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Salamanders The Omnibus – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Chapter One

I
The Old Ways…

Dak’ir stood above the lake of fire, waiting to let his captain burn.

What was left of Ko’tan Kadai’s corroded power armour was chained to a pyre-slab along with his half-destroyed body. Lava spat and bubbled beneath it, wafts of flame igniting in it before being consumed, only to flare to life again in another part of the molten flow. The black marble of the pyre-slab reflected the lava’s fiery glow, the veined stone cast in reds and oranges. Two thick chains were piston-drilled to one of the short edges, and the rectangular pyre-slab hung down long-ways. Ceramite coated its surface, so the pyre-slab would be impervious to the magma heat. It would take Kadai on his final journey into the heart of Mount Deathfire.

Inside the vast cavern of rock, Dak’ir recalled the slow and solemn procession to that great volcanic peak. Over a hundred warriors, marching all the way from the Sanctuary City of Hesiod, had made the pilgrimage. The mountain was immense, and tore into the fiery orange heavens of Nocturne like the tip of a broken spear. Ash drifts had floated from the crater at its peak, coming down in slow, grey swathes.

Deathfire was at once beautiful and terrible to behold.

But there was no pyroclastic fury, no belligerent eruption of rock and flame this day, just lamentation as the mountain took back one of her sons: a Salamander, a Fire-born.

‘Into fire are we born, so unto fire do we return…’ intoned Dak’ir, repeating the sombre words of Brother-Chaplain Elysius. He was speaking rites of interment, specifically the Canticles of Immolation. Despite the Chaplain’s cold diction, Dak’ir felt the emotional resonance of his words as they echoed loudly around the underground cavern.

Though ostensibly rough rock, the cavern was actually a sacred place built by Master of the Forge T’kell. Millennia old, its artifice and functionality were still lauded in the current decaying age. T’kell had fashioned the vault under the careful auspice of the progenitor, Vulkan, and had been amongst the first of his students upon his apotheosis to primarch. These skills T’kell would impart to future generations of Salamanders, together with the arcane secrets learned from the tech-adepts of Mars. The Master of the Forge was long dead now, and others walked in his mighty stead, but his legacy of achievements remained. The cavern was but one of them.

A vast reservoir of lava dominated the cavern’s depths. The hot, syrupy magma came from beneath the earth and was the lifeblood of Mount Deathfire. It was held in a deep basin of volcanic rock, girded by layers of reinforced heat-retardant ceramite so that it pooled briefly before flowing onwards from one of the many natural outlets in the rock. There were no lanterns in the cavern, for none were needed. The lava cast a warm and eldritch glow. Shadows flickered, fire cracked and spat.

Chaplain Elysius stood in the darkness, despite his prominence on an overhang of rock that sat on the opposite side of the cavern to Dak’ir. A spit of lava threw harsh orange light across the overhang. It was long enough for Dak’ir to see Elysius’s ebony power armour and the ivory of his skull-faced battle-helm. It was cast starkly, the light describing the edges of its prominent features. Eyes glowed behind the lenses, red and diabolic.

Isolationism was a fundamental tenet of Promethean creed. It was believed this was the only way a Salamander could find the reliance and inner fortitude he needed to prosecute the Emperor’s duties. Elysius embraced this ideal wholly. He was insular and cold. Some in the Chapter reckoned in place of his primary heart, the Chaplain had a core of stone. Dak’ir suspected that might actually be true.

Even though Elysius was often distant, in battle he was completely different. His barbed zeal, as tangible and sharp as a blade, as furious as a bolter’s voice, brought his battle-brothers together. His fury, his fierce adherence to the Promethean Cult, became theirs too. Countless times in war, the Chaplain’s faith had dragged hard-fought victory from bitter defeat.

A symbol of devotion hung from his weapons belt, a simulacrum of a hammer. It was Vulkan’s Sigil and had once been carried by the famed Chaplain Xavier. Long dead now, like so many heroes, the legacy of Xavier as keeper of this badge of office had passed to Elysius.

There in the highest echelons of the cavern, the Chaplain was not alone.

Salamanders from the Third and First Companies were watching too from a ridge around the edge of the cavern, where they stood to attention in darkened alcoves, their red eyes ablaze. This ocular mutation affected all Salamanders. It was a genetic defect brought about by a reaction to the radiation of their volatile home world. Together with their onyx-black skin, it gave them an almost daemonic appearance, though there were none amongst the Emperor’s Astartes more noble, more committed to the defence of humanity, than the Fire-born.

Chapter Master Tu’Shan observed the ceremony from a massive seat of stone. He was flanked by his bodyguard the Firedrakes, warriors of the First Company, his company. Honour markings covered Tu’Shan’s noble countenance, a physical legacy of his deeds writ into his ebon flesh. They were the branding scars that every Salamander had, in keeping with Promethean ritual. Few amongst the Chapter, only the most distinguished veterans, ever lived to have them seared upon their face. As Regent of Prometheus, Tu’Shan wore a suit of ancient power armour. Two pauldrons sat upon his hulking shoulders, wrought into the image of the snarling fire lizards from which the Chapter took its name. A cloak of salamander hide, a more venerable and honour-strewn version of that worn by the Firedrakes, was draped across the Chapter Master’s broad back. Tu’Shan’s bald pate shone with the reflected lustre of the lava, the shadows of its undulations creeping up the walls like fingers of dusk. His eyes were like captured suns. The Chapter Master brooded, chin resting on his fist, as inscrutable as the very rock of the mountain itself.

After acknowledging his Chapter Master, Dak’ir’s eye was drawn to Fugis. The Apothecary was one of the Inferno Guard, Kadai’s old retinue, of which only three now remained. He had removed his battle helm and clasped it in the crook of his arm. It was stark white like his right-side shoulder armour. His sharp, angular face was haunted by lava-shadows. Even through the rising heat shimmer emanating from below, Dak’ir thought he saw Fugis’s eyes glisten.

Ever since Dak’ir had won his black carapace and become a battle-brother, and throughout his forty years of service, he’d felt Fugis’s watchful eye. Before he became Astartes Dak’ir had been an Ignean, an itinerant cave-dweller of Nocturne. That fact alone was unprecedented, for no one outside the seven Sanctuary Cities had ever been inducted into the vaunted ranks of the Space Marines. To some it made Dak’ir unique; to others, he was an aberration. Certainly his connection to the human side of his genesis was stronger than any the Apothecary had ever known. During battle-meditation, Dak’ir dreamed. He remembered with unerring clarity the days before he became superhuman, before his blood and organs and bones were reshaped forever into the iron-hard cast of the alpha-warrior. Biologically, he was a Space Marine like any other; psychologically, it was hard to tell just what potential lay within him.

Chaplain Elysius had found no taint in Dak’ir’s spirit. If anything, the Ignean’s strength of mind and purpose was remarkably pure, to such a degree that he had achieved the rank of sergeant especially swiftly given the slow and methodical nature of the Chapter.

Fugis, though, was curious by his very nature and unshackled by the extreme views that afflicted the Chaplain. Dak’ir was an enigma to him, one he wished to fathom. But the Apothecary’s watchful eye did not scrutinise him this day. His gaze was turned inward instead, mired in grief-ridden introspection. Kadai had been Fugis’s friend as well as his captain.

Unlike his brothers, Dak’ir wore the garb of a metal-shaper, the nomadic smiths who worked the iron found deep beneath the mountains and sweated over heavy anvils. The vestments were archaic, but then on Nocturne they still believed in the old ways.

In the earliest millennia of civilisation, when the native tribes of the planet lived in caves, worshipping the fire mountain as a goddess and its scaled denizens as objects of spiritual significance, metal-shaping was regarded as a noble profession and its masters were tribal leaders. The tradition held thousands of years later, after the development of primitive technologies and the nascent art of metal shaping became forging, after the coming of Vulkan and when the Outlander had taken him away again into the stars.

A pelt of salamander skin covered Dak’ir’s loins. Thick sandals were lashed about his feet. The Astartes’s bare chest shone like lacquered ebony, onyx-black and harder than jet. In his hands he clasped one of the thick chains that held Kadai’s corpse steady above the lake of fire.

Promethean tradition demanded that two metal-shapers would guide the passing of the dead. Across from him, standing upon a plinth of stone that jutted out above the lava much like Dak’ir’s own, was Tsu’gan. He too wore a similar garb. But where Dak’ir’s Ignean heritage was obvious in his rugged and earthy face, Tsu’gan’s noble bloodline, passed down from the tribal kings of Hesiod, made his countenance haughty and cruel. His glabrous skull was fastidiously shorn, and he wore a narrow crimson beard like a spike. It was as much a statement of his arrogance and vainglory as it was simple affectation. Dak’ir’s hair was dark, characteristic of subterraneans like the nomads of Ignea, cut simply and close to the scalp.

Accusation and thinly-veiled contempt burned coldly in Tsu’gan’s gaze when their eyes met briefly. The fiery gorge between them spat and bubbled in sympathetic enmity.

Anger rising, Dak’ir looked away.

Tsu’gan was one of few amongst the Chapter that found Dak’ir’s singularity deviant. Born into comparative wealth and affluence, as such were possible on a volcanic death world, Tsu’gan had found himself instantly at odds with the idea of Dak’ir being a worthy candidate for the Astartes. The fact of his humble birth, his lowborn origins, and the levelling effect of them both as Space Marines, vexed Tsu’gan greatly.

Heritage was merely the undercurrent of acrimony that ran between them now. The bitterness that divided the two sergeants so cruelly had been set in motion as far back as Moribar, their first mission as neophytes, but its colour and acerbity had changed forever with the recent undertaking to Stratos.

Moribar… The thought of the sepulchre world he had visited over four decades ago unearthed bitter memories for Dak’ir. It was there that Ushorak had lost his life, and that Nihilan’s vendetta had been born.

Nihilan who had…

Old memories surfaced from Dak’ir’s subconscious like pieces of sharpened flint. He saw again the looming dragon, its red scales glistening like blood in the light of the temple to false gods. The melta flare filled his vision like an incandescent star, angry, hot and unstoppable. Kadai’s cries smothered all of his other senses and for a moment there was only blackness and the sounds of his accusing anguish…

Dak’ir snapped to. Sweat laced the grooves of his enhanced musculature; not from the lava heat, Salamanders were resistant to such things, but rather from his own inner pain. His secondary heart spasmed with the sudden increase in respiration, fooled into believing the body was entering a heightened state of battle readiness.

Dak’ir fought it down, mastering his own capricious biology with the many mental and physical routines he had been conditioned with as part of his rigorous Astartes training. He hadn’t endured a vision like that since Stratos. By Vulkan’s grace, it had lasted only seconds. None amongst his gathered brothers had noticed him falter. Dak’ir felt the impulse to suddenly cry out, and curse whatever fates had led them down this dark path to this grim moment of mourning and sorrow, this grief for a captain beloved.

Kadai’s death had stained them both. Dak’ir wore his openly, a white patch of scarification from a melta flare that covered over half his face. He had seen it again in his vision, the self-same blast that had ended Kadai’s life so grievously. Tsu’gan, however, carried his wounds inwardly where they ate away at him like a cancer. For now, their feud was kept hidden so as not to arouse the suspicion or displeasure of either Chaplain or, indeed, Chapter Master.

Brother-Chaplain Elysius had almost completed the ritual and Dak’ir shifted his focus back to his duty. It was a great honour to be chosen, and he did not wish to be found wanting under Chapter Master Tu’Shan’s fiery glare.

At last the moment came. Dak’ir had carried the weight of the pyre-slab for several hours. His shoulders did not even feel this exertion as he fed the chain down slowly, hand-over-hand. Each of the vast links, twice as large as an Astartes’s fist, was etched with the symbols of Promethean lore: the hammer, the anvil, the flame. Though the chain links would not dissolve when they touched the lava, they were still red-hot from the rising heat. As each link fed through his palm, Dak’ir gripped it and felt the symbols being slowly branded into his flesh.

Steam issued from every grasp. Dak’ir did not even flinch. He was focused on his task and knew that every link in the chain must be gripped in precisely the same way so that the three symbols were burned into the same place on his palm. Any mistake, however slight, would be obvious afterwards. The ruined mark would be scoured away by brander-priests, shame and disgrace left in its stead.

Though they never made further eye contact, Dak’ir and Tsu’gan worked in concert, passing the links, one over the other, in perfect unison. The metal chain clanked from its rig hoisted in the penumbral dark of the cavern’s vaulted ceiling, and Kadai was gradually lowered into the lava. The pyre-slab was soon submerged. The captain’s armour and the remains of his body were quickly ravaged. The intense heat would render the last vestiges of him to ash. Then he would sink, returning to the earth and Nocturne.

The scoured pyre-slab came into view again as the chain was hauled back up. Its mortal cargo was gone, its surface steaming. When the slab had at last reached its apex, the rig above was locked off and Dak’ir released it, his duty done.

A votive-servitor shambled forward. The part-flesh, part-mechanised creature was bent-backed from the weight of the massive brazier it carried. The dark metal cradle was fused to the servitor’s spine, filled with the gathered ash of offerings. As it approached, Dak’ir plunged his hand into the ash and with a thumb daubed a skull-like symbol upon his right arm.

Turning away from the creature, Dak’ir smacked his hands together allowing the flakes of burnt skin from his palms to cascade into the lava below. When he looked back he found a pair of robed brander-priests in the brazier bearer’s place.

Even without his armour, the Astartes towered over the serfs. Heads held low, they carried burning staves and used them to sear fresh honour-scars into Dak’ir’s skin. The Salamander accepted the heat, scarcely acknowledging the pain it caused, but embracing the purity of it all the same.

The silent exchange with Tsu’gan was distracting him. Dak’ir barely noticed the brander-priests as they withdrew. Nor did he see at first the three serfs that came after, carrying a suit of power armour between them.

Remembering where he was, the sergeant bowed as the serfs proffered his MkVII battle-plate. He took each piece of armour in turn, slowly re-donning it, casting off the mantle of metal-shaper and becoming Astartes again.

A deep voice issued from the dark when Dak’ir had almost finished.

‘Brother-sergeant.’

Dak’ir nodded to the armoured Salamander that emerged, the serfs scurrying past him and back into shadow. The mighty warrior, almost two heads taller than him, was clad in the green battle-plate of the Chapter, a blazing orange salamander icon on his left shoulder pad against a black field denoting him as a battle-brother of Third Company.

‘Ba’ken.’

Trunk-necked and slab-shouldered, Ba’ken was a fearsome sight. He also held the rank of Dak’ir’s heavy weapons trooper, and was his most trusted comrade.

Ba’ken’s arms were outstretched. In his gauntleted fists he clasped an ornate chainsword and plasma pistol.

‘Your arms, brother-sergeant,’ he said solemnly.

Dak’ir mouthed a silent prayer as he took up his weapons, relishing the familiarity of their touch.

‘Is the squad in readiness?’ asked Dak’ir. He gave a side-glance to Tsu’gan across the lake of fire, as he too was re-armouring. Dak’ir noticed that Iagon, Tsu’gan’s second, had dressed his sergeant. ‘Beneath you, is it?’ His muttered words were edged with venom.

‘Third Company await only you and Brother Tsu’gan.’ Ba’ken kept his expression and tone neutral. He had heard his brother-sergeant’s veiled remark, but chose not to acknowledge it. He knew well of the discord between Dak’ir and Tsu’gan. He also knew of the approaches Dak’ir had made in an attempt to ingratiate the other sergeant and the fact of their falling on deaf ears and a closed mind.

‘When I was in my youth, a mere neophyte,’ Ba’ken began as Dak’ir sheathed his chainsword and holstered his plasma pistol, ‘I forged my first blade. It was a gleaming thing – sharp-edged and strong – the most magnificent weapon I had ever seen because it was mine, and I had made it. I trained with the blade constantly, so hard it broke. Despite my best efforts, the hours I spent in the forges, I could not repair it.’

‘The first blade is always the most precious, and the least effective, Ba’ken,’ Dak’ir replied, intent on mag-locking his battle-helm to the weapons belt of his power armour.

‘No, brother-sergeant,’ answered the hulking Salamander, ‘that is not what I meant.’

Dak’ir stopped what he was doing and looked up.

‘Some bonds, they cannot be made however much we want them to be,’ Ba’ken told him. ‘The metal, you see. It was flawed. No matter how long I spent at the anvil, I could not re-forge it. Nothing could.’

Dak’ir’s expression darkened and his red eyes dimmed in what might have been regret.

‘Let’s not keep our brothers waiting any longer, Ba’ken.’

‘At your command,’ Ba’ken replied, unable to keep the hint of melancholy out of his voice. He had neglected to mention that he had kept the blade, in the hope he would one day restore it.

‘Or our new captain,’ Dak’ir concluded, stepping off the plinth and stalking away into the darkness.

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A Black Library Publication

‘Vulkan’s Shield’ first published as an audio drama in 2011
‘Hell Night’ first published in the Legends of the Space Marines anthology in 2010.
‘Fires of War’ first published in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology in 2009.
Salamander first published in 2009.
‘Fireborn’ first published as an audio drama in 2010.
‘Prometheus Requiem’ first published in the Fear the Alien anthology in 2010.
‘The Burning’ first published in the Black Library Live Chapbook 2010 in 2010.
Firedrake first published in 2010.
Nocturne first published in 2011.
‘Only Ash Remains’ first published in Tome of Fire in 2013.
‘Rite of Pain’ and ‘The Cage’ first published in Salamanders: The Omnibus in 2013.
‘The Firebrand’ first published in Tome of Fire in 2013.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Cheoljoo Lee.

Salamanders: The Omnibus © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Salamanders: The Omnibus, 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.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-939-3

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