by George Mann
Daed hefted his axe and fixed his sights on a nearby daemon. ‘For Tauron!’ he bellowed, breaking into a charge, leaving muddy plumes in his wake.
‘For Corax!’ he heard a voice echo from close by, and his face creased into a wide, satisfied grin.
The disrobing chamber was shrouded in a thick, comfortable silence, broken only by the skritch-scratch of a knife tip working insistently back and forth across ceramite, and the distant, tortured sigh of the battle-barge’s warp engines.
Captain Aremis Koryn of the Raven Guard sat alone, observed by the dead stone eyes of a hundred primitive statues, each of them peering down at him from one of the shadowy alcoves that lined the edges of the chamber.
All around him lay the carefully placed pauldrons, vambraces, and chest panels of his venerable armour, every inch of its surface etched with the names of the long-dead veterans who had once worn it before him. A little pool of corvia – the bleached skulls of ravens, carried to honour those who had died in combat – lay beside the armour, bound by fine silver chain.
Koryn was wrapped in a loose-fitting cotton robe, the ghostly-white flesh of his chest, shoulders and arms exposed as he sat on the cool marble floor, hunched over one of the pauldrons, worrying away with his blade. His black eyes flicked towards the open doorway at the sound of movement from the passageway outside.
‘Come, Cordae. Your loitering makes me ill at ease.’
The Chaplain stalked slowly into the room, his heavy boot steps ringing out like bolter fire in the empty space. ‘I thought you had come here to make preparations for the deployment?’ said Cordae, standing over Koryn so that his shadow fell across the captain’s work.
Koryn stilled his hand and glanced up at the Chaplain. Cordae was still clad in his full battledress, his ebon armour adorned with the skeletal remains of a giant Kiavahran roc. The creature’s ribcage formed a brace across his chest, its wings were spread upon his jump pack as if in stilted flight and its skull leered at Koryn like a grim, jutting death mask. Cordae cocked his head in a gesture that mimicked the creature whose spirit he claimed to share. Koryn could not recall the time when he had last seen Cordae without the macabre totems.
‘I did,’ replied Koryn simply, and returned to his work.
Cordae did not move. After a moment, he spoke again. ‘I fear you place too much trust in Captain Daed and the Librarian, Theseon. They have all but taken us captive upon this barge. We labour under the illusion of freedom, captain, but this place is, in truth, a prison.’
‘We must place our faith in our brothers, Cordae,’ replied Koryn, his voice low and even. ‘They fight in the name of the Emperor. Their methods may seem brittle and unfamiliar – ignorant, even – but nevertheless, their motivations remain sound.’
‘Can you be sure?’ asked Cordae, and it was clear he was not.
Koryn glanced up at Cordae. ‘I am sure,’ he said, sharply. ‘I will hear no argument. We do what we must. Gideous Krall and his foul cadre of traitors must be destroyed, before the whole of the Sargassion Reach succumbs to their blight, their sickness.’
Cordae made a gesture that might have been a shrug, or a nod of acquiescence. ‘I understand that Krall has fashioned a floating cathedral from bone and rotten flesh,’ said Cordae. ‘It sits amongst a flotilla of smaller warships, formed from the lashed-together remains of bloated plague corpses and the abandoned vessels of daemons that have returned to the warp.’
‘They shall all burn,’ said Koryn, with conviction. ‘The light of the Emperor shall banish them.’
‘We are few, captain,’ said Cordae, with a note of warning. ‘Even counting the Brazen Minotaurs amongst our allies.’
‘Then we shall fight harder, and longer, and with greater conviction than our enemies,’ replied Koryn.
‘You speak with the confidence of one who foresees the future, with the certainty that we will triumph. And yet, here you sit, alone and stripped of your armour, scratching your name into a pauldron with the end of a blunted dagger instead of preparing for war. Your actions do not mirror your words.’
Koryn glowered at the Chaplain. He knew what Cordae was doing. Koryn was being tested. This was Cordae’s way of preparing him for the trials to come.
‘I am etching my name alongside those of my ancestors. It is an honourable pursuit,’ said Koryn. ‘This is how I am preparing for battle.’
‘Aren’t the artificers supposed to do that when you’re dead?’ asked Cordae, bluntly.
‘We’re about to mount a boarding action against the enemy’s orbital fortress and attempt to smuggle a living bomb deep inside their leader’s palace of flesh and bone,’ replied Koryn. ‘None of us are coming back, Cordae. The artificers won’t ever lay their hands upon my armour.’
‘Yet you speak of victory and the light of the Emperor,’ said Cordae.
‘I speak the truth. I am nothing if not pragmatic. I do not wish to die without adding my name to those of my forebears. My honour demands it. Their spirits walk with me, Cordae, just as you share your armour with the spirit of the roc whose bones you wear. I cannot lead our brothers to victory unless I know that my ancestors are by my side. Unless I know that when I die, I cannot join them in honour.’
‘It is not your ancestors that worry me,’ said Cordae, ‘but our allies.’
‘I will hear no more of this, Cordae,’ said Koryn, sternly. ‘You shall not shake me from the path I have chosen.’
‘Then my work here is done,’ replied Cordae. ‘We shall die together, brother, side by side in glorious battle, as we smite the enemies of mankind.’ He placed a gauntleted hand upon Koryn’s naked shoulder. ‘I shall leave you to your preparations,’ he said, then turned and quit the chamber.
The test was over. Koryn was unsure whether or not he had passed.
He waited until the sound of the Chaplain’s footsteps had died away, before making the last few strokes with the tip of his blade.
He placed the pauldron on the floor beside its twin and stood, tucking the knife into his belt.
‘Calix. I wish to dress for battle!’ he called, and immediately heard the serf scuttling along the passageway vacated only moments before by Cordae.
Soon he would be ready. It was, he knew, going to be a glorious death.
He glanced at the pauldron, at the words AREMIS KORYN roughly hewn into the black ceramite, and smiled.
About the Author
George Mann is an author and editor based in the East Midlands. For Black Library, he is best known for his stories featuring the Raven Guard, which include the audio dramas Helion Rain and Labyrinth of Sorrows, the novella The Unkindness of Ravens, plus a number of short stories.
An extract from ‘Blood Oath’ by Phil Kelly, taken from Damocles
A thousand decapitated heads. One for every battle-brother in the Chapter.
By the time they had left Tarotian IV, the Third Company’s kill count had been closer to a million. He had killed over a hundred rebels himself. It was often the case. But like all White Scars, Kor’sarro knew the value of symbolism, and a round thousand was enough to make the point.
He wanted to be there to see them. An ending, of a sort, a cauterising of the wounds the Chapter had sustained on Tarotian IV.
Kor’sarro Khan stared out into the heat haze of Plain Zhou. From his vantage point within the highest eyrie in the fortress-monastery, it felt like he could see to the edges of the world. His topknot of greasy black hair flew erratically in the thermals, its thick strands mimicking the victory pennants waving high above.
Though the khan’s narrowed eyes flicked from scrub to bunker to a herd of stallions galloping in the distance, his hands had their attention elsewhere. Calloused fingers worked mechanically but precisely at the balcony’s edge, always in motion. The tip of the khan’s curved dagger scratched like an awl, carving the Khorchin word for ‘seeking’ onto the side of a dormant b
olt shell.
Forty-nine more of the deadly little cylinders shone in the evening sun, ranged along the balcony neat as dominoes. Those to the khan’s left were finished, and those to his right were bare. Three full crates hid in the shadow of the buttress arch, the tiny golden curls of swarf around their bases rolled back and forth by a playful wind.
The thud-stride-thud of Sudabeh crossing the eyrie yurut’s rugs in full battleplate made the khan’s cheek twitch. He placed the last of the unfinished shells to one side.
‘Sunning yourself between hunts, my khan?’ said the newcomer.
‘Stormseer. Your… gifts.’ Kor’sarro looked at the sky for a second. ‘They are wasted here.’
‘Anyone with half a nostril could tell that you’ve been standing in the sun. If you ever run out of promethium, you could scrape your skin and use the run-off to feed Moondrakkan’s engine instead.’
‘Ha!’ shouted the khan, grinning and clenching his fist in triumph as if Sudabeh had helped him solve a difficult problem. He would not take the Stormseer’s bait today, he was in too good a mood for it.
Like all White Scars, Kor’sarro loved to feel the play of the elements first hand. For the last three hours he had been meditating in the boiling heat of Quan Zhou, clad in little more than loose white fatigues. His olive leather-like skin practically glowed, shining with oily sweat.
The khan raised a thick bare arm covered in zigzag scars, revealing a tuft of armpit hair that protruded from the sutured edge of his torsal glove. ‘Have a proper sniff then, naysmith.’
‘I respectfully decline your generous proposal,’ said Sudabeh, using the formal Chogorian dialect. Both men chuckled, two sets of white teeth sparkling in the sun. They had been Space Marines long enough to know that moments of humanity were to be treasured, no matter how simple. In fact the simpler they came, the better.
The khan pulled a cube of meat the size of his fist from one of the ammunition crates, picking off the largest bits of swarf before taking a massive bite. He turned to face his old friend, stale blood running down his long black moustache as he chewed loudly. Eyebrows knitted in mock concern, he motioned the Stormseer forward, his frown fading to a wet red grin.
Shaking his head in resignation, Sudabeh joined his captain on the balcony. He looked up at his distorted reflection in the silvered, eyeless skulls that were spitted on pikes along the balcony’s edge. Most of the trophies were human-sized, but the largest was the size of a Land Speeder.
To the south, a large gunmetal lander was lowering its bulk towards the perimeter of Third Bronze Yurut. The squat ship’s backblast sent waves of plains-dust outwards in concentric circles before its striped underskeleton finally touched down.
‘Cargo?’ asked Sudabeh, squinting through the dust.
‘Trophies,’ the khan replied around a mouthful of raw meat.
The bulk lander’s front jaw lowered with a distant hiss of hydraulics. One at first, then a dozen, then hundreds upon hundreds of human heads poured down the ramp towards the yurut wall. Though the first to emerge bounced and rolled as if freshly taken from the neck, those spilling over the rear part of the lander’s jaw slopped over in a state of advanced decomposition. Their smell was unpleasant on the wind, but the khan’s stomach growled in appreciation nonetheless.
‘Heretics,’ said the khan, savouring the word. ‘Tarotian IV.’
Sudabeh nodded thoughtfully. He watched the servitor work teams retrieve the disembodied heads by the armful and dump them onto the vector carriages parked along the bronze yurut’s walls. Inside each carriage, wizened eyethieves rode the cupolas upwards towards the lances that jutted up from the wall’s crest. As they went, they took it in turns to stoke the carriage’s braziers and burn each trophy’s sockets clean with a length of red-hot iron.
Out past the dropsite, steed-beasts broke from distant herds. They galloped in to fall upon those heads left unattended, gnawing strips of meat from faces and scalps before the low blast of the lander’s horns drove them away. Part of Kor’sarro longed to be back in the saddle at the head of his tribe, hurling his spear into the flank of some doe-eyed zellion or marauding felid with a taste for human flesh.
‘Spit it out, then,’ said Kor’sarro.
‘My khan?’
‘You didn’t hide your scars under battleplate just to come out here and bait me, Stormseer. My temper’s not that tight.’
‘Of course,’ said Sudabeh, his tone suddenly formal. ‘The astropathic choir has a message for you, my khan. The Third Company is needed on Agrellan immediately. We are to eradicate a tau infestation, as loudly and as memorably as possible.’
‘Out of the question,’ replied Kor’sarro, but there was doubt under his tone. ‘You told me yourself, the Tarot indicates that Blackheart’s renegades draw closer with every passing hour. We are needed here, to defend our home world.’
‘Our elders have decided that our duty lies elsewhere, my khan,’ said Sudabeh. ‘Many other companies are ready to repel the Red Corsairs. Chogoris will endure without us, I can feel it. Quan Zhou will stand.’
A wordless pause stretched out, both men staring upwards as if Huron Blackheart’s fleet would glimmer into being at any moment.
‘Tau,’ sighed the khan. ‘So we face their cursed weapon-magicks again.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sudabeh. ‘I believe they seek to use the planet Agrellan as a staging post in order to seize the mineral-rich tithe worlds on the cusp of the Damocles Gulf.’
‘Agrellan,’ the khan continued, fingering his long moustache. ‘Dovar System, yes?’
‘Correct again.’
‘Ha. Terrain?’
‘Unremarkable, for the most part. Technically a hive world, but mostly scorched deserts and open plains.’
The khan’s grisly smile reappeared, bits of meat bleeding between his teeth.
‘Anything else?’
‘It’s haunted,’ said Sudabeh, matter-of-factly. ‘The place was subject to Exterminatus centuries ago. The Malleus alone know why.’
‘No doubt they do. The stain of Chaos is not easily erased.’
‘As you say. Reading between the lines of the data-slate, it seems the virus bombs left a highly toxic legacy. The planet still bears the marks of its former death, both physically and spiritually.’
‘Ghosts, then,’ said the khan, shrugging. ‘Common enough.’
‘Not these ones,’ the Stormseer replied.
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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Prey first published in 2012.
Helion Rain first published as an audio drama in 2011.
With Baited Breath first published as an audio drama in 2012.
Old Scars first published in 2012.
Labyrinth of Sorrows first published as an audio drama in 2012.
The Unkindness of Ravens first published in 2012.
By Artifice, Alone first published in 2013.
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