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Hounds of Wrath – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Hounds of Wrath

by John French

‘Do not ask which creature screams in the night.
Do not question who waits for you in the shadow.
It is my cry that wakes you in the night,
And my body that crouches in the shadow.’

– Karazantor the Vile, the Traitor of Xian

Know this, the daemon is a lie.

The daemon claims supreme dominion. It claims that in time all will be its slaves, that reality will lie broken, and that it shall rule the realm of mortals for eternity. It says that it is destiny. It says, in the paradox time of the warp, that this has already happened. These claims, like every part of its nature, are false.

The daemon’s existence is a dream. Its power is the stolen strength of mortal minds. Its shape is an image painted onto existence so that we may look on it and know that our sins have returned for us. Though it has power, it is a power which eats itself. The high daemons, which some call gods, squabble of souls and dominion, betraying each other and themselves. They are not predators. They are carrion.

Yet, for all its falsity, the daemon has the ability to twist the mind of the living, to make flesh a mockery, to defy death, and bring ruin on the works of mortals. When the warp waxes, and the neverborn walk through the veil, they have the strength to break armies and cast down heroes. They are always there, watching from the edge of thought and the corner of sight.

The daemon is a lie, but it is a lie that can unmake reality.

I say this because I have made my life in the calling and controlling of these creatures. I am Ctesias, and I above all know the price for believing in the power of the gods and their children.

Arrogance is the mark of the sorcerer, and those of the Thousand Sons more than any. We make the mistake of thinking that because we are not slaves that we cannot be prey. This is a tale of how I made that mistake, and the price that I paid.

The Fall of Ignorance spun in the fires of its death. Its hull had split from prow to beneath the bridge. Its stern hung from broken bones of girder. Standing upon the bridge, I watched as a splinter of iron and stone the size of a hab-stack tumbled slowly through the void.

+Geller field failure.+

I looked up. Astraeos knelt on the deck.

I shook my head and looked away without replying. The bridge was a cave of twisted metal open to the vacuum. Spheres of machine oil and blood drifted past me. Corpses, or rather parts of corpses, spun in lazy arcs. Portions of servitors hung from tangles of tubes and cables, still tethered to their systems. My eyes found pieces of power armour amongst the debris: a silver gauntlet set with a spiral of blue stones, a peg of severed bone projecting from within.

I sniffed. Inside my helm I could taste burnt meat and bitter ash.

+No,+ I sent. +It was not the Geller field.+

I reached out with my staff and sent a severed hand spinning with a gentle tap. Its fingers twitched at the psy-active contact.

+You seem very sure,+ sent Sanakht. He was standing on a crumpled wall section above me, feet mag-clamped to the metal. The swordsman looked bored, his hands resting on the pommels of his paired blades. He was ready, but this was a place of the dead and there was nothing to threaten him.

+Seeming does not come into it,+ I replied. +I am sure.+

+The neverborn were here.+ Astraeos stood, his fingers dark with half frozen blood from the deck.

+A crushingly obvious fact,+ I sent, and I could not keep the weariness from my words. I closed my eyes for an instant. They stung with tiredness.

We had translated from the warp only four hours before, and the passage preceding it had not been kind. We had passed outwards from the central volume of the Eye of Terror. Storms had battered our fleet and minds.

I took a long slow breath inside my helm and felt my hand twitch with the instinct to pinch my forehead with my fingers. Bright motes of red light were dancing on the edge of my sight.

+There were neverborn here,+ I sent, +but that does not mean that the Geller field failed.+

+Then what did happen?+ sent Sanakht, his thought voice not hiding his impatience with both Astraeos and myself. I bit back a retort, and instead gave the most accurate reply I could.

+Something else,+ I sent.

+What?+ Astraeos asked, his eyes fixed on me, contempt bleeding off his aura in grey coils.

+I am…+ I began, then paused. The Fall of Ignorance had arrived an hour after the rest of the fleet, cast back into reality, still burning, the echoes of its death trailing after it in tatters of red warp skin. That in itself was a puzzle, a worrying puzzle. How had the daemons got within the ship if the Geller field had not failed?

+I am not certain,+ I finished.

Sanakht gave a cough of laughter across the vox. I was about to reply when another voice filled our minds.

+He is right.+

We all turned as one as Ahriman entered. He did not walk, but floated, guiding himself with threads of telekinetic force. Wreckage spun past him, sometimes so close that I was certain it would hit him, but it did not, and he did not change his speed or direction. A film of ice sparked on the high horns of his helm, and in the weave of his silk robes. A squad of Rubricae followed him, their feet locked to the deck as they marched in dull unity. He stopped in front of us, and we bowed our heads. The ache in my skull was still bright.

+Ctesias is right,+ sent Ahriman. +The shields did not fail. When the crew died they were fleeing from something that came from within. Their doom was with them when they passed into the aether.+

+The damage…+ began Astraeos.

+One of the command crew overloaded the plasma couplings. Courage, or madness, it cannot be known.+ Ahriman paused, pivoting in the space above the burnt and twisted deck. +I can hear the screams still – they cling to the hull. But it is a storm without order, only the colour and texture of terror. And amongst it…+

His sending trailed away, and that hesitation sent ice across my skin.

+Master?+ sent Sanakht into the empty moment.

Ahriman shook his head, and turned his gaze on me.

+Discover what happened here, Ctesias. We make passage to Samatis in two cycles. You have until then.+

A protest began in my thoughts, but it died before forming fully. I could feel the skin of my face prickle inside my helm as Ahriman’s gaze held steady on me. I knew without testing the feeling that this was not a command I could refuse. Of his Circle, I was the one who knew most of the ways of daemons. I was most suited to getting him an answer. Our kind does not like mysteries; they damage our pretensions of infallibility.

+As you will it,+ I replied, bowing my head.

Ahriman nodded and gestured to Sanakht.

+Sanakht will watch over you, and keep you alive should there be need.+

I could tell from the swordsman’s posture and silence that he had already received the command from Ahriman by thought, and liked it less than I did. I nodded at him, once. He turned away.

+Two cycles, Ctesias,+ sent Ahriman, as he floated towards a ragged hole in the bridge wall. The firefly lights of circling gunships moved against the night beyond. I saw one craft change course and begin to close on our position. +Two cycles and then you will have an answer to what happened here.+

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A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Original art by Dave Gallagher.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-623-3

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