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Krakenblood – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

BLOOD PRICE

Ivar Krakenblood’s gauntleted fingers brush across the swordmaiden’s face with exaggerated care and close her eyes for the last time.

‘We should have been here,’ he says finally. ‘To shepherd at least a few of the near-slain from their first death.’

His mentor advances behind him. Ivar rises and turns, regarding Ulrik the Slayer with the wary awe that has never truly left him. The other warrior is a force of nature caged in flesh. In his every grim motion and pronouncement Ivar sees the distant echo of Leman Russ. The soul and spirit of the primarch lives in him.

The Wolf Helm of Russ is locked at Ulrik’s belt. The ancient’s face is weathered, his hair and beard faded to white, yet he radiates strength and determination. Ivar yearns to have even a fraction of that surety of purpose.

‘We cannot be everywhere,’ Ulrik says with a sigh. The wind whips about them, casting frost up onto the black and bronze of the Slayer’s armour. He bends to examine the dead boy, tilting his head one way then the other. ‘Weak,’ he pronounces.

‘It was not their time,’ Ivar muses. ‘Their wyrd led them only to death.’

‘As ours leads us to our task,’ Ulrik says, rising. ‘Do you know why I have brought you here, Ivar?’

Ivar pauses. Within the confines of his helm he can hear the hammering of his own hearts. Blood rushes in his ears. He looks down again at the dead pair and remembers that, despite his myriad gifts, he was once as they were. Fragile. Brittle little toys in the hands of fate. Now he stands beyond their weakness. ‘You wish to test me, Wolf High Priest.’

Ulrik chuckles at the formality, a dull rumble in tune with the winds. He stands ancient and indomitable. Fenris sings in his bones and bleeds from every pore. He and this world are one, perhaps more than any other living soul in the Chapter.

‘I am always testing you, pup,’ Ulrik says. Ivar tenses, though he knows it is no insult. ‘I am old, Ivar. The oldest of us not yet given to the iron sleep. All who serve as we do… they shall be tested, and one day, when I am gone, that warrior will stand as my replacement.’

‘Lord, I–’ Ivar begins, but Ulrik raises one gauntleted hand.

‘I will not leave this life without a fight, pup. You need not worry. I shall fight as I have always done. I will serve until the enemies of the Rout finally bring me down. That is all any of us can hope for.’ He hesitates then. Ivar hears the barest hint of it creep into his master’s voice. ‘For any of us to continue in this life, there must always be a blood price. Our fates must be sanctified with death. Do you understand that, when you stand as Wolf Priest?’

‘I understand,’ Ivar says at last. At his core he knows the truth of it. We are called to our purpose – tending the souls of the living and the legacy of the slain. ‘I know what is expected of me. I do not shirk from it. I simply…’

Ulrik snorts and turns from him. They are walking onwards now, up from the ice and onto the steep slopes of the land. ‘Kraken blooded, kraken minded,’ he interrupts. ‘There is a hunger in you, pup. Relentless. It drives you on as sure as land thirst.’

‘Perhaps it is duty,’ Ivar says, too quickly. ‘My wyrd.’

‘Glory,’ the Slayer says patiently, ‘is not the same as duty. It is an ill thing to wish glory alone to be your destiny. Those who yearn for an end worthy of the sagas, shall never find the end they imagined. Those songs will be mournful in the singing.’

‘I understand,’ Ivar began.

‘You do not,’ Ulrik finished. ‘But you will. Follow me, pup.’

Fenris claws at them. As they climb, the wind seeks to pitch them from the rocks and throw them beneath the hungry waves. Even through his helm Ivar can taste the sharp cold of the world and scent its salt.

There is something else on the growing gale. An animal reek, riven through with spilled blood and torn guts. It is the smell of predation, yet it is more than that. It stinks of gluttony and waste.

‘What is the greatest strength of our world?’ Ulrik asks, pausing to look back at Ivar.

The Wolf Priest hesitates and many answers whir within his mind. He bows his head.

The strength of Fenris is…

‘Our people,’ Ivar says at last. ‘The flesh and blood of our world rose up to conquer the stars and slay the beasts where they nested. We challenged false gods and cast them from the heavens.’

‘Very good,’ Ulrik says, and nods ahead of them.

There is a wound in the world.

That is the only way Ivar can truly think of it. Not merely a cave but a festering cut into the body of Fenris. Icicles rim the entrance like fangs, alongside the grey stone of stalactites. The stone has been shaped by geologic pressure, by glacial action, and by the work of claws. It has been riven like meat.

The wrongness is a physical thing. It radiates from the aperture, and Ivar holds in the face of it. His armour growls as he moves towards it. Ulrik’s hand grasps his pauldron.

‘The strength of Fenris lies in its people, yes, and so it falls to us to protect them. The first trial you must undertake upon this new path is to shed blood for theirs. You have walked the path of priest and warrior for many years now, since the Spur’s test. Now comes a truer blooding. The beasts are wild and mad in the wake of the sorcerers and their wiles. The sons of Magnus have left their heathen mark here, and it festers like old bloodrot. Even now Fenris is in upheaval.’ He gestures into the looming darkness. ‘There are trolls below. We will slay them in their lair and safeguard those who dwell nearby.’

Trolls. The thought radiates through his mind. Old kill-lessons blossom. Cants of battle and skjald’s wisdom on how they might be bested.

‘The battle, before?’ Ivar asks. ‘Did this lead to that end?’

‘They fear, and so they flee or they fight. Some wish for better land, further from the predation. Others would take advantage of a tribe already weakened. Cravens and carrion birds. Such should not be our way.’

Ivar’s fist tightens and then unclenches. Within the iron and bone of the helm, his dark skin prickles with growing outrage. His old scars ache down his chest, the old burn of a kraken’s wrath. He is as Fenris-marked as any other soul. He has seen the wild heart of their world, red with the blood of its inhabitants.

There is always a blood price upon Fenris.

Ivar looks to the skies and thinks of all those who have been taken by the rapacious hunger of the Allfather’s watchers, doomed by the Cyclops’ wrath. Somewhere beyond the skies, there are kin who yet suffer. Sometimes he dreams of distant screams that shake the foundations of the strongest land.

Some prices are too high, and some wounds never truly heal. Some slights can never be forgiven.

‘Show me what I must do, lord,’ Ivar says at last.

The descent is a strange and liminal thing. It does not feel as though it is part of the world – not as the passageways and vaults beneath the Aett are. There is no solidity here. All surety flees. The cave winds and sprawls, intestinal, like the innards of some vast beast.

Water drips in a relentless tattoo, matched to the slow pulse of Ivar’s hearts. The air, even filtered through his helm, is rancid with spoiled meat. It is a place touched by the passage of Morkai, clotted with death’s embrace, like a crater filled with brackish water.

The blood-scent draws them deeper, past great pillars of stone gouged by claws, under hanging mosses that crawl with unclean bioluminescence. Ivar does not need the pale illumination to see. His sight is surer than that. Even without the helm’s systems, cradled by iron and bone, the darkness holds no secrets for him.

Something crunches beneath his boots.

Ivar looks down and sees the first of the bones. The remnants of the beasts’ gluttony is everywhere, strewn without care or ceremony. Femurs, snapped open, their marrow gulped down, lie in ragged piles, littered with fragments. The top quarter of a skull leers up at Ivar, in mockery of his own visage.

‘Hold,’ Ulrik whispers over the vox. They are both helmed now. Each draws his weapon and they ignite in the cold gloom, shedding light and energy in a wave of purity. Each crozius is a sacred thing. Blessed in the sight of the Wolf Priests, anointed in accordance with the ways of Fenris. Allfather-blessed and spirit-sanctified. ‘We are not alone, pup.’

‘Where are they?’ Ivar asks as the world growls around him with tectonic thunder. The surrounding passages sprawl, no longer serpentine but instead a rat’s warren of tunnels and burrows. Something has hewn at the walls, expanding its den until it seethes like rot beneath Fenris’ skin.

Ulrik is turning when the first of the brood slams into him.

The massive presence bowls the Slayer over into the darkness. Ivar pushes himself back, crozius raised in sudden defiance. The haft is wound with tendrils, rising up to brace the wolf’s skull and bladed wings worked in adamantine and bronze. The light it casts illuminates the monster as it turns, as it lurches forwards out of the shadows, bellowing into his face.

Its maw is all peg teeth and fangs. Mismatched. Cobbled together as though made by the hand of a drunken craftsman god. Scaled shoulders hunch forwards and it roars again, drenching Ivar’s helm in spittle and blood.

Ivar swings for the monster and it slides backwards, eyes narrowing with sudden irritation. They are predator and prey and neither entirely sure which is which. Ivar’s voice growls from him with subdued fury. ‘Come, monster, show me your mettle!’

It howls forward, goaded. Claws flash down and Ivar ducks out of the way. He moves to the right, behind a gleaming pillar of crystalline stone. The creature flails after him, arms swinging round like a club of flesh. The pillar chips and then shatters before the troll hurls its bulk through the cloud of debris. Ivar blocks and parries, drawing back where he can, weaving inwards where he must.

The bladed wings of the crozius, limned with killing light, gouge in at its flanks. Once. Twice. Three times. Ivar kicks it in the chest, as though might alone could topple it. The thing staggers back as ichor dribbles from its wounds.

There it is, he thinks. There is the old legends come to life. Monster and beast. Eater of men. Slayer of kin.

The wounds in its hoary blue-white hide are knitting back together. It grunts – with dulled pain or muted rage, Ivar cannot tell – and lumbers forward again. The monster mocks him. It drums its massive paws against the bone-laden floor and crushes them to powder. The cavern shakes again.

Ivar lunges at the troll, crozius raised in both hands, and swings. It strikes in the same moment, slamming its massive fists into the crackling head of the mace. It drives Ivar down and then seizes the weapon. The foetid stink of burning flesh oozes from it, and it trembles with something like mirth.

Like Ivar, it enjoys the kill. It takes some bestial pride in it.

‘Fenrys hjolda!’ The cry jolts both Ivar and the beast, forcing the monster to turn. Ulrik the Slayer barrels into it, out of the darkness, slamming it into the chamber’s wall with a percussive boom.

He is not alone.

The monster’s lesser kin follow at his heels. Weaker examples of the breed. Stunted and malformed vermin, scrabbling and snapping at Ulrik’s back. He turns with contemptuous disdain and fires his plasma pistol one-handed, atomising the knot of wretched flesh. The troll-kin scream and squeal as the fire consumes them, a sudden sun-bright pulse of blue flame.

Ashes colour the air. For an instant they seem to hold their shape, screaming simulacra of slaughtered monsters, lit by the plasma light, and then they blow apart in the murder wind.

The monster turns for a moment, distracted by the pain of its murdered progeny, an animal keening forced from its distended lips. Ivar seizes the moment and swings upwards, gouging the troll’s face across the right eye. It reels back, ichor gouting down its maimed face, squealing now. It wrenches its head around, and Ivar stares into that one remaining eye.

The eye burns with hate and then with more than that. The flesh splits. Fire blossoms out from the wound, coiling about the monster’s face in a myriad of colours. It spreads like a creeping vine, winding through the meat of the beast. The scales ripple and change with a serpent’s guile.

‘Maleficarum,’ Ivar breathes. The corruption of the Archenemy. Chaos’ foul power. The mocking horror cast from the hands of the Cyclops’ bastard sons.

The troll laughs, or seems to. Its shoulders shake and it lurches forwards again. It swings madly, fists grazing the walls, showering Ivar with shards of granite. Sparks fly from the contact and Ivar ducks under them, swinging for the troll’s legs. The ichor flows sluggishly and the troll staggers. Ulrik meets it, gouging at the monster’s back.

Flesh burns at the contact. Fluids cook off to steam. Still the thing changes. Skin and muscle shift and morph, running like wax, lashing from the bone like snakes. Venom glistens at the tip of bone needles, flexing like teeth in the meat.

Every part of it is screaming now.

The sound rings off the walls. Unholy. Unclean. The two warriors standing against it hear the mockery in the sound. The distant ringing of past battles. The muted menace of the sorcerers’ last great infamy. Runes burn on its skin, shedding their dark light. The monster howls and thrashes. Each gouge and slash begets new atrocities, spreading and rising from its tormented form.

‘Monster!’ Ulrik bellows. Unholy mirth burbles from it once again.

‘These wounds are forever. Your mongrel world shall never heal.’ It does not speak. Something speaks through it, goaded to sudden voice. ‘We have left our mark upon you. Cut into your very fates. Doomed dogs! Damned by Prosperine hands!’

‘Speak. No. More!’ Ulrik snarls.

Its head snaps around, single eye blazing with hate. It radiates loathing, till the walls glisten with its benighted illumination. Its jaws yawn wide. Wider. Too wide. Tendrils made of muscle and sinew vomit forth and seize Ulrik’s raised weapon arm. The armour sizzles but does not buckle or melt.

It is master-crafted. More than that, it is sacred.

He swings his pistol up and fires. The monster’s distended lower jaw explodes. The searing blast is so intense, so close, that for a moment it blinds even Ivar’s auto-senses. A star being born and dying, all in one second.

Its howl degenerates into a brutal animal squeal of pain. Part of the ancient enmity is driven from it in a cleansing fire, purging the animus of the Cyclops. The once-troll flails back, claws scraping against the walls. It pushes itself off and slams forwards once more, into Ulrik. New limbs bleed from its torso, clawing and gouging at the warrior – trying in desperate animal futility to pry the Wolf Helm of Russ free.

The Slayer does not falter. He takes the blows as they rain down upon him. Ivar cannot stand idle, and so he swings at its broad back, tearing into undulating flesh. Faces made of ghost light and spite push outwards, laughing at his efforts even as cut after cut obliterates their visages.

A knot of mutating flesh and bone surges forward to coil around Ivar’s mace hand. Gnawing at him like a jackal at a bone. Ivar grunts in pain and slashes down once more. The trap falls away in a rush of stinking fluids, scuttling into the shadows. The monster spits bile and shrill invective at them. A wave of sound and fury, seeking to unman them.

They are more than men. More than flesh or bone. In sacred symmetry the two move as one to sanctify the moment. Each crozius rises and falls. Each strike cleaves open flesh or reduces it to powder. They stave in its skull and crush the malicious eye to jelly. Ichor pours from it only to boil away as soon as the disruptor field touches it.

The creature finally unravels. Muscles uncoil and try desperately to wriggle away, only to be crushed beneath boots. It dissolves further beneath the onslaught. Battered down. Beaten. Ivar snarls as he hews into it, striking with such ferocity that even the stone beneath it is cut and broken.

They pause for a long moment, both watching the thing as it dies. Even its regenerative gifts are no match for them, not even woven through with a sorcerer’s wiles.

‘Now,’ Ulrik breathes. ‘Now you are blooded, pup. Ready for what comes next.’

‘What comes next?’ Ivar asks, his helm tilting as he watches the troll’s carcass degrade and flow away like so much waste.

‘This was but the first of your trials. A test of your mettle.’ The old Slayer pauses, eyes lingering upon the dying monster. ‘There is a fate for which you are well suited.’

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2025.
This eBook edition published in 2025 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Christopher Cant.

Krakenblood © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2025. Krakenblood, 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: 978-1-83609-322-0

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.

For Eve – light in the dark and fire in the cold.
And for Mark-Anthony – friend and brother, skjald and gothi.

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