Table of Contents

Cover

The Cost of Command – Extract

Legal

eBook license

The Cost of Command

Sandy Mitchell

This wasn’t the first time Lanthus had duelled in the arena; the Astral Knights were dour by temperament, even for heirs of Dorn, and guarded their honour jealously. Even the most trivial of disagreements could easily escalate to the point where the symbolic shedding of blood seemed the simplest way to determine who was in the right. But never before had he entered the ring as a sergeant, let alone one whose judgement had been called into question. Most of the faces of the spectators in the tiered seats were hostile, resentful, unwilling to give him the benefit of the doubt.

This didn’t surprise him. Aldwyn, his antagonist, was liked and respected by many of the battle-brothers in the wider company, not just those of their own squad, while Lanthus had always preferred to hone his skills and piety without the distractions of companionship. In this matter of honour, he stood alone. The Chapter Master, gazing down from his crystal throne opposite the ampitheatre’s entrance, had a neutral expression, more pensive than judgemental. Master Amhrad hardly ever attended an affair of honour in person, and Lanthus wondered why this relatively minor matter merited his attention: perhaps it was a good omen.

Even if it wasn’t, his conscience was clear. The mission always came first. His decision had been the right one.

He stepped forward onto the carpet of tiny crystals, each smaller than a grain of sand, glittering crimson in the dull ember glow of their home world’s sun. The only garment he wore was the duelling tunic tradition demanded, its plain white fabric dyed the colour of blood by the glowering Eye of Obsidia, forever nailed to the horizon by the planet’s tidally locked rotation.

Aldwyn approached from the opposite side of the arena, his face twisting with anger as Lanthus nodded a formal greeting. Good. Angry men made mistakes. Lanthus had killed enough of them to know that. The advantage was his.

‘Dorn and the Emperor watch over you both,’ Master Amhrad said levelly, the ritual phrase as old as the Chapter itself. ‘May they guide your hands and shards swiftly to the truth.’

‘By Dorn and the Emperor,’ Lanthus responded by rote, drawing his soul shard from its scabbard. Every Astral Knight carried one of the glittering blades, each as unique as its owner, and would as soon be parted from it as from his progenoid gland. The first time every initiate wore power armour was the day he went out alone, to scour the endless plains around the Obsidian Vaults until one of the millions of crystals littering the landscape called out to him; honed carefully into a razor-sharp blade, mounted in a hand-crafted hilt, the soul shard became permeated with the essence of the man who created and carried it.

‘By Dorn and the Emperor,’ Aldwyn said, beginning an instant later, and eliding the first word to finish the ritual phrase at the same time as Lanthus.

‘To the drawing of blood,’ Lanthus said, as he had done at the beginning of every previous duel, expecting the ritual acknowledgement he had always heard. But Aldwyn shook his head, his expression as venomous as an ork’s.

‘To the death,’ he said.

Although his face remained neutral, the Chapter Master seemed as surprised as Lanthus. Nevertheless, after a moment’s reflection, his head inclined in the briefest of nods. ‘Is this acceptable to you, Brother Lanthus?’ he asked.

‘It is.’ In truth, there was no other answer Lanthus could have given. To refuse would have smacked of cowardice, or a trace of doubt in the rightness of his cause. But he was shaken, nevertheless, by the depth of Aldwyn’s hatred. To take the life of a battle-brother was almost unimaginable, a duel to the death by mutual agreement the only way in which it could be done without incurring centuries of penitential exile. Even then, the survivor would bear an ineradicable stain on his honour for the rest of his life.

The Chapter Master nodded. ‘Then you may commence,’ he said levelly, taking refuge from any disquiet he might feel in the time-sanctified ritual.

Lanthus was cautious to begin with, holding back, waiting for his opponent to make the first move. Aldwyn, he knew, was impulsive, and the anger driving him on would exacerbate that.

There. A faint shifting of Aldwyn’s centre of mass betrayed his intention a fraction of a second before he moved, striking out with a speed and power no mortal man could have evaded or withstood. Lanthus was ready for him, though, and pivoted aside on his back foot, letting the blow glide smoothly past, striking down with his elbow at the suddenly exposed base of Aldwyn’s skull as he overextended himself.

For a moment he hoped he could put an end to it here and now, that Aldwyn would drop, stunned, to the ground at his feet and allow him to escape the taint of fratricide, but his opponent anticipated the blow. He ducked beneath it, robbing the strike of much of its power, bringing himself back on balance as he did so. Then Aldwyn drove suddenly forward, his reinforced cranium slamming into the sergeant’s sternum. Lanthus barely had time to pull back, riding the blow intended to drive the air from his lungs, and blocking the follow up strike from Aldwyn’s shard with a hard deflection, his forearm cutting down like the edge of a sword blade to impact heavily with Aldwyn’s, pushing his arm aside with only a fraction of a second to spare.

The razor-edged chunk of obsidian in Aldwyn’s hand flickered past his ribcage, missing by millimetres, and the two combatants drew apart, regaining both balance and breath, regarding one another warily.

Click here to buy The Cost of Command.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2015 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

The Cost of Command © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Cost of Command, 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: 978-1-78572-175-5

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.