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Daemonhammer – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter one

The room was seventy feet long but seemed smaller due to the mess. Banks of cogitators teetered on top of each other, rattling against bulkheads and spooling parchment onto the floor. There was a row of tables down one side that looked like sarcophagi, covered in corpses and surgical equipment. The walls were obscured by wires and duct piping, and there were servitors buried under the equipment, murmuring and twitching, hunched over runeboards. They were monofunctional wretches with scab-encrusted heads, wasted arms, and tails of knotted cabling where their spines should have been. As Lord Inquisitor Torquemada Coteaz entered the chamber, the servitors showed no sign of recognition, sucking mindlessly on the nutrient pipes sewn into their mouths.

‘My lord,’ said a voice. It was an inorganic rasp, crackling from an emitter in the ceiling.

Coteaz looked around the room. ‘Albaro.’

Cables undulated and birthed a pale object: the head of an elderly man covered in engine grease. He blinked away some of the gunk and smiled at Coteaz, revealing gleaming yellow teeth. As the cables settled, it became clear that the head had no body. Beneath its jaw, where a neck should have been, there was a plastek collar connecting it to a cluster of pipes. Albaro stared at Coteaz, his disembodied head swaying. Then he looked past the inquisitor to a group of retainers following in his wake. Albaro was chewing tabac, and black spit oozed between his teeth as he smirked. He spat a treacly gobbet on the floor.

The nest of cables shifted again, carrying Albaro’s head higher, until his eyes were level with Coteaz’s. Wires lifted from the wall, acting as his arm, and he pointed towards the back of the chamber. ‘She has been oiled and sanctified.’ He sneered at the retainers again, as though challenging them to speak, but they said nothing. The cables swallowed his face, then he re-emerged at the far end of the room, sprouting like a scornful bud. ‘Should be less painful this time.’

Coteaz and the others picked their way across the room, stepping carefully around machines and blank-eyed servitors, heading over to the space Albaro had indicated. Some of the tables had been shoved aside to make space for an iron chair, big enough to resemble a throne but less ornate. It was a simple metal frame, like a scaffold stuffed with wires and capacitors and draped in plastek tubes, each filled with dark fluid and tipped with a copper syringe. There were straps on the arms and a cowl at the back, placed where a head would go. More straps lay around the base, to restrain the sitter’s legs, and the whole thing was bolted and riveted with such brutality that it looked more like a weapon than a piece of furniture.

Coteaz’s face was lined with age, and there were only a few wisps of grey to soften the lines of his brow, but he moved with the speed of a younger man, striding up onto the pedestal and sitting down with a clang. As he sat, words rose from his memory, words from his childhood. Blood of the Throne. The adamantine spirit of man. The light in the abyss.

Albaro’s head resurfaced, covered in more engine fluid. ‘You need to remove the armour, remember,’ he said. ‘Ceramite dampens the currents. Restituta don’t like it.’

Coteaz stood, arms raised in readiness, and for the first time that morning, he actually looked at his retainers. Only three were present. Standing directly before him was Korov, a bull-necked colossus who dwarfed even Coteaz. He was shrouded rather than dressed, wrapped in sheets of filthy sackcloth bound with synthleather straps. Every inch of the sackcloth was covered in writing – furiously scrawled pleas for absolution and forgiveness. In some places, Korov had simply written the word Sinner over and over again, the letters growing frenzied and distorted in places, overlapping and spiralling around each other. In place of arms he had dozens of vulcanised rubber tendrils that ended in claws, grips and drills, and his face was almost entirely hidden – the top half buried in a grubby hood and the rest encased in a stained plastek muzzle. Only his eyes were visible, furtive and restless, looking everywhere but at Coteaz. The sound of heavy breathing growled through his muzzle.

Standing beside him was Turcifel. The two of them could hardly have looked more different – where he was grubby, she was immaculate, with flawless pale skin, flowing white robes, and glossy black hair combed in a centre parting so severe it looked as if it had been painted on. She stood erect, with her hood thrown back and her chin raised, her fingers locked around a long string of green prayer beads. But like Korov, she avoided Coteaz’s gaze, staring into the middle distance. This was, no doubt, hard for them to watch.

Standing a few feet behind the other two was Captain Malevich, dressed in the smart black carapace uniform of Coteaz’s Scion companies. As High Protector of the Formosa Sector, Coteaz had almost limitless resources. Entire armies were at his disposal. But the Scions were his elite troops, some of the most seasoned veterans in the entire sector, and Malevich was amongst the best of them. He stood with rigid, military bearing: shoulders back, chest out, hands clasped behind him. He was a tempered weapon, forged by the same schola drill abbots as Coteaz; a compact man with skin the colour of rosewood, a clean-shaven jaw, streaks of grey at his temples, and an oiled pencil moustache. Unlike the other two, he was looking directly at Coteaz, taking in every detail. He was sharp and neat – sleek as a blade.

As Coteaz studied his acolytes, hooded serfs rushed from the shadows and began removing his armour, cradling every filigreed plate with reverence, wrapping the golden ceramite in cloth, and whispering to the pieces as they carried them away to be oiled and polished. The suit was a priceless relic, intricately detailed with thousands of holy sigils. Illuminated scrolls fluttered from the greaves and gilded reliquaries clattered at the belt, objects so sacred worlds had died to preserve them. The armour was rumoured to be even older than Coteaz’s flagship, the Pilgrim’s Wrath, and legends claimed that it had been forged in the Sol System, within sight of Holy Terra itself. The sun that shone on the God-Emperor might once have warmed this armour. Its value was impossible to quantify.

Once the armour had been removed, the serfs cautiously lifted Coteaz’s warhammer, their eyes straining ecstatically. It took four of them to lift it, and Coteaz gave them a warning glance as they carried the weapon away and wrapped it in his crimson cloak. The daemonhammer was a conduit of his faith, anointed by the Holy Order of the Sacred Throne and able to harness the violence of his prayers. Over the years, he had poured so much of his belief into it that if it were damaged, he was not sure his mind would endure the shock of separation. But the risk was worth it. The daemonhammer was so innately holy that even the monsters of the empyrean quailed before it.

At Albaro’s prompting, the serfs also removed the quilted garments Coteaz wore under his armour until he was naked apart from a loincloth. The light in the chamber was brutal, revealing the whorls of scar tissue that covered the inquisitor’s muscles. There was a time when he knew the cause of every wound, but after so many years, they had become too numerous to track. As a youth, he had considered them badges of honour; now they felt more like a warning.

What was it Laredian used to say? Time has no antidote. Coteaz shook his head, irritated by his cowardly turn of thoughts. He that cleaves to the Throne shall abideth.

‘Begin,’ he said, settling back against the cold metal as the serfs strapped him into the seat.

Once the straps had been fastened and checked, Albaro ordered everyone to step back. Then his face slid back under the pipes, and viewscreens flickered into life around him. Coteaz resisted the urge to close his eyes as the chair stirred. A motor growled behind him. Cogs rattled and bellows hissed. Cords slid across his face, binding him tighter as vials dropped from the ceiling. As the tubes slid into position, Coteaz lost sight of most of the room. Only Turcifel’s face remained visible. She was whispering prayers and gazing into the distance, looking at places no one else could see.

Pain scuttled up Coteaz’s arms as needles punctured his skin, linking him, through tubes, to the glass vials. Data scrolled across his retinal overlay, reporting incisions and rates of blood loss. There was a whirring sound as something burrowed through the cables and pressed against his chest. Something cold and metallic. Pain flashed across his ribs, followed by numbness as morphia shots took hold. For Coteaz, pain was a constant, so to suddenly feel its absence was oddly disorientating – as if he had lost one of his senses. He could still feel the object against his chest, though, and after a few seconds it sprouted barbs, hooking tighter.

‘Out with the old,’ rasped Albaro, as the engine noise shifted in pitch, becoming a thin whine. The pipes fixed to Coteaz’s right arm shivered as his blood rushed out into them. ‘In with the less old.’ Coteaz’s left arm juddered as cold liquid was forced into his veins. Pumps gasped, servos whined, and the stink of ammonia filled the air. The process was demeaning but not, he thought, impious. The Emperor willed this machine into being. And that which proceeded from the Emperor could not be a lie.

He continued looking at Turcifel, wondering idly where her mind was, and from her, his thoughts turned to the other members of his retinue – not the legions of agents he employed across the sector, but the small group that travelled with him on the Pilgrim’s Wrath. All of them were impressive in their own way. Unique, even. But they were trusted servants, nothing more. Even after all these years, he had never found an acolyte with whom he could share even a tenth of his knowledge. The idea troubled him more than the blades that were cutting into his scalp. After all these decades, there was still no one but him.

He noticed that Turcifel was frowning at him.

‘Albaro?’ said Captain Malevich. Coteaz could not see him, but his clipped tones were unmistakeable.

‘It’s nothing.’ Albaro no longer sounded like he was smiling. ‘Give me a minute.’

The chair was shaking more than usual. Coteaz felt warmth rush from his chest and begin pooling in his lap. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘My lord,’ said Albaro, sounding unnerved. ‘I just need a minute.’

Coteaz no longer felt numb. Pain bloomed behind his ribs, and his veins were burning, hammering fitfully. This was worse than usual.

‘Get him out!’ ordered Malevich as scuffling sounds filled the room. ‘He’s haemorrhaging.’ Coteaz heard things being shoved and pulled, then the sound of breaking glass. The pain was now all over his body. It felt as though something was trying to emerge from his cranium.

It was only when his heart stopped that Coteaz realised he was dying.

His breath stalled in his chest and, unexpectedly, an image filled his mind, a memory he had long fought to suppress. The scene was as vivid and awful as the first time he saw it. He saw the Golden Throne engulfed in flames. It was nothing like the crude chair he was dying in; it was a grand edifice, the work of centuries, gilded and armoured like a battleship. The figure at its centre was a pillar of blue flame, and heaped around the throne room lay thousands of dead. Coteaz looked around in horror, as if he were truly there, and saw that the walls of the Imperial Palace had toppled and the world outside was aflame. But it was no ordinary fire. It was a fire that lived: grinning and writhing, moaning ecstatically as it dissolved walls, flesh and air. The flames climbed higher, engulfing the stars, consuming the heavens, and leaving a maelstrom in their wake. He knew it was a lie, but it grew more vivid every time he went under Albaro’s knives.

‘No,’ said Coteaz, as his life ebbed away. ‘No!’ he roared, lurching to his feet.

‘Stop!’ cried several voices at once.

Skin tore from Coteaz’s arms. The engine wailed.

Coteaz was blind with pain and something buckled behind him. Agony exploded in his head. Then the strength went from his legs, and he fell.

His head hit something hard.

Then there was nothing.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2024.
This eBook edition published in 2024 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Nathaniel Himawan.

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