Contents

Cover

Resurrection - Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Prologue

VISAGES

The daemon watched the lone warrior through stolen eyes. Walls of rock, smoothed over time by the passage of water, rose from the floor of the cave. Fingers of slime-covered crystal reached down from the roof. Water dripped from their tips, thick and pale with salts. A soft light rose from the pools of liquid caught in the ripple of the cave’s floor. Bones lay in clusters, some dry, some still clad in tatters of skin. The warrior moved through the gloom and past the pools, eyes moving steadily over the darkness beyond his sight. On his shoulder a weapon-machine pivoted and spun without cease. Crimson armour encased his chest, and a tome sat on his back, bound by locked chains. Lightning crawled down the blade in his hands, its flicker marking his hawk-like features with pale light.

The daemon watched as the warrior paused beside a luminous pool. It could see the fire of the human’s mind coiling in the realm beyond his flesh, bright with strength, threaded with the cobweb shadows of secrets. The daemon smiled, and felt its host’s lips pull back from its teeth.

‘You are Covenant,’ it said in the voice of its flesh prison.

The warrior remained still, but the weapon on his shoulder flicked around, barrel and targeting lens sweeping the dark.

‘I am glad you are here, boy,’ it said. ‘We have met before, but you would not remember.’

Covenant shifted the grip on his sword. On his shoulder the gun linked to his mind slowed its scanning, like a dog waiting for scent to come to it on the wind.

‘Of course,’ said the daemon. ‘That is a lie. I am not glad to see you. I have no soul to loathe or love you.’

Covenant took a step forwards, sword rising slightly, head turning to look to his side.

‘I am a creature that exists by theft. Everything we are, we take from you, our shapes from your nightmares, our words from your mouths, our existence from your weakness.’

The daemon paused. Its flesh shuddered in its wrapping of shadows. The fat, skin and sinew of its host would have rotted to nothing decades before, but the daemon’s presence sustained it, just as the flesh and the cold iron hammered into that flesh had held the daemon like a prison.

‘You know this, of course,’ it said. Covenant had stopped again. He was so close that the daemon could feel the life radiating from his soul. ‘You know what I am. You know that I speak to you because it is my nature, my ordained purpose in the courts of what you might call Chaos. You know I speak because I must. You know all this of me. But what do I know of you, boy? What do we know of you?’

Covenant turned slowly, and the daemon moved with him too, sliding into the space behind him. The lightning glow of Covenant’s sword caught a strata of crystal in the walls and sent a fork of reflected fire through the stone.

‘You don’t wish to know, of course.’ The daemon moved forwards, wrapping silence around itself, dragging darkness with it. It reached a hand out towards Covenant’s back. Its fingers lengthened like shadows under a setting sun. ‘But he wished to know.’ The words slid around the chamber, echoing and returning.

‘Wished… wish…’

‘Know… know… know…’

It was so close now. Just a little further, and then it could feed, it could grow strong, it could slip the bonds that held it here in this realm of mud and pity.

‘The one you call Talicto, the one who bound me here – he wished to know all I could tell him and more, and when I could give him no more he still kept me here in case I had lied, in case there was just one secret that I had not told him.’

Its fingers were almost on Covenant’s shoulder now. The man’s gaze was fixed on empty shadows.

‘And, do you know, there was one thing I did not tell him.’ The words were a wet purr as its host’s jaws distended, glass teeth growing beside its tongue as it tasted the air just behind Covenant’s neck. ‘But if you ask, I will tell you.’

Covenant whirled. The sword was a sheet of lightning as it cut through the front of the daemon’s face. It felt its host stagger, black blood pouring from its cleaved skull. The cannon on Covenant’s shoulder fired. Shells ripped into the daemon’s host body. Chunks of bone and rancid meat showered to the ground. Pain – pure, bright pain of a kind that did not exist for mortals – tore into its essence. The daemon had no true eyes. But it did not need eyes to see in the realm of the spirit. The fire of Covenant’s soul blazed as he came forwards. The daemon lashed out, blood and pus scattering from the iron nails in its limbs as its flesh split and grew. Covenant met the blow with his blade, turned it, and hacked down.

The daemon felt the left side of its body drop away, burning to ash as it fell. It staggered, its remaining flesh reshaping. It scuttled across the surface of a pool. Covenant came forwards again, shoulder cannon firing without pause. The daemon twitched aside as the rounds tore shards from the cave walls. It pulled on the tides of power that were its to command, and an arc of black lightning whipped towards Covenant.

The bolt from Covenant’s cannon caught the daemon in the centre of its remaining flesh, and ripped it apart. In the nailed and bound core of its essence, the daemon heard its stolen flesh try to scream.

It was on the floor juddering, trying to form the pulped matter of its host into a shape to fight. The shadow of Covenant fell over it. The fire of his cold rage sent a shiver through the daemon even as reality pulled it apart.

‘By the grace and power of the God-Emperor–’ began Covenant.

‘I will…’ said the daemon, forcing the words into being with the last spite of its existence. ‘I will tell you–’

‘I cast thee into the abyss,’ said Covenant, and the daemon saw the man’s soul blaze as the sword came down.

The sculpting tool scraped a ribbon of red wax from around the eye socket of the death mask. The tool paused, the polished tip poised above a half-formed fold of flesh. The sculpted face was a horror. Quills hung from its bald skull, and weeping sores blistered the sagging flesh beneath a double set of eyes. Its mouth stretched from ear to ear: a crooked grin like an axe wound filled with row upon row of needle teeth. It was vileness and abomination rendered with perfection.

‘Does it match the memory?’ Josef stepped from the dark beyond the circle of light which bathed the workbench. Tools lay on its grey stone top, each one set next to its siblings in neat rows. Dry spatters of wax marked the blades and tips of some of the tools. In the bright light the dried wax looked like congealed blood. A jet of blue flame glowed above a silver burner, shimmering slightly with the vibration of the ship’s engines.

Covenant remained silent for a moment, his gaze steady on the empty holes of the death mask’s eyes.

‘He was a scholar before Talicto gave him to the warp.’ Covenant looked up. ‘He lived his life in the histories of saints and heroes, and thought of nothing else.’

‘What was done to him happened long ago,’ said Josef, stepping closer. ‘Before you even ascended to the rank, before you could have done anything to prevent it.’

‘There is no forgiveness in time. We are responsible. Always.’

Josef raised a bushy eyebrow, and smoothed the fabric of his robe over his gut.

‘Course is set for Ero,’ said Josef. ‘Viola estimates we will be in-system several days before the conclave.’

Covenant gave a single nod, and flicked his eyes to the side of the chamber. A servitor shuffled forwards from a niche in the chamber wall and took the wax face with long brass fingers.

‘Take it to the forge,’ said Covenant. ‘I will follow within the hour. Have the crucibles of silver ready.’

The servitor bowed, gears clicking in oiled melody. Josef waited as the cyborg shuffled away.

‘Do you wish everyone to gather before we make transit?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Covenant. ‘There are plans to discuss.’

Josef turned to leave, then paused for a second, looking up at the walls. Silver faces gazed down at him, their eyes empty holes, their features set as they had been in the last moments of their lives.

‘As you command, my lord,’ said Josef, and left Covenant to the silence.

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For James French

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2017.
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 K.D. Stanton.

Resurrection: The Horusian Wars © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Resurrection: The Horusian Wars, 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: 978-1-78572-663-7

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