Iron Warriors - The Omnibus

by Graham McNeill

  Honsou sensed their confusion and waited to see who would speak first.

  ‘Horus Lupercal?’ spat Grendel. ‘That Warmaster?’

  Honsou shook his head. ‘No, the Despoiler.’

  Grendel gave a harsh bark of laugher. ‘Then you’d best not heed her words, for they did Abaddon no good. That fool has been sent packing with his tail between his legs more times than I’ve killed the dogs of the Emperor.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that, Grendel,’ said Honsou, ‘but the Despoiler’s failings are his own. It was Moriana who guided him to the Blackstone Fortresses.’

  ‘The Gothic War?’ asked Vaanes.

  ‘So the Imperials call it, aye,’ agreed Honsou.

  ‘That was over eight hundred years ago, surely she must be dead.’

  ‘You think seers have no power to step outside the passage of time?’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to find out,’ said Vaanes. ‘Anyone who has cheated death for so long gathers ill-fate to them like crows to a battlefield.’

  ‘And how much longer than a mortal man have you lived, Ardaric Vaanes?’ asked Notha Etassay with a silky chuckle. ‘We are all harbingers of death here. You, me, Honsou. Grendel especially. And even this grotesquely ugly by-blow has existed far beyond its span.’

  ‘You’re a great comfort, you know that, Etassay?’ snapped Vaanes.

  ‘Enough,’ said Honsou. ‘We’re here.’

  The mouth of the cave was hung with talismans and fetishes that sang in the wind, tinkling musically as bone and glass swayed back and forth. Tendrils of aromatic smoke issued from the darkness, as though something vast and ancient dwelled within. The rocky mound stood inside a stunted grove of trees amid a withered glade, and to see such an approximation of living things was strange and unsettling.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Vaanes. ‘Do we go in?’

  ‘No,’ said Honsou. ‘I go in, you wait here.’

  ‘Suits me,’ said Grendel, staring in apprehension at the black maw of the cave.

  Honsou took a moment to gather his courage. He had faced the mightiest of champions of Chaos during the Skull Harvest, yet the prospect of marching into this cave to face this seer sent tremors of unease along his spine.

  ‘I will fear nothing,’ he whispered. ‘I am what others should fear.’

  Without a word to his subordinates, Honsou left them behind.

  The darkness of the cave swallowed him.

  Honsou’s eyes adjusted to the darkness slowly, the mechanics of his armour and the augmetic eye whirring as they sought to penetrate the unnatural gloom. He felt a moment’s dislocation, a sharp spike of dizziness, as he crossed the threshold of the cave, as though he had stepped from one realm and into another. He looked back over his shoulder, but instead of the reassuring silhouettes of his warriors against the bleak light of the nameless world, he saw only a deeper blackness.

  ‘Come farther, Honsou of the Iron Warriors,’ said a voice from the darkness.

  Honsou obeyed without hesitation, knowing on a deep, instinctual level that to disobey would be a terrible mistake. With each step he took into the cave, the more he saw of his surroundings, as though its occupant was choosing to only gradually reveal it to him.

  The walls were smooth stone, machine finished, and every inch was covered with tightly wound lettering, an entire library copied onto the rock. Yet more charms and fetishes hung from the ceiling, grotesque trophies torn from living bodies or crafted from their remains. Noxious candles flickered in bowls fashioned from the lids of skulls, and scrolls crafted from human skin were spread across tables of bone.

  Honsou had seen far worse in his time, and such petty cruelties were little more than shabby window dressing to frighten those who had not stared into the warp and seen true horror. A low fire burned in the centre of the cave with an amethyst light, and a hunchbacked creature squatted behind it. Honsou saw the figure was clad in what might once have been a hooded dress of vivid green, but which was now little more than a tattered, filthy shift.

  ‘You are Moriana?’ asked Honsou, removing his helmet and taking a breath of the foetid, herbal stench of the cave. The molten glass smell of the world beyond was gone, and beneath the fragrant poultices, Honsou could smell the reek of something long dead.

  The hunched figure rose from behind the fire and drew back her hood, revealing the crumpled face of an ancient crone with leprous flesh, cratered and pitted like the surface of a dead moon. Grey and pallid, her features were gnarled and ancient, her eyes gouged out long ago by some long-dead torturer, yet still weeping tears of blood.

  ‘Of course I am,’ wheezed the crone. ‘Who else would dwell in such a place?’

  ‘Then you know why I am here?’

  ‘I do,’ confirmed Moriana, spitting a black wad of phlegm as a hacking coughing fit bent her double. ‘You seek the Thrice Born.’

  ‘It’s real then?’ said Honsou, coming forward, his eagerness overcoming his natural caution. ‘Tell me where I can find it!’

  ‘Patience,’ wheezed Moriana. ‘All in good time.’

  ‘No,’ demanded Honsou. ‘Now.’

  Moriana laughed at his impatience and said, ‘The mightiest champions of the warp have sought my counsel, by what right do you dare come before me?’

  ‘By right of battle and by right of knowledge,’ said Honsou. ‘I know who you are and what you have done. I know you once stood in the presence of the corpse-emperor and I know why you fell from grace.’

  ‘You know nothing!’ said Moriana, spitting the words at him. ‘You read a few ancient tomes and you think that makes you wise? Yes, I stood before the golden throne, but a half-breed like you will never understand the truth of those times.’

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ snarled Honsou. ‘People who call me that end up dead.’

  ‘You think you can threaten me?’

  ‘Why not? I could kill you where you stand.’

  ‘Always with your kind it is threats,’ said Moriana, as though saddened by his predictability. ‘Mighty Abaddon thought to open my throat with the claw he took from Horus Lupercal’s corpse, but even he knew better. Others have come since then, and all have barked their empty threats. Listen well, half-breed, I have stared into the abyss and treated with the foulest monsters of the deepest dark, so I do not fear your petty torments.’

  Honsou swallowed his anger with difficulty. It sat ill with him to allow an insult to go unpunished, but without Moriana, his schemes of vengeance would come to nothing.

  ‘Very well,’ said Honsou. ‘Speak and I will listen.’

  ‘It is not enough simply to listen, Honsou. What will you offer in return for my help?’

  ‘Name your price,’ said Honsou. ‘Whatever you ask I will grant you.’

  ‘You are impetuous, Honsou, but I am never one to forego such an offer. I require only your word that you will see this through to the end, no matter what. When all others falter, you must not. When all hope is gone, you must remain true, for great deeds require great sacrifice.’

  ‘You have my word on it,’ promised Honsou.

  ‘The word of men is valueless,’ croaked Moriana. ‘Blood is the only thing that speaks true. Come closer.’

  Reluctantly, Honsou took a step towards the blinded seer, his lip curling in distaste as she lifted a hand to his face. The withered claw caressed his skin, long curling nails like talons encrusted with centuries of filth tracing a path over his features: his strong jaw line, his aquiline nose and the crude augmetic grafted to his skull where a bolter round had pulped the side of his face.

  Moriana snatched at him, slicing the skin of his cheek, and Honsou flinched, more in surprise than pain. Blood welled briefly from the cuts, running down Moriana’s curling nails as she brought them to her mouth. The seer’s tongue flickered out, like a snake’s, and she moaned in pleasure at the taste of his blood.

  ‘Ah…’ she sighed. ‘Yes, I feel the fire of your ambition, it reminds me of my own foolish dreams of youth, when all I could
see was the path before me and not the world around me.’

  ‘Then you will tell me what I want to know?’

  Moriana nodded, moving from beside the fire to where a stack of scrawled parchments, scrolls and dusty books were piled beside an obsidian statue of some nameless creature that defied identification. ‘I shall, but first… tell me what you know of the Thrice Born.’

  ‘Very little,’ admitted Honsou. ‘After the destruction of Khalan-Ghol, I emptied the libraries of the ruined fortress before taking the

  Warbreed

  from the Crooked Tower and setting off into the stars.’

  ‘You sought a weapon to use against your enemies,’ stated Moriana, lifting a wadded armful of leaves, roots and pouches towards the fire.

  ‘I did. The Warsmith before me was a meticulous records keeper, and since he had bound the Heart of Blood to his fortress, I hoped to find knowledge of other lords of the abyss I might bind to my cause.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘It was frustrating work, for each book was ancient beyond imagining. All were fragmentary, archaic and couched in language that defied easy interpretation.’

  ‘Many were penned around the time of the rebellion of Horus,’ explained Moriana. ‘Many men and women lived then to tell tales of those times, but none now remember them.’

  ‘I spent every waking moment with those books,’ continued Honsou, ‘and I had all but given up hope of finding anything of value when I came across an oblique reference to a daemon prince known as the Thrice Born, the father of the Blue Sun.’

  ‘Yes… the Keeper of the Red Word, M’kar.’

  ‘M’kar? That is its name?’

  ‘One of them,’ said Moriana. ‘A fiction to deal with mortals and protect its true name, but one it has gone by in these last few millennia. What else do you know of it?’

  Honsou hesitated, unwilling to show how little he had gleaned from the books of his former master, but sensing that to lie to Moriana would be dangerous in ways he couldn’t imagine.

  ‘Only that the Thrice Born is the bane of the Gatekeeper of Zalathras,’ said Honsou, letting his frustration show as Moriana crouched beside the purple fire. ‘And that it would rise again in the Time of Ending to wreak bloody revenge on those who paid homage to his sons.’

  ‘And do you know the identity of the Gatekeeper?’

  ‘I do,’ said Honsou. ‘Ardaric Vaanes told me of the Siege of Zalathras, a war fought a century ago on the southern arm of the Ghoul Stars. It’s said that Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines supposedly held a greenskin horde at bay for a day and a night. Ridiculous, of course, but just the sort of overblown nonsense Guilliman’s warriors would put about. And if the Thrice Born is the bane of the Ultramarines, then I want to know more of it.’

  ‘And that is all you know?’

  ‘I could learn little more, for the cunning or madness of the writers buried the secrets of the Thrice Born in allegory, metaphor and riddles.’

  ‘They were written to confuse the unwary or the unworthy. Only those with true vision could see the truth. So tell me, Honsou, do you have vision?’

  ‘I’m here aren’t I?’

  ‘Then tell me

  how

  you came here, for I make it my business not to be easily found.’

  ‘The prophecies of the Thrice Born wilfully contradict one another, and apocryphal tales spin lurid sagas of its depravities, but they all agree on one thing; that a former handmaiden of the Imperium’s master, who dwells in endless darkness on a nameless world, knows how to find it.’

  ‘That alone led you to me?’

  ‘The warp whispers your name, Moriana, and I am not without means to listen to its gibberings. The Newborn led us here, though I don’t know how it knew of this place.’

  ‘It knew because its mind is collapsing,’ said Moriana. ‘Its brain is a gestalt organ; a hybrid creation of a damaged child’s psyche, implanted doctrine, warp-spawned knowledge and stolen memories. An imperfect thing, it has begun to unravel since leaving New Badab, you must know that?’

  Honsou nodded. In the months since leaving the fortress world of Huron Blackheart, the Newborn had suffered agonising fits of madness and lucid nightmares of a life unlived.

  ‘Its mind is at war with itself,’ continued Moriana. ‘It is remembering things from its past life, but imprinted memes are slowly destroying what it once was. But more than that, it knew because the one you hate has been here before, and thus your creature knows of it.’

  ‘Ventris was here?’ hissed Honsou. ‘When?’

  ‘Less than two decades ago,’ said Moriana. ‘When he wore the armour of black, he and his warriors were sent here to kill me. Naturally, they failed.’

  Honsou fought to contain his excitement.

  ‘Tell me how I may find the Thrice Born,’ he demanded.

  ‘It last walked this realm many years ago,’ said Moriana, ‘when its host of the damned stormed the star fort

  Indomitable

  , a vast fortress anchored in the stars that rivals even the Blackstones coveted by the Despoiler. The Lord of the Ultramarines led his greatest warriors in battle, and they defeated the daemon prince, banishing his army to the warp where they await his return to the material realm.’

  ‘Then how do I summon the Thrice Born back?’

  ‘It cannot be summoned, for it was never banished.’

  ‘Speak plainly,’ said Honsou, tiring of the woman’s oblique answers.

  ‘M’kar was defeated, but the Lord of the Ultramarines was unable to destroy it, for the daemon was too strong, even for one such as he. Instead he and his allies imprisoned it within the molten heart of the

  Indomitable

  , bound with chains a thousand times stronger than adamantium. And while the mighty prince slumbers, his daemon army haunts the swells and currents of the warp in readiness for their master’s return.’

  ‘Where is this star fort?’

  Moriana smiled, a thin-lipped expression of triumph and venom. ‘It orbited a world with a poisoned sun, a world whose atmosphere was burned away in a long ago age of heroes.’

  ‘Calth…’ whispered Honsou.

  ‘You know this world?’

  ‘It is the home world of Ventris,’ said Honsou, feeling his skin flush with the thrill of a hunt nearing its end. Such synchronicity could not be accidental, and he felt himself closing in on his quarry like a flesh hound with the scent of blood in its nostrils.

  Honsou turned to leave, but Moriana’s words halted him in his tracks.

  ‘You think the Lord of the Ultramarines would be foolish enough to leave so dangerous a foe tethered to one of his dominion worlds? No, the

  Indomitable

  is long gone from Calth.’

  ‘Then where is it?’

  Moriana shrugged. ‘The Lord of the Ultramarines was cunning. To move so vast a leviathan is no small task, for it cannot move without help. A small fleet of ships attend it, like sucklings around a sow. The

  Indomitable

  jumps at random through the Empyrean, never stopping for long, and forever on the move. None save its master ever knows where it will appear next.’

  ‘So how do I find it?’ said Honsou bitterly.

  Moriana threw a handful of herbs and roots onto the fire, and Honsou gagged as the flames consumed them hungrily. Narcotic smoke billowed from the fire and he tasted the actinic tang of warp energy as it filled the cave.

  ‘So strong is M’kar’s hatred of Guilliman’s sons that no matter how distant a course its Navigators plot, the

  Indomitable

  remains forever shackled to Ultramar.’

  ‘That’s still a lot of space to search,’ said Honsou.

  ‘Only if you do not know where to look.’

  ‘Then tell me where I should look,’ demanded Honsou, tiring of Moriana’s evasiveness.

  ‘I cannot,’ said the blind seer, ‘but the denizens of the warp will know. Past, present and futu
re are all one in that realm of gods and monsters. They will know where you must go, for the daemon horde of M’kar watches over their master still…’

  TWO

  It began as a flickering point of unlight in the outer reaches of the Triplex system, a little travelled region of space at the furthest extent of Ultramar. Distant from Macragge and comprising only three uninhabited worlds, few cartographers even counted the Triplex system as part of the Ultramarines’ realm.

  That flicker of blackness, that veiled region of space where light was swallowed, expanded and swirled with colours radiating in spectra beyond those of the material universe. Like a needle pricking at a black cloth from a lighted room, more light spilled from the crack in reality until it grew wider and wider and eventually tore the curtain of space apart in a thunderous, silent explosion of light and inimical matter.

  A trio of blunt, wedge-nosed craft vomited through the tear, giant slabs of iron and stone worked into the form of enormous, columned fanes. Each was a kilometre long, an escort vessel decorated in the blue and gold of the Ultramarines, and each trailed a frothing scum of immaterial detritus. Sparkling clouds of waste matter spalled from their hulls, crackling and hissing as it slowly dissipated in the face of stubborn reality.

  In the midst of the escorts was a sleek, dart-shaped vessel whose sprawling silver and gold etchings along her forecastle named her the Omnis Videre. The proud ship bore the heraldry of the Castana family, one of the most respected Navigator clans of Terra, and a dynasty said to have served the Ultramarines since the earliest days of the Imperium.

  Behind the escorts and Navigator ship came a host of smaller craft, each similarly wreathed in wastelight from an alternate universe. Little more than giant plasma drives with a rudimentary crew compartment attached, six hundred of these tugboats trailed enormous iron chains with links fifteen metres thick.

  The tear in reality widened still further as something impossibly vast forced itself through, a huge, monstrous city in the stars that glittered with light. A colossal gothic basilica of iron spires, graceful flying buttresses, crenellated towers and golden statuary reared at its centre and towering martial structures spread outwards to its furthest extremities. Four mighty piers extended from the central basilica, each a carved metropolis of docking bays, temples, armament assemblies, impregnable bastions and weapon emplacements.