who preceded us. Before my mentor, Sergeant Mardas, brought me to this room, I was little concerned with a book I could not read. And yet… it has a power all its own.’

‘I thank you, master, for showing it to me, just as you must have given thanks to Mardas.’

A mechanical chime announced the arrival of the archive servitor. At the same moment, the booming thump of distant bolter fire echoed through the All-vault from the atrium chamber outside.

Ushizar’s smile died on his lips at the reminder of the ongoing desecration. ‘I did. But now we must attend to our search.’

Fourteen tomes sat on the desk before Ushizar. The scriptorium was a haven of calm, its walls panelled in dark wood worked with tessellating patterns of clouds and suns. Each sun’s face was unique, Ushizar saw, reflecting the different generations who had laboured to produce this work of art.

The first tome he selected belonged to a former battle-brother he had known well, Nazid bal Kingu. Nazid had served the Chapter for four centuries and his tome was weighty, bound in cracked black leather with iron corners. Ilum had indicated the chapter that detailed Nazid’s encounter with the Word Bearers with an embroidered ribbon: it had occurred near the end of the brother’s service, when he had led a Bladeguard Veteran squad. Ushizar remembered it well – he had been Nazid’s commander that day – but he had never read his brother’s account. He opened the book at the ribbon and began to read.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘The Buried Beast’ first published digitally in 2021.
‘The Long and Hungry Road’, ‘The Price of Morkai’, ‘Starstruck’, ‘Blood Harvest’, ‘Memories of Broken Glass’, ‘The Dust that Remains’ and ‘The Whispering Blade’ first published digitally in 2023.
‘Painboyz’ and ‘The Reskard Purgation’ first published digitally in 2024.
Tome Keepers: Legacy of Defiance: Volume I first published in White Dwarf no. 496 in 2024.
Tome Keepers: Legacy of Defiance: Volume II first published in White Dwarf no. 497 in 2024.
Tome Keepers: Legacy of Defiance: Volume III first published in White Dwarf no. 498 in 2024.
Tome Keepers: Legacy of Defiance: Volume IV first published in White Dwarf no. 499 in 2024.
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