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Call of Chaos Quick Read Collection: Warhammer 40,000 – Extract

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An Extract from 'In Wolves’ Clothing'

Ian St. Martin

Fractured nightmare light undulated across the faceplate of Hrothgir, born of Fenris, as he charged into the throng of screaming fanatics. He snarled at a wall of frenzied cultists, their abused faces swathed in kaleidoscopic silks or flayed of skin, as they broke their twisted bodies against him. Hrothgir’s pack kept tight to either side of the Space Wolf, an unbreakable shield wall of storm-grey power armour cleaving through the rusted knives and gnashing teeth.

‘Forward brethren!’ roared Hrothgir, sweeping cultists apart with crushing blows from his war maul. ‘Our time to strike is now!’

The Vlka Fenryka had sailed into the Eye like a needle lancing corruption from a boil, hounding a fiend from one of the Traitor Legions and his degenerate rabble across the light of toxic stars. The Wolves of Fenris had run him to ground beneath the skies of this daemon world, goading him into a martial exchange his vanity was incapable of resisting.

Once, Hrothgir’s prey had been a warrior of the vaunted III Legion, a peerless swordsman of the Emperor’s Children. He had epitomised the martial prowess and ruthless pursuit of perfection that had swept out to reconquer the galaxy during the time the Allfather walked among mortals.

Like all of his Legion, the fires of the Heresy had seared away any nobility and honor from him, and what remained collapsed into decadence and debauched sorcery. For ten millennia he had reaved across the Imperium and the madness of the warp, until he now stood before Hrothgir and his pack upon the mire of this planet within the Eye. Hubris was the enduring trait of the traitor Space Marine, and as the warriors of the rout cut through the multitude of his wretched devotees to reach him, he could not resist indulging in the bloodshed.

‘You are known by many names,’ Hrothgir boomed, leveling his war maul at the waiting champion of Chaos. ‘Scion of Chemos. Fulgrim’s Champion. Soulthief. Champion of the Fell Powers. But to me, wretched one, you are only prey!’

An Extract from 'Siegemaster'

Chris Wraight

I see the marks of his work from orbit, long before Tacitus reaches drop-range. I have time to study them, shifting blurred images across the lenses, and what I see inflames the anger that has been intermittently dormant for the long month I have spent in the void getting from Scraw’s Reach to Harrowar.

It makes me angry for the waste of resource. I find I care about this even more than I did before the Legion broke itself apart and every usable rivet became as precious to us as diamonds.

The last time we had spoken, he and I, we had lamented this. We had remembered how it had been in the Stor-Bezashk, when we had commanded access to our unmatched leviathans, those machines of glorious, terrible power. We had both been in that brotherhood. We had both been there when our instruments of reduction had vomited their innards out against those damned, Dorn-crafted gates.

But now we scratch around for blunted blades and pretend the rust was always there. So it stirs my anger that he has diminished himself further. As I see what he has done on Harrowar, my eyes are dark with fury.

My crew evade my gaze. They clank and shuffle in the darkness of the bridge-wells, preparing the lander.

I look down at the world my brother travelled to, eighty Terran years before this day, and whisper the curse that he will find most hurtful.

‘You have wasted yourself.’

‘Warsmith Bakulos,’ the slave-drone vocalises.

I do not look at it, that creature of iron and pulled sinew, but its intervention tells me descent is prepared. I rise from my throne, armour hissing, and draw my helm to me. The patina of old wars is on it, thick like oxidation.

My retinue falls in behind me as I walk – three battle-brothers of my warband, clad in dark, chevroned iron, the icon of the Corpse Grinders on their blunted shoulder-guards. I have not seen their true faces in a hundred years, nor they mine, for our mortal skins are now bound up with our armour, the union of body and ceramite our Father himself had flirted with, on occasion, back when he still possessed the inclination for invention.

My quarry has hidden his location well, but not the effects of his presence. As the lander burns down through Harrowar’s choked atmosphere, I see the webs of scarring stretch out, gradually sharpening into networks, and networks inside networks. The earth is beaten down by the tread of a billion boots, made slick and black, then burned again, until it all glints like coal.

An Extract from 'Glory from Chaos'

Chris Dows

Smoke spiralled lazily from the smashed frigate into the emerald-green sky of Valaena, carried away on the same high breeze that bore several wheeling eagles, curious at the violent disturbance to their tranquil world. They carefully avoided each other and the still-burning pyres of debris strewn out in a rough arc around the ship, flames made greedy by the oxygen-rich atmosphere. A handful of armoured figures picked their way through the ruins, salvaging what was useful and abandoning that which was beyond repair. To most eyes, the image was one of violation, of nature torn asunder by the works of man, but the lone figure watching from the gently hovering golden disc was no longer human, and cared as little for the damage to the planet as for the loss of his ship.

If the feeling could be given a description, Karnel the Ruinous, Thousand Sons lord and sorcerer of Tzeentch, felt a tired satisfaction at the vista before him. True, he had lost more of his followers than anticipated, but the final trap in his carefully executed plan was now set. Those who considered themselves the greatest hunters in the galaxy would soon become his prey, and within a few short hours the Tzeentchian lord would command a warband unlike any other. And not a moment too soon, as the tremendous energy he had expended was finally taking its toll.

With a turn of Karnel’s head, the living platform on which he balanced pitched and rotated, the underside of one of its upwardly curved barbs brushing carelessly against the carpet of grass beneath. The sorcerer’s blue and gold cloak whipped crazily as he willed the disc of Tzeentch to accelerate, leaning forward on his bedlam staff as he glided over the brow of the hill and into the wide rolling valley below. Within seconds of his descent, Karnel was enveloped in a black-purple darkness, Valaena’s clean, sweet atmosphere exchanged for the stench of putrid decay. A thunderous roar filled the air, punctuated with low moans and high wails, a symphony of despair and misery to match the swirling maelstrom that had engulfed the valley’s floor. Bringing his disc to a halt, Karnel dismounted and strode towards the six towering figures stretched out on jagged X-shaped crucifixes on the edge of the swirling portal behind them. Despite being stripped of their armour and sporting the marks of months-long abuse, the White Scars were still an imposing presence.

Karnel stood before the nearest Chogorian and waited for the warrior’s good eye to fix upon him. While the White Scars’ suffering had helped create a temporary gateway to the warp, it was Karnel’s powers that hid it on Valaena. As their lives slipped away, the portal got that bit smaller, but Karnel had calculated the torture perfectly. It was true, of course, that the longer the conduit remained open, the greater were the chances of a daemon tearing into this realm and taking everything for itself, but he had done his very best to hide it from both sides. The effort had been enormous, but it was a risk the sorcerer was prepared to take.

The Chogorian began to speak, every word heavy with spite and venom.

‘Karnel… My brothers will not abandon me… they will hunt you down… and send you back to that abomination from which you came.’

The Tzeentchian lord looked up at the battered warrior, the tips of the curved golden horns on his helmet not reaching the chin of the massive Space Marine. He had to shout his reply, such was the eruption of noise generated by the warrior’s naked hatred within the seething conduit behind him.

‘That is what I am relying on.’

Click here to buy Call of Chaos Quick Read Collection: Warhammer 40,000.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

‘Divine Will’ previously published in 2015.
‘In Wolves’ Clothing’ previously published in 2015.
‘Gift of the Gods’ previously published in 2015.
‘Jackalwolf’ previously published in 2015.
‘Siegemaster’ previously published in 2015.
‘Black Iron’ previously published in 2015.
‘A Song for the Lost’ previously published in 2015.
‘Blood and Iron’ previously published in 2015.
‘Glory from Chaos’ previously published in 2015.
‘Midnight Rotation’ previously published in 2015.
‘Without Fear’ previously published in 2015.
‘The Staff of Asclepius’ previously published in 2015.
This eBook edition in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Call of Chaos Quick Read Collection: Warhammer 40,000 © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. Call of Chaos Quick Read Collection: Warhammer 40,000, 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: 978-1-78572-388-9

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