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Eye of Terra – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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An extract from 'The Wolf of Ash and Fire' by Graham McNeill

‘I was there,’ he would say, right up until the day he died, after which he spoke only infrequently. ‘I was there the day Horus saved the Emperor.’ It had been a singular moment, the Emperor and Horus shoulder to shoulder in the fiery, ash-choked depths of the scrapworld. Blood-lit in the broil of combat for almost the last time, though only one of them knew that.

Father and son, back to back.

Swords drawn and their foe all around.

As perfect an encapsulation of the Crusade as any later immortalised in paint or ink.

Before remembrance of such times became a thing to be feared.

The scrapworld of Gorro; that was where it had happened, deep in junkyard space of the Telon Reach. The greenskin empire that once claimed dominion over its stars was in flames, assailed on all sides by the inexhaustible armies of the Imperium. The aliens’ empire was being overturned, their muddy fortress-worlds burning, but not quickly enough.

Gorro was the key.

Adrift in the distant light of a bloated red sun, where no planet had ever been wrought by inexorable time and gravity, it drifted on an erratic path. Not a wanderer, an intruder.

Its destruction was made the Crusade’s highest priority.

The command came from the hand of the Emperor himself, and his most favoured and brightest son answered this call to arms.

Horus Lupercal, primarch of the Luna Wolves.

Gorro wasn’t dying easy.

Any expectation that this would be a swift strike to the heart was dashed the moment the Sixty-Third expedition surged towards the system boundary and saw the scale of the scrapfleet protecting it.

Hundreds of vessels, pulled back from the fighting at the core of the Reach to defend its warlord’s planetoid citadel. Vast corpse-ships brought to hellish life with flaring plasma reactors at their heart. Warhulks welded together from rusted wreckage scavenged from celestial graveyards and returned to life by hideous mechanical necromancy.

Anchoring the fleet was a colossal, hollowed-out asteroid fortress, a mountainous rock encrusted with pig-iron and ice. Kilometres-wide engine cowlings were bolted deep into its bedrock and its craggy surface was thick with immense batteries of orbital-howitzers and mine-lobbers. It lumbered towards the Luna Wolves as rabid scrapship packs raced ahead like feral, club-wielding barbarians. The vox howled with baying static, a million tusked throats giving voice to the primal instinct of the ork.

The engagement volume became a swirling free-fire zone, an impossibly tangled mass of entwined warships, collimated laser fire, parabolic torpedo contrails and explosive debris fields. Void-war engagements normally fought at ranges of tens of thousands of kilometres now began so close that ork marauders with crude rocket-packs were launching boarding actions.

Atomic detonations fouled the space between the fleets with electromagnetic distortion and phantom echoes, making it almost impossible to separate what was real and what was a sensor ghost.

The Vengeful Spirit was in the heart of the fiercest fighting, its flanks ablaze with broadsides. A hulk tumbled away, bludgeoned into molten submission by multiple decks of concentrated explosive ordnance. It trailed scads of burning fuels and arcing jets of plasma. Thousands of bodies spilled from its ruptured innards like spores from a fungal mass.

There could be nothing subtle in such a fight. This wasn’t a battle of manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, it was a brawl. It would be won by the fleet that punched hardest and most often.

And right now, that was the orks.

The Vengeful Spirit’s superstructure groaned like a living thing as it manoeuvred far faster than anything as massive should ever be asked. Its ancient hull shuddered under thunderous impacts, and the deck vibrated with the recoil of multiple broadside decks firing in unison.

Space between the brawling fleets was thick with debris storms, atomic vortices, duelling attack squadrons and flash-burning vapour clouds, but within Lupercal’s flagship, discipline held firm.

Cascading data-slates and shimmering wire-frame holos bathed the vaulted strategium in a rippling, undersea light. Hundreds of mortal voices conveyed the shipmaster’s orders, while chattering machine tickers recited damage reports, void strengths and ordnance firing schedules over the binary cant of Mechanicum priests.

A well-drilled bridge crew in battle was a thing of beauty, and were it not for the caged-wolf pacing of Ezekyle Abaddon, Sejanus might have been properly able to appreciate it.

The First Captain slammed a fist on the brass rim of a hololithic table displaying the engagement sphere. The scratchy, flickering threat vectors burped with angry static, but the grim picture of battle surrounding the Vengeful Spirit didn’t alter.

Greenskin warships still vastly outnumbered those of the Luna Wolves, outgunning them and appearing – in defiance of all reason and sense – to be outmanoeuvring the commander.

It was most vexing, and Ezekyle’s choler wasn’t helping.

Nearby mortal crew, their faces limned by data-light, turned at the sudden sound, but looked away as the First Captain glared at them.

‘Really, Ezekyle?’ said Sejanus. ‘That’s your solution?’

Ezekyle shrugged, making the plates of his armour grate together and the gleaming black of his topknot shake like a shaman’s fetish switch. Ezekyle loomed, it was his thing, and he tried to loom over Sejanus as though he actually thought he could intimidate him. Ridiculous, as it was only the topknot that made him taller.

‘I suppose you have a better idea of how to turn this disaster around, Hastur?’ said Ezekyle, glancing over his shoulder and careful to keep his voice low.

The pale ivory of Ezekyle’s armour gleamed in the light of the strategium. Faded gang markings survived on those plates that hadn’t been replaced by the armourers, faded gold and tarnished silver. Sejanus sighed. Almost two hundred years since leaving Cthonia, and Ezekyle still held onto a heritage best left in the past.

He gave Abaddon his best grin. ‘I do, as it turns out.’

That got the attention of his other Mournival brothers.

Horus Aximand, so like the commander with his high, aquiline features and sardonic curl of the lip that they called him the truest of the true sons. Or, if Aximand was in one of his rare, lighter moods, Little Horus.

Tarik Torgaddon, the idiot joker whose dark, saturnine features had avoided the transhuman flattening common among the Emperor’s legionaries. Where Aximand would puncture the humour of any given moment, Torgaddon would seize upon it like a hound with a bone.

Brothers all. The confraternity of four. Counsellors, war-brothers, naysayers and confidantes. So close to Horus, they were likened unto his sons.

Tarik gave a mock bow, as though to the Emperor himself, and said, ‘Then please enlighten us poor, foolish mortals who are grateful merely to bask in the radiance of your genius.’

‘At least Tarik knows his place,’ grinned Sejanus, his finely sculpted features robbing the comment of malice.

‘So what is your better idea?’ said Aximand, cutting to the heart of the matter.

‘Simple,’ said Sejanus, turning to the command station behind them on a raised dais. ‘We trust in Horus.’

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An extract from 'Aurelian' by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

The archpriest watched from the cathedral window as his city burned below.

‘We should do something.’

His voice was a bass rumble, yet edged by a softness that smoothed his words into something almost delicate. His was a voice made to reason, to question, to reassure – not to scream and froth and rage.

The archpriest turned from the window. ‘Father? When will the fires stop burning?’

Kor Phaeron walked across the chamber, his wizened scowl deep-set on his face, like a scar cut into old leather. He busied himself with the scrolls on the central table, his thin lips moving as he read each one in turn.

‘Father? We cannot remain here while the city burns. We must help the people.’

‘You have not spoken since we claimed the Cathedral of Illumination.’ The ageing man glanced over for the merest moment. ‘And your first words after winning this war are to ask when the fires will be drowned? You have just conquered a world, boy. You have greater matters to concern yourself with.’

The archpriest was a young man, beautiful in a way that transcended notions of physical attraction. His tan skin gleamed with tiny tattoos of gold-inked scripture. His eyes were dark without being cold, and he could spend days without smiling, yet never seem sinister.

He turned back to the window. In his mind’s eye, he’d always pictured the crusade’s end in this very place, the avenues of the City of Grey Flowers flooded by cheering crowds, their joyous prayers reaching into the skies, shaking the slender towers of their former rulers.

The reality didn’t quite approach it. The streets were crowded, that much was true, but crowded with rioters, looters and clashing bands of robed warriors, as the last lingering remnants of the Covenant’s defenders fought to the last against the tide of invaders.

‘So much of the city is still aflame,’ the archpriest said. ‘We must do something.’

Kor Phaeron murmured to himself as he read the tattered parchments.

‘Father.’ The archpriest turned again, watching the older priest discard another scroll.

‘Hmm? What is it, boy?’

‘Half of the city is ablaze. We must do something.’

Kor Phaeron smiled, the expression ugly but not unkind. ‘You must prepare for your coronation, Lorgar. The Covenant has fallen, and the Old Ways will be cast down as blasphemy against the One God. You are no longer merely Archpriest of the Godsworn, you are the Archpriest of all Colchis. I have given you a world.’

The golden figure turned back to the window, eyes narrowed. Something crept into his voice then, something rigid and cold, a foreshadowing of all that would be in the centuries to come.

‘I do not wish to rule,’ he said.

‘That will change, my son. It will change when you see that no one else around you is as fit to rule as you are. In a moment of realisation, it will change out of your own selfless need. That is how it always works for men of power. The road to every throne is paved with good intentions.’

Lorgar shook his head. ‘I wish for nothing more than our people to see the truth.’

‘The truth is power.’ The other priest went back to the scrolls. ‘The ignorant and the weak must be dragged into the light, no matter the cost. It doesn’t matter how many bleed and cry out on the way.’

Lorgar watched his new city burn, seeing his followers slaughter the last of the Old Ways’ blasphemers in the streets below.

‘I know I have asked so many times before,’ he said softly, ‘but does it not give you pause, even as the crusade ends? You once believed as they do.’

‘I still believe as they do.’ Kor Phaeron gave an assured smile. ‘But I believe as you do, as well. I keep to my old faith that there are many gods, Lorgar. Your One God is simply the most powerful.’

‘He will come to us soon.’ The archpriest looked to the darkening sky. Colchis was a thirsty world, and rainclouds rarely made a call in the heavens. ‘Perhaps a year from now, but no longer. I have seen it in my dreams. On the day he arrives, his vessel will descend through a storm.’

Kor Phaeron came closer, resting his hand on the taller man’s forearm. ‘When your One God comes, we will see if I was right to believe you.’

Lorgar was still staring up at the blue sky, watching it become choked by the rising smoke from the burning city. He smiled at his mentor’s words.

‘Have faith, father.’

Kor Phaeron smiled then. ‘I have always had faith, my son. Have you ever dreamed this god’s name? The masses will ask for it, soon enough. I cannot help but wonder what you will tell them.’

‘I do not believe he has a name.’ Lorgar closed his eyes. ‘We will know him only as the Emperor.’

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An extract from 'Brotherhood of the Moon' by Chris Wraight

[Transcript begins.]

I am Torghun Khan, of the Brotherhood of the Moon, and the ordu of Jemulan Noyan-Khan. This is my sworn testimony.

> Tell me where it started.

From Khella?

> No, from before. You told me you were on secondment before then.

Very well.

> Hide nothing.

Do you think I would try?

> Some do. I would not recommend it.

It was during the fractured time. We had had more freedom then. This changed at Ullanor, they tell me, and by the time we were all called to Chondax there were attempts to rein us in. But back then it wasn’t like that.

I had taken my brotherhood on a mission to the plains-worlds of Urj, to re-pacify places we had conquered twenty years before. The Legion had moved on too soon; the roots were not set deep. It was not a heavy task – we were out on our own, five hundred mounts, and a single attack frigate to house them – but it should never have been necessary.

It took three months. It was a punitive raid, and they had no stomach for a long fight. We restored the Imperial banner over the system capital, and called in the Army to resume control. Hakeem was with me, though I did not know him well. We had served together by then perhaps… two years? No more than that. He had been keener than I on the assignment, and I came to appreciate his zeal. We were both Terrans, as were many of my warriors. It was harmonious.

With that done, we waited for orders. I had expected to rendezvous with the ordu again – we had already heard that the muster was underway for something big, but we did not know what it was. Instead, we were re-tasked, told to remain away from the main deployments.

This was the road that would take us to Khella, but not yet.

First came the Tarsch Belt, a string of worlds on the edge of the Crusade’s southern front. The defenders were humanoid, but barely. I do not know, even now, if they were some offshoot of our species, xenos or something else. We killed them, and that was all anyone asked of us.

It was a long journey. We had trouble in the warp on the way, running it close with the ship. That was why we had been chosen – resupply in the Belt was proving difficult, and we were closest. The main force was the other Legion: the Luna Wolves, as they were then. They had been fighting for nearly seven months, and had been told to bring it to a swift conclusion.

So we became part of that. I delegated liaison to Hakeem initially, while I was busy digesting the scant tactical data I got from my commanders.

I had no strong feelings about it, at the time. I was curious, no more.

> On your file, it states that you were initially assigned to the Sixteenth Legion’s recruitment program.

Yes.

> You say you had no strong feelings? You would be fighting with them.

I was a White Scar. I had been a White Scar for a long time. I was a child when the transfer was made.

> There is a supposition–

I know of it. It is false.

> We will take this up later. Continue.

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A Black Library Publication

Inheritor first published as an eBook in 2016.
Red-Marked first published as an audio drama in 2016.
Massacre and Ironfire first published as eBooks in 2015.
The Eagle’s Talon and Iron Corpses first published as audio dramas in 2015.
The Wolf of Ash and Fire, Brotherhood of the Moon, Vorax and The Final Compliance of Sixty-Three Fourteen first published as eBooks in 2014.
Master of the First, Stratagem, The Long Night and The Herald of Sanguinius first published as audio dramas in 2014.
Aurelian first published as a hardback novella in 2011.
Sins of the Father first published in 2014.
Hardback edition published in Great Britain in 2016.
This eBook edition published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-195-3

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