Scythes of the Emperor Read online

  Backlist

  More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library

  The Beast Arises

  1: I AM SLAUGHTER

  2: PREDATOR, PREY

  3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS

  4: THE LAST WALL

  5: THRONEWORLD

  6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR

  7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN

  8: THE BEAST MUST DIE

  9: WATCHERS IN DEATH

  10: THE LAST SON OF DORN

  11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR

  12: THE BEHEADING

  Space Marine Battles

  WAR OF THE FANG

  A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang

  THE WORLD ENGINE

  An Astral Knights novel

  DAMNOS

  An Ultramarines collection

  DAMOCLES

  Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare

  OVERFIEND

  Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master

  ARMAGEDDON

  Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire

  Legends of the Dark Millennium

  ASTRA MILITARUM

  An Astra Militarum collection

  ULTRAMARINES

  An Ultramarines collection

  FARSIGHT

  A Tau Empire novella

  SONS OF CORAX

  A Raven Guard collection

  SPACE WOLVES

  A Space Wolves collection

  Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Map

  The Aegidan Oath

  Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Heloth

  Reclamation

  Daedalus

  Terminal Velocity

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘The Eye of Ezekiel’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Warhammer 40,000

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  The Aegidan Oath

  ‘I could count myself a king of infinite space,

  Were it not that I have bad dreams.’

  – from Amulet, Prince Demark (attributed to the dramaturge Shakespire), circa M2

  The strips of parchment darkened quickly upon the brazier coals, the heat curling their edges and setting hungry flames over the illuminated script that marked each one.

  As the three Space Marines watched, the words of their primarch were erased. Forgotten. Consigned to the murk of history as surely as if they had never been written.

  Indeed, there were those who would deny that they ever had been written. The laws of men had finally overridden the word of the demi-gods, and the universe seemed so much more hollow and uncaring for it.

  Oberdeii stared into the fire.

  ‘I am an oath-breaker,’ he murmured to no one in particular. ‘No matter what happens from this moment on, that truth will remain with me until the end of my days.’

  The halls of the orbital platform were dark, the beacon lights spinning reluctantly to life only as the craft passed the atmospheric threshold. Tarpaulins hung from the gaunt silhouettes of several decommissioned shuttles, their frayed edges stirred for the first time in months by the downdraft of the Thunderhawk’s manoeuvring thrusters, with empty storage bins and cargo crates stacked well beyond the operational grid-lines marked out on the deck. The pilot, Brother Wenlocke, eyed each obstacle through the frost-rimed armourglass of the canopy, easing the gunship into position as carefully as he could in the gloom.

  One of the landing struts grazed an abandoned tool bench, sending a brace of oily engine parts clattering to the floor as the dropship touched down. The Space Marine cursed.

  ‘This is a wretched disgrace. Could no one have cleared the landing bays for our arrival?’

  Remaining where he stood behind the empty co-pilot’s seat, Segas ran his tongue over his teeth and sniffed. ‘No one knew we were coming,’ he replied, ‘and there are precious few personnel still stationed here, anyway. I doubt that cleaning up their predecessors’ mess was ever high on their list of priorities.’

  Cycling the engines down, Wenlocke turned. ‘Forgive me, my lord Chaplain, but we travel with the authority of the Chapter Master himself in this matter. Does that not count for anything? We might at least have let them know the purpose of our visit ahead of time, and they could have prepared what we need.’

  Segas shook his head.

  ‘No, brother. We cannot reveal our purpose, save in person and only to those who must know of it. No physical record must remain of this enterprise, regardless of the outcome.’

  The pilot grunted and rose from his seat, moving his armoured bulk sideways through the cockpit to the rear hatch. Segas slid around the unmanned navigation console to meet him, recovering his skull-faced helm from the stowage locker overhead. He ran a finger over the clean edges of the Ultima engraved upon the brow, and considered all that for which it stood.

  Wenlocke made to load his bolt pistol sidearm, but the Chaplain stopped him. ‘No. No weapons.’

  ‘And yet you will take your crozius? I’ve seen you break our foes with it, as often as lead a sermon.’

  ‘Aye, I will take my crozius. We will have one chance, and one chance only, to put this delicate matter right
. Our primarch’s eternal legacy is at stake. That was why Chapter Master Decon sent me in his stead, and why I brought only you.’

  Pausing with one boot on the topmost rung of the descent ladder, Wenlocke frowned. ‘What, because you can trust me to keep my mouth shut when awkward questions are inevitably asked? Or just because we’re both old enough to remember what happens to Chapters that keep dirty little secrets from the High Lords of Terra?’ Without waiting for an answer, he swung his weight out and began to climb down into the gunship’s hold. ‘I did as you said – I purged all navigation data from the system. There is no record of our journey left for anyone to find.’

  As the grey-haired warrior disappeared from view, muttering to himself in irritation, Segas considered Wenlocke’s question.

  I brought you for all of those reasons, and more besides, he thought. Because you and I may never return from Mount Pharos.

  The air was cold and stale, and the deck plates of the corridors felt gritty beneath the Ultramarines’ armoured tread. Segas and Wenlocke met with the skeleton crew of the Sothan orbital, all mortal serf-officers of the Chapter who were long past combat retirement age. The men and women saluted stiffly, and they walked with the stilted gait of humans who had lived all their natural life in artificial gravity. They were tired, and had evidently been forgotten by the Imperium at large.

  As tired and forgotten as the orbital platform itself, perhaps?

  At the Chaplain’s request, they arranged transit for the two Space Marines on board an anonymous cargo lighter bound for the planet’s surface. The flight was cramped and uncomfortable for warriors of their size, but the need for an unheralded arrival made it a necessity.

  Some kilometres outside the ordered coastal city of Sothopolis lay the freight terminals of Odessa, and it was there that they emerged into the first rays of dawn’s light ready to walk the overgrown paths to the mountain.

  The mountain.

  It appeared far more impressive from the ground than when Segas had first laid eyes upon it from orbit. It towered over the distant, lesser peaks of the Blackrocks, utterly dominating the skyline. Many were the myths surrounding its dark history, and only a select few within the Chapter knew them all.

  No matter how deeply Segas and Wenlocke pressed into the creaking quicktree forests, the mountain was always just visible beyond. For the most part they walked in silence, feeling faint and sporadic tremors in the earth beneath their feet.

  Though it was a laughable notion, it seemed that Mount Pharos might be following their progress.

  Or, at the very least, listening out for their approach.

  As the day’s heat grew, their path began to climb into the foothills. Without warning, Wenlocke froze mid-step – Segas saw the veteran’s hand flick reflexively to the empty holster at his hip, then up in a halting gesture. Something cracked in the thick undergrowth ahead of them, and Segas’ own fingers closed around the grip of his crozius maul. The two warriors edged apart, scanning for the unseen threat.

  A man trudged into view, walking with a rough wooden staff in one hand and a las-lock rifle slung at his back. His clothing was simple, his frame lean, his gait assured. His tanned flesh and lined features spoke of countless summers beneath the open skies, and a wholesome life working close to the land. Only when he looked up to see the two armoured giants before him – one in cobalt blue, the other in black – did he slow his pace, his expression more vexed than alarmed.

  Segas and Wenlocke held their ground, saying nothing. The man leaned on his staff, and mopped his brow with a ragged sleeve.

  ‘Good day to you, friends. Tell me, have you seen a stray quarian pass this way?’

  The Chaplain kept his voice level, his gaze as piercing as he could make it. ‘Quarian?’

  ‘Aye,’ the man replied. ‘Herd beast. Crafty little boggarts. They give me the slip every chance they get, up and down the hillsides.’

  Brother Wenlocke looked to Segas. They both knew that the mountain was forbidden. The paths were supposed to remain untrodden by the people of Sothopolis, and yet here was a simple herdsman wandering wheresoever his animals took him. But he had a straightforward manner about him, and he held the Chaplain’s eye without fear. He clearly believed that he had every right to be there. Was this, then, the famed pride of the Sothan people?

  It mattered not. They did not have time to dwell upon the trespasses of the locals, and Segas waved Wenlocke back. ‘We have not seen your beast, citizen. We cannot help you.’

  The man grinned, scratching his chin. ‘Citizen, he says? Heh. You’ve never been to Sotha before, that’s for sure.’ Still showing no hint of being intimidated, he sidled up to Segas and reached out to paw at his battleplate, appraising him. ‘The Chapter, then? You’re a tall one, like the Scouts and their training sergeants. More than twenty hands from toe to tooth, I’ll bet…’

  Segas remained guarded. The herdsman rapped his staff on the packed, loamy earth.

  ‘Do you know anything of this world, my tall friends? When I was young, the Chapter sent many Scouts. They were taught their craft on Sotha, and took what they learned to the stars, yes? They arrived as boys, but left as gelding-warriors, taller than any man from the plains or the cities. Not as tall as you two though, I think!’ He screwed his face up, thoughtfully. ‘And not as tall as the old man.’

  At that, Segas leaned in sharply. ‘The old man? Another Chapter warrior, like us?’

  The herdsman grinned again. ‘Aye, a gelding-lord like you, but without any pretty war-plate or badge of rank. The old man on the mountain, we always called him. Even before the Scouts stopped coming, he was the only one allowed up to the top of Mount Pharos. The braver lads from the herds used to help him clear the pathways, and he would tell us such tales about the horses and whatnot from his home world. But you’d never cross him. He has a fearsome manner, when he’s riled.’

  Wenlocke stepped in behind the man, and placed his gauntlets firmly upon his thin, mortal shoulders, enveloping them completely.

  ‘This old man on the mountain,’ he whispered, ‘you know where we might find him?’

  The herdsman frowned, looking from one gauntlet to the other and then back up at Segas.

  ‘I dare say, my tall friends, that he’ll be up at the old castellum. The ruins are hard for you to see from the air, I’ll bet. If you’d be so kind as to unhand me, I’ll take you there.’

  The Aegida Castellum, Segas recalled from the Chapter’s archives on Macragge, had been constructed during the Great Heresy as a base of legionary co-operation on Sotha. Ravaged by traitor assault and never fully rebuilt in all the centuries since, it stood now only in name upon the lower slopes, with tumbles of mossy ferrocrete strewn down the mountainside beneath it. What a casual glance might have mistaken for a rocky outcropping, Segas now saw was the overgrown remnant of a blocky, armoured keep, shot through with pale quicktree trunks and choked by vines.

  Over the afternoon chorus of insects and birdcalls, there came the rhythmic threshing of a blade, and the mumbled refrain of what sounded like a work song.

  Segas looked often to their guide, who seemed at times as surefooted as any quarian might be upon the uneven surfaces of the steep forest floor. Where previously he had been happy to engage the two Space Marines in inane chatter about the changing seasons and the preposterous price of a sack of grain at market, he fell to a respectful silence as they climbed the outer curtain wall of the ruins. Now that they could hear the old man’s gruff voice, the herdsman had become visibly uneasy.

  ‘I shall leave this to you, my lord Chaplain,’ said Wenlocke with a bow of his head. ‘As you said before, this could be delicate.’

  Handing off his skull helm to the other warrior, Segas approached the final gate. Wenlocke followed at a distance, with the herdsman trudging warily after him. Through the fallen arch lay what had once been a courtyard or mustering ground, the flagstones
now cracked with grasses and weeds.

  At the far end, in the shadow of the ruined keep, the old man on the mountain toiled.

  His transhuman physique had been little dulled by the centuries. Age had not wearied him as it might a mortal, yet he remained largely free of the battle scars or augmetics that one would expect upon such a venerable warrior of the Adeptus Astartes. His bare limbs were clean, his torso rippled with corded muscle, and only the neural interface ports of his black carapace broke the skin of his back. His wild, white hair was tied back, slick with the greasy sweat that covered his body and darkened his tattered breeches.

  He hefted an immense agricultural scythe, oversized for his grip, with which he cut back the vegetation. The rhythm of the sweeping, repetitive motion was a counter­point to the song on his lips.

  ‘In avis, in novas, farsoni…’ he murmured as he worked. ‘Invere, vesu ves ni vox…’

  Segas cleared his throat, and called out.

  ‘Brother-Captain Oberdeii, Warden of the Pharos and commander of the Ultramarines Aegida Company?’

  The warrior let his scythe fall still. He straightened slowly, and turned to face the Chaplain. There, in his cold stare and not upon his physical form, were borne all the hardships of his life.

  Segas came to attention, saluting him with the sign of the aquila over his breastplate. Behind him, he heard Wenlocke do the same, and waited for a response.

  Oberdeii stared at them for a long while, the butt of his scythe resting upon the ground. He showed no sign of recognition at their livery, nor even the Ultima adorning it. Segas began to wonder if they had made a mistake in coming unannounced after all, and whether or not they would live to take word of it back to Macragge.

  Reaching up slowly to smooth his long whiskers, the aged captain’s gaze moved to the mortal cowering in the archway. ‘You,’ he barked. ‘I remember you. You are called Benvis. You brought me milk when my bovid was taken by the rot.’

  The herdsman let out a gasp of relief. ‘Yes! Many years ago, I think you mean, when I was a boy.’ He patted the strap of the las-lock on his back. ‘You taught me the best way to hold a rifle, as thanks, and–’