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Mortarion’s Heart – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Mortarion’s Heart

L J Goulding

Upon the blighted plains of Kornovin, a single warrior stood against all the foul hordes of Chaos.

He fought hard. He fought with the strength and fury of one freed from the trappings of ceremony, and without thought for any other. Many kilometres away, around the bastion enclaves, the Brotherhoods would be commencing their counter-attacks upon the encroaching daemonic forces, but Kaldor Draigo fought alone. Quickened by his Librarians’ battle-meditations, he was like unto the legendary champions of old as he carved a path through the enemy ranks.

They came at him in droves, with withered flesh and rotten fangs, broken blades and ragged claws. Draigo beat them back again and again, his sword singing fairly in his grip.

As he fought, he felt the maggot-ridden multitude falter around him. The skyline was lit anew by the flash of Imperial guns, and he saw the Chapter’s liveried gunships sweeping low in the distance. Caught between a fresh wave of Master Kai’s Terminators and Purgation squads, and this upstart new lord of the Grey Knights tearing through their rearguard, Draigo supposed that it might be enough to make even the Death Lord himself take notice.

He did not know if it was destiny or merely chance, but he sensed that his quarry was close at hand.

Breaking out from the throng, the daemon prince’s surviving champions barred his path; bred for battle and whittled down by millennia of endless attrition, the implacable Deathshroud were singular foes. Draigo unleashed a psychic barrage from his gauntlets, rending their corrupted flesh and shattering their ancient war-plate – yet still they came, their eyes blazing with unremitting fury as they struck back at him.

Draigo fired until his storm bolter was dry, then hewed left and right with his blade. He hacked open the corroded breastplate of one warrior, then thrust clean through the skull of–

There. Behind him.

The flash of psychic precognition saved Draigo. He hurled himself aside just as the monstrous form of the Death Lord crashed down to earth on ragged wings, the force of his landing scattering the lesser rabble and carving furrows in the mud with his clawed, armoured feet.

Draigo spun to face him, his sword already up. ‘Hold, daemon. Come no closer.’

The daemon prince rose slowly from his crouch, flexing his grip around the pitted haft of his war-scythe. Though his gaunt features seemed perpetually lost in shadow, an elaborate and archaic rebreather mask protruded from the lower half of his hood, spouting plumes of noxious vapour with every hissing, rasping breath. He stared down at the bloodied and battered Grey Knight before him.

‘I have nothing to fear from you, little witch,’ he rasped, his voice like cracking bones. ‘You are… not the one.’

The closest daemons gibbered in a twisted parody of laughter, edging closer to their master and his chosen prey. Draigo did not move.

‘I may not be “the one” you speak of,’ he said, ‘but I shall open the way for him to follow.’

The Death Lord snorted. ‘Divine prophecy, or wishful thinking?’ He inclined his head, as though considering the difference between the two. ‘You seek to confront me, to bind me to the mortal plane. Seven times seven. Let us be about it, then. Speak your hollow rituals and empty words of power.’

Behind his visor, Draigo narrowed his eyes.

‘I name you as Mortarion, fallen Primarch of the Fourteenth Legion, Master of the Death Guard. You are the Dread Liberator of Barbarus. You are the Reaper and the Traveller, the Death Lord and the Pale King. You are–’

‘Titles,’ Mortarion interrupted him. ‘Titles and epithets conjured from the minds of lesser beings, to venerate or denigrate. They would know me only by what I had done, or what they feared I might do. The sycophant and the subjugated, ally and enemy alike – who are they to seek to bind me with such paltry, mortal words?’

He raised an immense, gauntleted hand and pointed at Draigo.

‘Who, indeed, are you?’

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A Black Library Publication

First released as an audio drama in Great Britain in 2014.
This eBook edition published in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan.

Mortarion’s Heart © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Mortarion’s Heart, 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: 978-1-78572-837-2

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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