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Grandfather’s Gift – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Grandfather’s Gift

Guy Haley

There once was a being who was divided by himself. Opposed in all he was, contrary, and doomed.

This being was man who was not a man. He was a sorcerer who despised magic. He was a saviour who had turned to damnation. He was a treasured son who hated his fathers.

He forgot all this, for a while, and when he awoke upon the slimy moss, he recalled nothing of his life. For a few, blissful minutes he was without past or prejudice, and knew a measure of peace.

It could not last. A part of his hypocrisy was a desire for knowledge, although he had once judged a brother for seeking the same. His mind set to work assessing its shroud of flesh. He was a he, he knew that instinctively. The first piece of the puzzle in place, his sense of peace began an inexorable retreat.

He was made in the form of a human male, with the bilateral symmetry of a Terran organism, and the feet and hands of a post-simian being. He was not a man. Men were small and weak, but he was strong, improved upon – man made god. His human form caged immortal power. Once he remembered that, he realised he had always known what he was, better than his brothers did.

He had brothers. Peace fled further. Bitterness filled its void.

He sat upright. Strong hands pushed into the lawn. Filthy water welled from the giving surface. He looked around, perplexed, at black trees reaching out coy branches from the mist. Marsh gas filled his nostrils with its fulsome scent, and that stirred another memory. His hand went to his throat and his face, seeking out the apparatus that should cover his mouth, the gas exchange and vaporator that filled his lungs with the airs of his youth. Finding their lack, a memory of fog-choked mountains rushed back, and with it, rolling onto his tongue sure as a marble down a tube, was a name. His name.

‘Mortarion,’ he said. ‘I am Mortarion.’

He got to his feet and scanned the miserable trees that fringed the lawn. Nothing moved among them but curls of vapour dancing at the decree of gentle currents.

Mortarion looked down at himself. Tall, wan yet powerful, spare of limb and gauntly featured, there was iron strength in the sinews of his frame. Long, lank hair brushed his cheeks. He wore loose clothes of grey, a tunic and trousers, covered with a robe. He never dressed like this. He knew that too. Of his gas mixer and his pistol, the Lantern, the Barbaran plate that armoured him and his scythe, Silence, there was no sign. None of the panoply of war he bore everywhere was to be seen. He looked about again, expecting, perhaps, for his armament to be heaped up at the foot of a tree for him to take up. It was not.

A further peculiarity struck him. The form he wore, though it once was his, was his no longer. There had been… alterations. The genetic masterwork of his second father had been perfected by further gifts. Gifts from a true divinity, not the false god his first father was, inured him to all pain and harm. He had been remade into a lord of death. And yet here he was, as untouched as the day his second father had come to find him. He remembered light and disappointment, and a hatred that curdled his soul. Or was all that just a dream?

He could not tell. He did not know. He was as he had been long ago, or not so long ago. He had changed, he had not changed. Both statements appeared to be true.

‘Barbarus?’ he said aloud, his whisper stirring clotted air. No, it was not Barbarus. The idea struck him as ridiculous as soon as he spoke. Barbarus was gone. He had a new home.

Dim recollections pressed at him. His laboratory, high in the mists of another world akin to Barbarus, but so much worse. Experiments with arcane technology. The fruits of his triumph over base sorcery. Technology he was determined to perfect. The technology was not the end. There was a purpose to it… There was something he was seeking, something he had wanted for years. He grimaced in frustration. What he sought, he could not recall.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Alex Boyd.

Grandfather’s Gift © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Grandfather’s Gift, 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.
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ISBN: 978-1-78572-811-2

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.

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