Brothers of the Storm Read online

  THE HORUS HERESY

  Novels

  Book 1 - HORUS RISING

  (Also available as an abridged audiobook)

  Dan Abnett

  Book 2 - FALSE GODS

  (Also available as an abridged audiobook)

  Graham McNeill

  Book 3 - GALAXY IN FLAMES

  (Also available as an abridged audiobook)

  Ben Counter

  Book 4 - THE FLIGHT OF THE EISENSTEIN

  James Swallow

  Book 5 - FULGRIM

  Graham McNeill

  Book 6 - DESCENT OF ANGELS

  Mitchel Scanlon

  Book 7 - LEGION

  Dan Abnett

  Book 8 - BATTLE FOR THE ABYSS

  Ben Counter

  Book 9 - MECHANICUM

  Graham McNeill

  Book 10 - TALES OF HERESY

  edited by Nick Kyme and Lindsey Priestley

  Book 11 - FALLEN ANGELS

  Mike Lee

  Book 12 - A THOUSAND SONS

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  Graham McNeill

  Book 13 - NEMESIS

  James Swallow

  Book 14 - THE FIRST HERETIC

  Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Book 15 - PROSPERO BURNS

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  Dan Abnett

  Book 16 - AGE OF DARKNESS

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  edited by Christian Dunn

  Book 17 - THE OUTCAST DEAD

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  Graham McNeill

  Book 18 - DELIVERANCE LOST

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  Gav Thorpe

  Book 19 - KNOW NO FEAR

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  Dan Abnett

  Book 20 - THE PRIMARCHS

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  edited by Christian Dunn

  Book 21 - FEAR TO TREAD

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  James Swallow

  Book 22 - SHADOWS OF TREACHERY

  edited by Christian Dunn and Nick Kyme

  Book 23 - ANGEL EXTERMINATUS

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  Graham McNeill

  Book 24 - BETRAYER

  (Also available as an unabridged audiobook)

  Aaron Dembski-Bowden [Coming 2013)

  Order the full range of Horus Heresy novels and audiobooks from www.blacklibrary.com

  Audio Dramas

  THE DARK KING AND THE LIGHTNING TOWER

  Graham McNeill and Dan Abnett

  RAVEN'S FLIGHT

  Gav Thorpe

  GARRO: OATH OF MOMENT

  lames Swallow

  GARRO: LEGION OF ONE

  James Swallow

  BUTCHER'S NAILS

  Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  GARRO: SWORD OF TRUTH

  James Swallow

  GREY ANGEL

  John French

  GARRO: BURDEN OF DUTY

  James Swallow

  Download the full range of Horus Heresy audio dramas from www.blacklibrary.com

  To Hannah, as always, with love.

  BLACK LIBRARY

  A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

  Black Library,

  Games Workshop Ltd.,

  Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover by Neil Roberts.

  Internal art by Sam Lamont, Rhys Pugh and Neil Roberts.

  © Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.

  Black Library, the Black Library logo, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy logo,

  The Horus Heresy eye device, Space Marine Battles, the Space Marine Battles

  logo, Warhammer 40,000, the Warhammer 40,000 logo, Games Workshop, the

  Games Workshop logo and all associated brands, names, characters, illustrations

  and images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ® and/or © Games

  Workshop Ltd 2000-2012, variably registered in the UK and other countries

  around the world. All rights reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN13: 978 1 84970 267 6

  Product code: 60040181035

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

  fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  See Black Library on the internet at

  www.blacklibrary.com

  Find out more about Games Workshop

  and the world of Warhammer 40,000 at

  www.games-workshop.com

  Printed and bound in the UK.

  THE HORUS HERESY

  It is a time of legend.

  MIGHTY HEROES BATTLE for the right to rule the galaxy.

  The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered

  the galaxy in a Great Crusade - the myriad alien races have

  been smashed by the Emperor's elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

  The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.

  Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many

  victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million

  worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful

  and deadly warriors.

  First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs,

  superheroic beings who have led the Emperor's armies of

  Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable

  and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor's genetic

  experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest

  human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable

  of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

  Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions,

  the Space Marines and their primarch leaders

  conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

  Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious,

  the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son

  unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief

  of the Emperor's military might, subjugator of a thousand

  thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a

  warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.

  As the flames of war spread through the Imperium,

  mankind's champions will all be put to the ultimate test.

  ~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~

  The Primarchs

  JAGHATAI KHAN

  Primarch of the White Scars

  HORUS LUPERCAL

  Primarch of the Luna Wolves

  The V Legion 'White Scars'

  SHIBAN KHAN

  Brotherhood of the Storm

  TORGHUN KHAN

  Brotherhood of the Moon

  TARGUTAI YESUGEI

  Stormseer

  Imperial Personae

  ILYA RAVALLION

  Departmento Munitorum

  HERIOL MIERT

  Departmento Munitorum

  I. SHIBAN

  I REMEMBER MUCH of what he said even now, but we all learned quicker from example than words. That was the way we were made - we watc
hed, and we acted.

  We took delight in the speed we travelled. Perhaps we went too far, too fast, though I regret nothing. We were true to our nature, and in the final test that was what saved us.

  I do remember much about him from that time, back when our instincts were simpler. Some examples, some choice lessons, stay with me even now, and I am better for it.

  Of all the things he said, or was supposed to have said, only one truly struck at my heart. He said: 'Laugh when you are killing.'

  If we had needed an epigram, if anyone had ever asked what made us what we were, then I would have told them that.

  No one ever asked. By the time anyone cared enough about us to seek us out, everything had already changed. We were suddenly needed, but there was no time to think about why.

  I followed his recommendation: when I killed, I laughed. I let the ice-wind pull my hair free, and I felt hot blood against my skin. I ran far and strongly, daring my brothers to keep pace. I was like the herkut, the hunting eagle, free of the jesses, out on the rising air, high up on the horizon.

  That was what we were back then; that was what we all were Minghan Kasurga - the Brotherhood of the Storm.

  That was our ranking name, the one we used to differentiate ourselves.

  In private, we were the laughing killers.

  To the rest of the galaxy, we were still unknown.

  I LIKED CHONDAX. The planet that had given its name to the whole stellar cluster suited our style of war, unlike magma-crusted Phemus or jungle-choked Epihelikon. It had big, high skies, unbroken by cloud and pale green like rejke grass. We burned across it in waves, up from the southern landing sites and out into the equatorial zone. Unlike any world I had known then or have known since, it never changed - just a wasteland of white earth in every direction, glistening under the soft light of three distant suns. You could push your hand into that earth and it would break open, crystalline like salt.

  Nothing grew on Chondax. We lifted supplies down from orbit in bulk landers. When they were gone, when we were gone again, the earth closed over the scorch-marks, smoothing them white.

  It healed itself. Our presence there was light - we hunted, we killed, and then nothing remained. Even the prey - the greenskins, which we call the hain, others the ork, or kine, or krork - failed to leave a mark. We had no idea how they supplied themselves. We had destroyed the last of their crude space-vessels months earlier, stranding them on the surface. Every time we cleared them out of their squalid nests, torching them and turning the earth to glass, the white dust came back.

  I once led a squadron a long way south, covering three hundred kilometres before each major sunset, back to where we had fought them in a brutal melee that had lasted seven days and stained the ground black with blood and carbon.

  Nothing remained as we passed over the site, nothing but white.

  I checked my armour's locators. Jochi did not believe me; he said we had gone wrong. He was grinning, disappointed to find nothing, hoping some of them might have survived and holed up again, ready for another fight.

  I knew we were in the right place. I saw then that we were on a world that could not be harmed, a world that shrugged off our bloodstains and our fury and made itself whole when we passed on.

  That observation was the root of my liking for Chondax. I explained it to my brothers later as we sat under the stars, warming our hands indulgently by firelight like our fathers had done on Chogoris. They agreed that Chondax was a good world, a world on which good warfare could be conducted.

  Jochi smiled tolerantly as I spoke, and Batu shook his scarred head, but I did not mind that. My brothers knew they had a poetical character for a khan, but such things were not disdained by Chogorians as I had been told they were in other Legions.

  Yesugei once told me that only poets could be true warriors. I did not know what he meant by that then. He might have been referring to me particularly or he might not; one does not ask a zadyin arga to explain himself.

  But I knew that when we were gone, our souls made hot and pure by killing, Chondax would not remember us. The fire we warmed ourselves by, its fuel brought down by lifter like everything else, which in the old fashion we would not extinguish with water nor kick over when dawn came, would leave no stain.

  I found that reassuring.

  * * *

  WE WENT NORTH again. Always moving, always seeking. That was how we liked it; we would have quickly withered had we been forced to stay locked down in the same place for long.

  I took my brotherhood over the plains; five hundred of us pristine in our crimson-rimmed ivory armour. Our jetbikes cut swathes in the earth beneath us, churning it up and throwing out furrows behind. We rode them flamboyantly, knowing that none could master their thunderous power like we could. When the third sun rose, making the empty sky glow, our inscribed pennants flashed and our weapons glittered. We hurtled like earth-tied comets, strung out across the flat land in an arrowhead of silver, whooping our joy and our glory and our purpose.

  When the third sun rose on Chondax, there were no shadows. Everything came to our eyes in razor-edged blocks of colour. We looked at one another and saw details we had never seen before. We saw the bloom in our leather-brown faces, and realised how old we were, and how long we had been on campaign, and marvelled that we felt more savage and vivacious than we had as children.

  On the seventh day when the suns were at their apex we saw orks on the horizon. They were heading north too, driving in long columns of battered, clumsy armoured vehicles that sent gouts of soot into the air and gave away their position.

  As soon as I saw them, my heart leapt. My muscles tensed, my eyes narrowed, my pulse quickened. I felt my fingers itch for the feel of my guan dao glaive. The blessed weapon - two-metre metal shaft, single curved blade, a work of close combat genius - had not drunk blood for many days; its spirit longed for the taste again, and I did not intend to disappoint it.

  'Prey!' I roared, feeling the tight, cold air buffet my exposed face. I rose up in the saddle, letting my bike sway beneath peering into the sun-glare of the horizon.

  The greenskins did not turn to fight. They kept going, ploughing on in their smoke-choked convoy as fast as they could.

  When he had first led us to Chondax, they they would have fought us. They would have rushed at us, mob-handed, bellowing and stampeding with spittle flying from their ragged mouths.

  But no longer. We had broken their spirit. We had chased them across the face of the world, rooting them out, beating them back, cutting them down. We knew that they were mustering somewhere, trying to summon up some kind of defence in numbers, but even they must have sensed that the end was coming.

  I did not hate them. In those days I did not know what it was to hate an enemy. I knew how strong, how clever, how resourceful they were, and I respected that. In the earliest days they had killed many of my brothers. We had learned together, the two of us, learning where our weaknesses lay, learning how to fight on a world that gave us nothing and was uncaring of our feuding presence. They could travel fast when they wished to. Not as fast as us - nothing in creation was as fast as us - but they were wily, creative, brave and fierce.

  It may have been sentiment operating, but I do not believe they hated us either. They hated losing, and that gnawed at their spirit and took the bite out of their blades, but they did not hate us.

  Years earlier, on Ullanor, it had been different. We had nearly been undone by them. They had come at us in an endless, formless green tide, overrunning everything, drunk on strength, unbounded in their magnificent, beautiful way of war. In the end it was Horus who had turned them back. Horus and he had both fought there - I saw it myself, if only from a distance. That was where things had finally turned, where the back of the beast had been broken. All that remained on Chondax were the dregs, the last gritty remnants of an empire that had dared to challenge ours and had almost prevailed.

  So I did not hate those that remained. I sometimes imagined how I would
feel if we ever came up against a foe we could not defeat, where nothing remained but to fall back, again and again weakening further with every encounter, watching the lifeblood slowly drain out of those around us as the noose tightened

  I hoped and believed that I would do as they did, and keep fighting.

  I DID NOT need to give my brothers orders - we had done the same thing many times. We powered to full speed, sweeping up on either flank of the convoy in split formation.

  It was a sight to make the blood race and the heart sing: five hundred gleaming jetbikes, thundering in arrowhead squadrons of twenty, their engines deafening, their riders whooping. We spread out across the dazzling sand, superb in our livery of white, gold and red, throwing up a storm of eddying dust in our wake.

  Until then we had been cruising, letting our bikes sweep us into range. Now we were racing, our long hair snapping around our shoulder guards, our blades flashing in the light of suns.

  We homed in on the enemy vehicles - big, bulky carriers on half-tracks or mismatched wheel - swaying and rocking as the greenskins pushed the wheezing engines hard. Streams of smoke roiled out of gaps in the armour plating. I saw individual orks perched in gun-positions, swinging round to aim at us with patched-up rocket launchers and muzzle-blackened beam-weapons.