CONTENTS CONTENTS DRAMATIS PERSONAE HELL IS A CHAINSWORD DEEP ONE TWO THREE FOUR I AM THE FORTRESS NOW ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX FOUR VICTORIES (TO THE DEATH) ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE THE TWENTY-SIXTH OF QUINTUS AFTERWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS DRAMATIS PERSONAE The Traitor Host of Warmaster Horus Lupercal F – ‘The Phoenician’, Primarch of the III Legion, Emperor’s Children P – ‘The Lord of Iron’, Primarch of the IV Legion, Iron Worriors A – ‘The Red Angel’, Primarch of the XII Legion, World Eaters M – ‘The Pale King’, Primarch of the XIV Legion, Death Guard M R – ‘The Crimson King’, Primarch of the XV Legion, Thousand Sons The IV Legion ‘Iron Warriors’ Y C – Lord Captain of the Second Armored Century O G – Warsmith, Stor-Bezashk B M – Warsmith, Stor Bezashk The XVI ‘Legion Sons of Horus’ K A – Equerry to Warmaster Lupercal The Mournival E A – First Captain H A – ‘Little Horus’, Captain, Fifth Company T F K – ‘Widowmaker’, Captain, Justaerin Terminator section T M – Captain of the 18th Company L G – Captain of the 25th Company S L – Line Captain, 5th Company, Haemora Destroyer Squad U G – Line Captain of the Justaerin Terminator section X E – Assault Captain, Chtonae Reaver Squad, 18th Company DR – Line Captain of the Catulan Reaver section The XII Legion ‘World Eaters’ K – Captain, Eight Assault Company E – of the Devourers K Y – of VII Rampager H – of the Caedere S B B – Centurion H M – Centurion B R B M B G J – of the Devourers U K – of III Destroyers S C D V M – of the Caedere M A K K – of II Triarii R R T G F C W – Centurion M D – of VI Destroyers H B S N – of II Triarii K W B The XV ‘Legion Thousand Sons’ A A – Chief Librarian The III Legion ‘Emperor’s Children’ E – Lord Commander V K – Equerry to Eidolon L P – Vexillarius Q M N DD J D S Z Z J K The Dark Mechanicum E-O-T – Speaker of the Epsta War-Stead linked unity The Defenders of Terra J K – ‘The Warhawk of Chogoris’, Primarch of the V Legion, White Scars R D – Praetorian of Terra, Primarch of the VII Legion, Imperial Fists S – ‘The Great Angel’, Primarch of the IX Legion, Blood Angels M S – Regent of the Imperium The Talons of the Emperor C V – Captain-General of the Legio Custodes A T – Custodian T – Custodian, Prefect Warden J K – Vigil-Commander of the Silent Sisterhood A – Raptor Guard, Silent Sisterhood Officers and Seniors Militant of the War Court S N – High Primary Solar General C B – Militant Colonel Auxilia S I – Second Mistress Tacticae Terrestria K E – Mistress Tacticae N S-K – Solar Commander Staff, former Admiral of the Jovian Fleets The VII Legion ‘Imperial Fists’ A – Master of Huscarls D – Huscarl C – Huscarl V – Veteran Captain C D – Lord Castellan of the Forth Sphere, Siege Master F R – Lord Seneschal, Captain of the First Assault Cadre F H – Captain of the 19th Tactical Company T – Sergeant, 19th Tactical Company M T – Captain, 22nd Company Exemplars S – First Captain, Marshal of the Templars B – Venerable Dreadnought B T R M – Captain, Wall Master of Oanis K – Sergeant, Wallguard L B – Seconded to kill team duty G – Seconded to kill team duty M – Heavy weapons, seconded to kill team duty O – Heavy weapons, seconded to kill team duty The V Legion ‘White Scars’ S K – called Tachseer N – Stormseer K K Y – of the Kharash Q F – Noyan-Khan The IX Legion ‘Blood Angels’ R – First Captain, First Chapter D Z – ‘The bringer of Sorrows’, Captain B S – Captain-Paladin of the Keruvim host S A K F E L The Imperial Army (Excertus, Auxilia and others) A A – Marshal, Antioch Miles Vesperi K B – Militant General, Kienmerine Corps Bellum A – Conroi-Captain, Host palatine (Command Prefectus Unit) B C – Colonel (33rd Pan-Pacific Mobile) A-N N – Captain, Auxilia M T – Captain (16th Arctic Host) W K – (33rd Pan-Pacific Mobile) J B M – (18th Regiment, Nordafrik Resistance Army) E C – (Fourth Australis Mechanized) S F – (Hiveguard Ischia) J K – (22nd Kantium Hort) B G – (3rd Helvet) O P – (105th Tercio Upland Grenadiers) P C – (11th Heavy Janissaries) L T – (77th Europa Max) A G – (55th Midlantik) O P – (Hort Borograd K) G O – (16th Arctic Hort) A Sinderman’s Order K S – Historian C G – Historian H H – Historian T K – Historian L T – Historian D – Historian M – Historian Serving the Adeptus Mechanicus A L – Magos, Technoarchaeologist The Chosen of Malcador G L – The Lone Wolf H G – Knight Errant E H – ‘The Riven Hound’, Blackshield N G – Knight Errant At Blackstone V S – Auxilia Veteran, Warden of the Watch E K – Former Remembrancer E A – Inmate B F – Inmate G B – Inmate Others J G – Logokine E L – Her Legionary N – Pilot, Port Guild ‘The Earth has lost its youthfulness; it is gone, like a happy dream. Now every day brings us closer to destruction, to desert…’ – Terran poet Vyasa, circa 850.M1 ‘I need to fight whole armies alone; I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms; I feel too strong to war with mortals -bring me gods!’ – the dramaturge Rostand, circa 900.M2 ‘Immortality, for us, is impossible.’ – Horace, Odes, fl. Ml PART ONE HELL IS A CHAINSWORD DEEP Reiteration Who knows what He is thinking, or what He was ever thinking? He moves, Kyril Sindermann conceded to himself as he climbed the last of the steps, our beloved Emperor, He moves in mysterious ways. ‘Misterious,’ he said aloud, breathing the word like a sigh. The cold echo of the stairwell answered him, the patter of the rain. Sindermann was exhausted. He had come a long way; not just up the thousand step of the tower, but along the path before that, the long road that had once seemed so promising, but had led him – led them all – into unforgiving disaster. Kyril Sindermann had walked alongside history as it was being made’, and had been appointed to observe and record that process. But history, wilful and cruel, never leads where it is expected. It cannot be anticipated. Sindermann should have known that most base of professional principles – history only makes sense in hindsight. Did He know? The beloved Emperor? Did He read history backwardsand understand what the end of the book would be? If He did, could He have changed the words? Could He have warned us? Did He try? Did He know, all along, in His mysterious way, that this would be where it all led to? Here? Sindermann unlatched the door and pushed it open. Cold air met his face. The roof garden hissed with rain. Beyond, grey cloud sloped from the upper bastions of the Sanctum Imperialis, cloud-conjured ghosts of the mountains that had been levelled to make way for this citadel. It had once seemed a wonder, a great feat of man, the flattening of a mountain range to make the foundation stone of a city-palace. ‘No greater wonder can be imagined,’ some witness had written at the time. No longer. Greater wonders had come since to eclipse it: the war to pacify the heavens; the crusade to crush bestial species; the liberation of lost humanity; the unification of the cosmos. The revelation of unthinkable horror. The betrayal of all that was. Now this, here. Mountains had been shaved flat to build a palace, and from that palace, an empire was raised. All that would fail, and the palace would fall, and the rocks that had been planed away to hold it up forever would split, and so too the world beneath that rock. Sindermann wandered along the garden walk. The Katabat Terrace, a hanging garden, once a paradise. The beds had been left to grow wild, stone tubs and planters split by untended roots. Auto-irrigation and pesticide systems had been shut down to conserve power. The botanical servitors had long since been recoded to serve in the munition vaults. The garden staff had been conscripted to siege labour brigades or sent to the front lines. Other Palace gardens, and there were many, had been turned over to food cultivation. But not the Katabat. The highest, the loneliest, the Emperor’s favourite, near the top of old Widdershin’s Tower. It had simply been abandoned. Perhaps He, the beloved Emperor, hoped it could be opened again one day, the gardeners brought home, the precious specimens nurtured back into bloom. If that was so, thought Sindermann, then hope still existed. The Katabat had not withered. Rain drummed across its paths, beds and parapets, pooled on uneven flagstones, and overspilled from empty pots. The garden had turned feral, overcome with weeds, untamed creepers and unpruned saplings. Water dripped from the bowed and buds of chemically disfigured flowers. The symbolism was breathtaking. It wasn’t even rain, not natural rain. The entire Inner Palace, the Sanctum Imperialis, of itself a city bigger than old Konstantinopol, had been shut inside its dome of void shields since before the start of Secundus. The shields had never been designed to stay up for so long. All air was recirculated, processed, breathed a trillion times, and artificial weather systems had built under the dome, breeding stained cloud, acid rain and pocket storms that churned and festered beneath the crackling fields. This rain was recycled sweat, body moisture, piss, blood. It was worse, he had been told, outside the inner voids: toxic smogs and bacterial clouds lifting from the burning sectors and the battle fronts, or artificially engineered; searing firestorms; ash blizzards; epileptic convulsions of lightning spasming from the aftershock of orbital strikes; shrieking tornados, propagated by the concussion of incessant bombardments.