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Void King – Extract

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‘We are sworn to Him.

By bond of blood.

By Letter of Marque,

And Warrant of Trade.

To claim the all-encompassing void,

For sacred Mankind, in all her terrible wonder.

To push further.

To fight harder.

To strive, not for glory alone.

Not for empty plunder, nor hollow profit.

We are the vanguard, a light in the black.

Oath-sworn, solemn.

We are the Davamir Compact.’

– The Words of the First King

CHAPTER ONE

The Summons Home

Erastus Lamertine lived his days beneath the eyes of the long dead.

There was almost no part of the upper reaches of the Cradle that were not adorned with the sombre ouslite busts and death masks of the kings and queens who had gone before. The eyes seemed to follow him, sometimes sparkling with precious gems or gold embellishment. Servo-skulls, cherubs and stranger constructs drifted past the higher plinths from which the statues glowered, and so there seemed an unnatural motion to them.

He did not glance up as he passed beneath the sharp features of a Helvintr death mask, the scars carved into the plaster with almost savage relish, or the captured preening of a Radrexxus bust. He had lived within the great station for so many years now that he could recite their names and titles all in turn. He could keep his way by them as he navigated the ancient, winding halls. The weight of the place’s history had been etched into him, soul-deep lines that even rejuvenat could not fully hide.

His meandering path had carried him from the core of the station, the Bladespire, through the Arches of Victory and the Halls of the Lost, till he arrived here, at the Starlit Marches. The great viewports looked out across the gnarled docking spurs and their relentless activity. Ships of the line crowded in, jostling for space like pugilists. The crimson light of the Davamir star caught on the bladed prows of the ships and the outermost spires of the station, casting it as bloody as the ambition that had forged them all.

And before it, silhouetted in the light cast by the flurry of movement beyond, stood his father. Davos Lamertine gazed out, his expression fixed. His entire weight was hunched forward, balanced on the cane that was less and less an affectation. The silvered tip of it rocked back and forth in the marble, and Erastus wondered if it might wear some impossible groove there.

‘Father?’ he said. His voice felt insufficient in the vast silence of the space. Once again he was reduced to little more than a cadet in his father’s sanctum, his words weak and wavering. The older man turned, regarding him with his cold grey eyes. He did not smile. His dark skin did not crinkle with any form of paternal recognition, the pale scars on his cheeks were not lessened by joy. His frown remained, his disappointment as pointed as it had always been.

‘Erastus.’

He felt his father’s scrutiny pass from him, and return to the bustle of the docks.

‘They have come,’ Davos whispered, almost as though he thought Erastus could not hear him. ‘But so few.’ He shook his head. ‘It is to be expected. Whether kept from us by a wall of fire, or bound up in their own ambitions. So many of our fellows prove themselves lacking. How long since the Draiks walked amongst us, eh? They spurned us again – committed to the west, they say. As though there were anything of worth.’

‘Who has actually answered the summons?’ Erastus spoke carefully, measuring his every word. His father’s scrutiny did not settle upon him again; the old man’s gaze swept back and forth, in time with the tapping of his cane.

‘Look there.’ Davos pointed. ‘The Wyrmslayer Queen.’ He laughed. ‘Of all those who come to us, it is the savages who rush to the fore.’ His gaze drifted. ‘Radrexxus comes, though likely only to gloat of his latest trade endeavour, or what new alchemical concoction graces his veins. The Astraneus? None trust them, or their bastard faith, but they have power. Influence.’ He paused, considering.

‘Surely there are more than three?’ Erastus asked.

‘Oh yes,’ his father said. ‘The shepherds of men come.’

‘The Torvanders?’

‘The very same. A son and a daughter, both of their lesser stock.’ He scoffed as he spoke, gesturing to a heaving mass conveyer as it disgorged a tide of grey-robed multitudes. The edges of the immense vessel still sparkled with old gilding, though it seemed tarnished and bronzed in the harsh starlight. ‘All pilgrim piety and recrimination. Useful enough if you want to move men, but ultimately? An empty gesture.’

‘Is there anyone you actually approve of?’ Erastus said. ‘Anyone whose support doesn’t come with caveats, or concerns?’

‘You cannot approve of any of them,’ Davos said. There was a sudden edge of iron in his voice. ‘They may be peers, they may be useful, but they are not our allies. Not in truth. Point them at a target, and they may play the tame hunting pack, but their teeth are ever aimed at our throats.’ He paused. ‘Your sister knew that well enough.’

Another hand-me-down lesson, Erastus thought, ill-fitting and worn through.

He ignored it. ‘Your choice of metaphor is telling, though. I didn’t think you were afraid of anything, let alone the huntresses of Helvintr.’

That brought a dry chuckle from his father. His mirth had curdled of late, grown as dark as the broken galaxy beyond their fief. ‘I do not fear.’

Erastus could see his fingers grow white around the eagle’s head of the cane. Tightening and loosening, as though he sought to convince himself as much as his ersatz son.

‘They are almost beasts themselves, running the stars the way their ancestors rode the ice seas. The chill of the winter world is in them, and the fire of the Wolf’s Eye. We forget that at our peril.’

Erastus nodded. ‘I know, Father–’

‘Do you?’ Davos snapped. ‘Do you truly understand, when you have slunk around the corners of our family? When you have no honour save that tarnished by your grasping attempts at advancement?’

Erastus flinched back as though struck.

‘We have lost so much, and our rivals gather. Called by my hand, yes, but with their knives ready for my back. And you tell me you know? The stakes have never been higher.’

‘Forgive me, Father,’ Erastus said. He held back from abasing himself. He looked at his father as though seeing him for the first time, in the light he had cast across Erastus’ entire life. The starched, pale blue military uniforms, never ostentatious or ever truly wielding the grandeur of his position. He was a man and a warrior before he was a king. Or a father.

Davos turned, striding past his son without a backward glance. The confrontation seemed to have enlivened him, his cane barely touching the floor as he moved away from the crystalflex panels and into the corridors of power.

‘How did you do it, Ev?’ Erastus wondered aloud. Evelyne, his sister, had been the heir, and so had borne the brunt of their father’s favour. The storms of wrath and disappointment seemed never to faze her. She did not merely weather them, or survive them, she thrived under the stern eye of their patriarch. Yet she had never let his attitude taint her, not truly.

He watched a while longer, as the ships crowded in, like supplicants. Locked to the bloated structure of the Cradle by docking gantries and arterial lines of fuel, they haemorrhaged men and took on materiel in the fitful osmosis that ensued whenever a vessel berthed. He could see knots of colour as crews gathered, congealing around leaders as they awaited the true permission to come aboard.

To be received into the court of the Void King of the Davamir Compact.

CHAPTER TWO

Wolves and Other Predators

The old dynasties gathered, and if they felt any exasperation at being summoned they did not show it. The docks teemed with rival houses and their sworn kinsmen as they ducked beneath the shadows cast by the cranes and clearance towers. Alarums and tocsins blared as workers tried to push through the thronging masses of armsmen and crew, while servitors trundled forwards laden with supply crates. A few of the crewmen were almost crushed beneath the lobotomised advance of the cyborgs, who chirruped emptily as they plodded across the rockcrete.

‘Compliance.’ ‘Compliance.’ ‘Compliance.’

The huntress watched their progress and held back a smile. Homecoming, such as it was, was ever bittersweet. Every time she bestrode the great station and its storied halls, she was reminded of the legacy of the Compact. She had borne its weight upon her shoulders and passed it on, yet every time she returned the burden was renewed.

Katla Helvintr stood upon a gantry extruding from the side of her vessel, the Wyrmslayer Queen, and watched as each of the dynasty’s ships emptied.

Officers barged through the crowds, barking orders and waving their symbols of command. Some, of her own dynasty, bore runes woven into the leather of their uniforms, while others brandished golden batons as tokens of rule. A gaggle of black-robed figures held their hands aloft in the shape of the holy aquila, drawing others of their kind to them by dint of faith alone. As one, the clutch of worshippers went on their knees and bowed in worship before the mighty edifice that now carried them.

The Cradle was truly as ancient as it was massive. The station had grown as organically as it had been able to in the millennia since the Great Crusade, slowly drawing other vessels into its fabric with a near-parasitic relish. Not with the crawling chaos of a space hulk, but with a measured and considered hunger to be complete. At the core of the station, so tradition held, the great flagship of the First King waited. Time had rendered it massive and mighty, transforming it gradually into the majesty of the Bladespire. Even now it exuded strength and domination, whether it was aweing the human swarm disembarking upon it or the Davamir System itself.

It was, above all else, a seat of power, a throne in mimicry of greater thrones. Some might have thought that blasphemy in a system so close to Holy Terra, but the Compact had no such shame. As the pilgrims raised themselves up and advanced, they passed beneath a gilded archway inscribed with the words: By my hand are they cast into the stars, and thus the stars reclaimed.

Standard bearers lurched forward as they steadied their banners in the artificial breeze of immense air-recyc engines, the ironweave fabric snapping. There was the sombre grey of the Helvintrs, crimson spears crossed beneath the snarling visage of a wolf. Those who bore it wore leather masks twisted into the features of beasts. They strutted almost arrogantly, the ferrules of their banner-poles slamming into the decking in an incessant tattoo. As they asserted themselves, the other crewmen fell in behind them. They formed ranks of grey, purple, black, bronze and brown. There was a ritual to it; an order.

One by one, they marched under the golden arch and the great doors of the docking bays slid open. Iron and silver glimmered, as golden light flooded from beyond. Like a welcome.

The Hall of Equals was vast, like an immense senate chamber. Row upon row of seating had been prepared around long tables of cool, black marble. Attendants were making the final touches, ensuring that every seat had its place, with glasses and platters at each stance.

All of them were within sight of the dais, where Davos sat. His posture was straight against the gilded back of the throne, and his cane lay against one of its arms. He reached up and adjusted the glossy black circlet of the Umbral Crown. It caught the light in odd ways, distorting it to strange angles. The starlight was directed through the glassaic windows in the upper galleries, illuminating the dais with the crimson radiance of the Davamir star. Light was sacred here. Under the light of this star, the Compact had been forged; in its sight, the Emperor had empowered them. Murals around the chamber displayed Him as the gathered dynasts knelt before Him, alongside the stylised images of the fleets as they cast out amidst the Great Crusade.

To one side of the throne there sat another chair: less ornate, like an echo of the seat of power. In better days, before the Rift, Evelyne would have sat there, the better to learn at her father’s right hand.

Erastus stood off to one side, watching the proceedings. His father raised a hand and men rushed to attend his every whim. He did not envy his father his power. Frankly, the idea of wielding it terrified him. He crossed his arms across his chest and leant back against the cool stone of a column. If his father saw him, he gave no sign.

Erastus had grown accustomed to this peculiar form of stealth. For so long he had languished low in the hierarchy, barely considered as an officer, let alone an asset. He had slowly made himself useful, though, even if his father could not appreciate it. He had compromised.

He had reached out to his opposite numbers in other dynasties, or in trade concerns. Fixers. Men of charm and confidence – the kind of assets his father despised having to use. His father relied on his own personal charisma, born of might and fear, to cow and direct those he made use of. He had no sense of compromise, no understanding of what was required to truly forge lasting bonds. For his father, respect was something to be taken, not truly earned.

Erastus was about to cross the room when bells began to toll somewhere in the vaulted ceiling. He turned, looking to the door. Horns sounded, not in onerous mourning or discordant skirl. Their roar was a howl, near bestial, a primal rhythm coaxed up by musicians whose craft lay in goading the Helvintr troops to battle-readiness. Mechanisms clattered, adding to the surreal chorus, as the doors to the chamber began to open. They folded inwards, gilt surfaces shimmering in the light of the hall’s braziers. Erastus looked back in time to see his father’s features sharpen and fix into a smile.

The wolves were amongst them.

At the head of the pack, for there was no better word for the rabble of crew, came Katla Helvintr. She stalked into the hall with a grace and confidence which belied her wounds. Like a conquering hero, she advanced, raising her fists in greeting. Her retainers slammed their own fists against their breasts or pounded at leathern drums in response. They cheered their chieftain, their jarl, their queen. The air turned electric and urgent, almost tribal, yet riven through with hints of the void’s cold.

Her eyes sparkled, the blue of storm-tossed seas, set in a face rendered magnificent through ruin. Its left half was pitted and scarred with the touch of bio-acid. Whatever beast had done this to her, whatever mighty slaying had remade her, was lost to legend. Far from diminishing her, it had made her seem mightier. Artfully inked tattoos had been woven across the scar tissue, depicting the skeletal visage of a wolf. The half-death-mask leered at them with its human eye, passing from Erastus to settle upon his father. She smirked, and her hands dropped to run through the shock of auburn hair which remained on the unscarred side of her head.

‘My king!’ she declared, deigning to bow. ‘The Helvintr Dynasty returns to the Cradle at your summons. We bear fealty in our hearts, and gifts from the Wild Hunt amidst the Emperor’s realm. Do you welcome us to your hearth?’

‘You are welcome, Jarl Helvintr, to my hall and hearth.’ Davos inclined his head. There was no truth in his smile as he leant forward. ‘How fare the edges of the Imperium? How goes the hunt?’

‘The hunt is stranger now than ever before.’ She laughed. ‘The galaxy burns, and all is cast to the wind. Beasts grow bolder. Wilder.’ She flashed her teeth in a furious grin. ‘And we relish it. Our forebears would be proud. The Season of Fire has made its way to the stars, and stirred even the mightiest of kraken from their lairs. I say, let them come.’

‘As you say.’ His features had tightened, set into a smile that did not reach his eyes. Likewise there was no true joy in her grin, only the echo of the void.

Even here, Erastus realised, she was still hunting.

Katla raised her hand and one of her throng broke ranks, moving to stand at her side. The newcomer had a warrior’s bearing as she swaggered to primacy, her blonde braids shaking with the motion. She looked up at Davos without fear, wearing her resolve as proudly as she displayed her bloodline.

‘You remember my daughter, Astrid? My second spear.’ The other woman bowed as Katla spoke, and Erastus turned to watch his father’s reaction. The forced smile was gone, replaced by one that bordered upon the indulgent.

‘I remember. You have raised a fine warrior.’ He paused. ‘A noble heir.’

‘Ah,’ Katla said, as though realising for the first time. ‘Of course. You have my sympathies on the loss of your daughter. She was a credit to your line.’ She gestured to where Erastus stood. ‘As, I am sure, is your son.’

Davos did not follow her glance. He did not acknowledge Erastus or dignify her remarks with a response.

‘Be seated,’ he said. ‘Enter this hall as peers, for though we stand mighty in the Imperium, we are as equals in this place. Bound by blood and oath to the Compact.’

‘Bound by blood and oath,’ the crew repeated. They filed into the first row of seats, as the standard bearers stowed their banners at one end of the great tables.

‘Who comes next?’ Davos asked. Erastus could hear the weariness breaking the façade. ‘Who will honour us?’

Erastus moved round the edges of the chamber as the parade of rogue traders continued. Where the Lamertines and the Helvintrs were unmistakably martial, others had taken more diverse routes to power. The Lord Technologist, Absalom Norastye, clattered into the hall on a small plinth carried on dozens of ceaseless mechanical feet. He regarded Davos with his gleaming augmetic eyes, turning every glance into a crimson glare. Even so, he bowed low, lacing his steel fingers into the sign of the cog, before flourishing them into the aquila. Like many of the rogue trader dynasties which spanned the galaxy, Absalom Norastye had not been born into such privilege. Where the Helvintrs, Lamertines or the Radrexxus were familial organisations, others such as the modern iteration of the Norastye had ascended through service. Absalom had been a humble explorator once – before his long years of service had culminated in his ascension to rank.

‘Our oaths are iron, my king. Norastye answers the summons.’

When they had passed to their allotted place, there came the moribund procession of the Astraneus. Erastus shuddered to look at them. They were a strange breed, lank and pale in the manner of many voidborn, but it was their faith that truly set them apart. Erastus knew little of the Church of the Shrouded Emperor, save that they honoured Him as being in the dark of the void as much as the light of the stars.

‘We come to you, in fidelity and revelation. We bear His light, and His shadow.’ Delvetar Astraneus spoke in a low whisper, mercifully amplified by the vox-grid woven into their black hood. In them the pallor of the bloodline was more pronounced, almost luminous around blackened lips. The Arch-Lecter closed their heavily lidded eyes, tilted back their head, and a low chorus built behind them as the entire congregation began their hymn.

Oh blade of light, oh shield of night…

They carried it back to their tables, even as Davos reached up and cradled the side of his head as though in pain, or exasperation. Erastus could empathise. He slunk beneath the gemstone-lined fabric of a tapestry, still skirting the edges of the chamber.

There was another rustling of robes, as another group glided into the room.

If the Astraneus were a dark reflection of conventional Imperial faith, then the Torvanders were the crystallisation of it. Mara and Barisan Torvander affected the look of humble, simple souls. Their robes were white, though as rough-spun as any penitent’s, and they wore gold bracelets in place of a supplicant’s chains. Each wore an ornate aquila necklace at their throat, and they bowed low in greeting to their king. They did not waste time with song, or idle threats. They simply walked to their places, and were silent.

They were a newer addition to the Compact; their father had once served as a worthy seneschal, and had been granted a Warrant for his service. Now he spent his heirs and hangers-on with the eagerness of a merchant prince, as though he could merely buy position with hoarded gold and curdled piety. They kept their heads low, and their expressions sombre, barely even looking at the finery which practically dripped from the walls.

You’ll enjoy that, Father, Erastus thought. Finally, someone here knows the place you expect them to occupy.

A sudden fanfare broke him from his thoughts. Where the Helvintr horns had been the baying of wolves, these were more the bugles of the parade ground. The clamour of drums went up, orderly and well drilled. A voice cut across the vastness of the hall, vox-amplified and ecstatic.

‘All hail the lord admiral, Lord Radrexxus, Lord Gunther of that most noble house! Bearing the glory of ages, and the blood of kings! He who walks in the Emperor’s true sight! Hail! Radrexxus! Hail!’

The ranks of armsmen that paraded through the central aisle were joyous as they played their instruments. Pipes skirled and wailed alongside the relentless percussion. They stopped ahead of the dais and parted as a figure swaggered forward. He was a storm of motion, of fluttering purple silks and a haze of perfumed air. He bowed low, ostentatiously flailing his arms as he did so. When he looked up again, his pale green eyes sparkled – one orbed with a gleaming gold monocle. Runtish attendants hurried up behind him, holding the long tails of his frock coat up off the ground, as though the vaunted lord admiral was too good for the sacred decking of the Cradle. At his side came Maximillian, his major-domo – black-clad and sombre as a headsman. Where Gunther was a constant, riotous blur, Maximillian was stolid. Stable. Focused.

‘Davos!’ Gunther Radrexxus beamed as he raised a hand sinfully adorned with rings to adjust the folds of his powdered periwig. ‘It has been far too long, an eternity!’ He flounced melodramatically, and Erastus could practically hear his father’s eyes roll.

‘Indeed, Lord Radrexxus. Be welcome.’

‘Most gracious,’ Gunther said. His eyes were wild with amusement.

And who knows how many narcotics, thought Erastus, as the lord admiral nodded with new enthusiasm and led his crews to their places.

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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 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 Jodie Muir.

Void King © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. Void King, 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: 978-1-80026-725-1

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To my parents, who always read to me,
and for my wife  – who now reads with me.
And for Whiskey, our own new little Void King.

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