Corax- Lord of Shadows Page 20

  ‘That is for the Emperor to decide, Errin, not you,’ said Corax.

  The cell door closed. For a moment Corax held still, listening to Errin’s protest. More pleas, more anger, more demands Corax return to his people. He rested his hand on the door.

  ‘One day I shall return,’ said Corax to himself. ‘I will come back here and make this place the perfect paradigm of human society. But that is far ahead, and there are many dark days to weather before then.’

  Resolute, Corax vanished into the gloom of the Ravenspire.

  About the Author

  Guy Haley is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, the Primarchs novels Corax: Lord of Shadows, Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia, and the Warhammer 40,000 novels Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Baneblade, Shadowsword, Valedor and Death of Integrity. He has also written Throneworld and The Beheading for The Beast Arises series. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

  An extract from Corax.

  He had not felt this way for a long time. Not in the decades since he had fought alongside the primarch to rid his home of its technocratic enslavers had Agapito been possessed of such vigour. It burned through him, giving him strength beyond his transhuman physique, every swing of his power sword energised by the purity of his cause.

  Righteousness.

  It was a hatred that boiled inside the Raven Guard commander, sending him without hesitation into the slaves of the accursed Word Bearers. Following Corax on the Emperor’s Great Crusade had given Agapito purpose and determination, but the near-rage that propelled him into battle now was of an order far above duty and dedication.

  It was fate that had delivered the hated foe into the hands of the Raven Guard. A chance encounter on the edge of the Cassik system – the Word Bearers caught with warp engine trouble and unable to flee. Agapito would not let the opportunity pass lightly.

  This was providence, though from what higher power Agapito did not know, nor care. The slayers of his brothers would in turn be slain. The betrayal of Isstvan would be avenged, one traitor at a time if necessary. The memories of thousands of Raven Guard culled like vermin by the guns of the Word Bearers were like daggers in the commander’s chest, their piercing a goad to drive him onwards.

  He spied a traitor legionary amongst the crew that had spilled forth along the corridors to defend their strike cruiser against the boarding of the Raven Guard. The sight of the Word Bearer brought back a flood of recollection: cannons and las-fire scything across the Urgall Depression, leaving scores of dead sons of Deliverance with each salvo; the vox-net swamped by the cries of the dying and the shock of treachery; warriors he had fought alongside for many years ripped from the world of the living by cold-blooded murderers.

  The half-human servitors and misshapen henchmen of the traitor legionary were no obstacle, easily thrown aside by Agapito’s charge. In the confines of the strike cruiser the Raven Guard could not be matched. Agapito wreaked bloody ruin with sword and fist, slashing and punching his way into the press of mutated foes without a moment’s regard for the blades and mauls clattering from his armour.

  Towering over the mass of freakish slaves, Agapito could see the Word Bearer as the traitor exhorted his minions to hurl themselves against the Raven Guard warriors. Dozens of slaves fell, their bodies rent with gruesome wounds, as Agapito and his legionaries thrust along the passage.

  Breaking free from the throng, the commander paused, eyes fixed on his target as the red-armoured legionary waited a few metres away. The Word Bearer raised his chainsword to the grille of his helm, a mocking salute and a challenge to mortal combat.

  Agapito was not here to duel, to exchange strike and parry in an effort to determine the worthy. He was here to avenge, to punish, to kill.

  A blast from his plasma pistol seared through the armoured breast of the Word Bearer as he lowered his blade, turning ceramite and flesh to greasy slag. The Word Bearer toppled face-first to the deck as Agapito dashed onwards, carving into the sub-human creatures that served the Legion of Lorgar.

  A few more seconds, a flurry of blows and shots, and Agapito was left standing over a mound of dead foes. A squad of his Talons – all survivors of Isstvan too – gathered around their leader.

  ‘Quadrant clear, commander,’ reported Sergeant Ashel. The legionary’s armour was coated with blood, the black paint glistening with fresh gore. He looked down at the remains of the enemy. The corpses were of men and women twisted and mutated, with eyes and skin like snakes, and sharp teeth filling wide mouths. ‘Vile filth.’

  ‘Not so vile as those that lead them,’ snarled Agapito.

  He listened to the vox-net for a few seconds, picking out the interleaved reports and messages from other forces spreading out through the enemy strike cruiser. Squads Chovani and Kalain were encountering stiffer resistance than the others: more Word Bearers.

  ‘We head to starboard,’ the commander told his companions. ‘Follow me.’

  ‘The reactor chamber is aft, commander,’ Ashel replied, staying where he was as Agapito took a step. ‘The primarch’s orders are–’

  ‘The enemy are to starboard,’ Agapito snapped. ‘As are the escape shuttles. Do you wish them to elude their punishment? Have you forgotten Isstvan so quickly?’

  Ashel glanced back at his squad for a moment, and shook his head.

  ‘For Isstvan,’ the sergeant said, lifting his bolter.

  ‘For Isstvan,’ Agapito replied.

  Disgust welled up inside Corax as he pulled the blades of his lightning claw from the body of the crewman. The liquid that sprayed across the corridor was not human blood but a foul greenish fluid, fed through the slave from a brass cylinder riveted to his back. Many others, similarly altered, lay dead around him. At first Corax had thought the creatures mindless servitors, but the fear and desperation in their eyes had betrayed a spark of life not seen in the half-human creations of the Mechanicum. They were men and women with fully human faculties, modified and experimented upon by their Word Bearers masters.

  The primarch’s disgust was not for the pitiful figures that flung themselves into his path, but for the traitors that had created them. The followers of Lorgar had become wicked, inhuman things – a twisted parody of the honourable legionaries they had once been.

  In the red light of the passageway his lightning claws gleamed. Crafted by his own hand on Deliverance after the victory at the Perfect Fortress, the weapons made him feel complete again. The Raven’s Talons, his warriors called them – as much a symbol to the Legion of their determination to fight on despite their losses as they were weapons. Corax had forgone his flight pack in the close confines of the boarding action, but he felt as comfortable in the arched halls and winding corridors as he did the open skies.

  He had been taught to fight in a place like this: a maze of ferrocrete and metal where every corner hid a potential foe. In the prison where he had been raised, endless passageways had become his hunting ground. He had never forgotten the lessons.

  He did not head directly for the strategium but chose a less obvious path that would circumvent the strongest defences. The strike cruiser was like so many others in layout, with a central corridor running for most of the length of the ship; but Corax instead made his way along the gun decks, already ravaged by the broadsides of the Avenger as the battle-barge had closed for the boarding. In places the hull had been cracked wide, leaving the batteries open to the freezing void. The primarch, with a memorised schematic of the Avenger’s last pre-attack scan in mind, found routes around the breached sections, moving up and down through the decks to keep the defenders uncertain
of the Raven Guard’s route.

  With him came a company from the Avenger, but for the moment the legionaries were little more than onlookers as the primarch carved his way towards the starship’s strategium. It seemed the Word Bearers had thought it wiser to unleash their horde of mutated creations rather than face the ire of the primarch themselves.

  They were not wrong.

  Advancing swiftly, Corax encountered several dozen more slaves in the next gallery, armed with nothing more than wrenches, hammers and lengths of chain. Some had cybernetics grafted to them, others carried the artificial ichor-tanks he had already seen. All of them had pale skin slicked with the sweat of exertion and dread, their eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. They did not shout any war cry as they ran at the primarch, and there was resignation, perhaps even relief, in their eyes as his lightning claws slashed left and right, hewing them down by the handful.

  None of the crew-creatures survived long enough to strike Corax as he waded into their midst, his energy-sheathed fists turning metal to splinters and flesh to spatters. Glancing through the windows of the gallery he saw the Avenger holding course alongside the boarded ship, and beyond that the gleam of plasma engines from the Triumph and Aeruginosis, while further away still waited the rest of the Raven Guard flotilla.

  Had they arrived two or three days later the Word Bearers might have continued on their way, to wreak whatever malevolence they intended. Good fortune for the Raven Guard had brought the enemy out of the warp just a few thousand kilometres from where the Legion had been mustering. Even before the bombardment by the Raven Guard, the traitor ship had shown signs of prolonged combat, damaged warp engines amongst its more obvious battle scars. Whatever had forced the strike cruiser to travel in such a state had to be important.

  So it was that Corax sought to capture the vessel and learn its secrets, rather than destroy it out of hand.

  Resistance grew stronger as the Raven Guard neared their objective. Securing the chambers and halls surrounding the strategium, the primarch and his warriors created a cordon clear of enemies. The rooms were strangely devoid of decoration. On the few occasions that Corax had spent time on Word Bearers ships before the Warmaster had turned, he had marvelled at the carvings and banners, icons and murals dedicated to the celebration of the Emperor and his deeds. What must have once been the officers’ quarters were now empty shells, devoid of furnishing and embellishment, as though everything that once had lauded the Emperor had been expunged.

  The strategium portals – two sets of huge double doors sealed by immense lockbolts – proved to be only a minor obstacle. Corax’s lightning claws cut through one of the doors with a few blows, sending the reinforced plasteel tumbling into the darkened command chamber.

  Corax was taken aback for a moment by the quiet. He had expected a hail of fire to greet his entry, and his charge onto the mezzanine overlooking the main floor of the bridge faltered as he met no resistance.

  Glancing around the chamber, the primarch was confronted by clusters of interred servitors meshed with glowing consoles, their half-dead faces and withered limbs nearly white in the glow of the static that filled the main screen. Lights winked on and off in the gloom, the red and amber of failing systems, while exposed wiring buzzed and flickered. The chamber was filled with a faint smell of decay coming from the servitors; of flesh slowly going rank, mixed with oil and rust.

  ‘Where are the Word Bearers?’ asked Commander Soukhounou. As he had stormed into the strategium behind Corax, he too had come to a halt, confused by the absence of foes.

  ‘Not here,’ was the only answer Corax could give.

  His gaze was drawn to a shape swaddled in bloodied robes, pierced by many pipes and cables, at the heart of the strategium. The figure’s corpse-like thinness showed her human skeleton despite the profusion of implanted machinery. All that could be seen of her face was a slack mouth showing a few broken, yellowed teeth, the rest of her head encased in a many-faceted helm of ceramite into which passed dozens of coiled filaments.

  Corax descended the steps to the main hall, his footsteps resounding across the quiet murmuring of the servitors and the buzz of poorly shielded circuits. To Corax’s amazement, the woman stirred. She raised her head as though looking at him, a small black gem fixed to the brow of the enclosing helm.

  ‘Release me,’ she whispered. Blood-flecked saliva drooled from between cracked lips, a dark tongue lolling across raw gums. ‘I can serve no more.’

  ‘We are not your captors,’ Corax told the woman as he stopped beside her. Now, closer, he saw the glint of silver thread in the tatters of her clothes. The patterns were broken, but taken together the remnants revealed the woman to be a Navigator. ‘I am Corax, of the Raven Guard.’

  ‘Corax…’ She breathed the name and her lips twisted into a hideous smile. ‘Grant me my death. You are the Lord of Deliverance and I need delivering from this torment.’

  The primarch moved one of his energy-sheathed claws towards the Navigator, but he hesitated before granting her wish. It tore at his conscience, but a harder part of him – the part that had sent atomic charges into the cities of Kiavahr to kill thousands of innocents, and allowed him to pacify worlds resisting compliance – stayed his hand.

  ‘Soon, I promise you, but first I have need of answers,’ he told her. The Navigator slumped, causing the pipes and wires to rattle fiercely like the twitching of a grotesque puppet’s strings.

  Before Corax could begin his questioning he diverted his attention to the vox-net, distracted by an exchange between Branne and Agapito on the command channel.

  ‘We can’t break through here,’ Branne was saying. ‘You were supposed to flank the forces defending the reactor, brother.’

  ‘I will be with you shortly,’ Agapito replied, breathing heavily. ‘One of the bastards fled, the coward. We’ll have him cornered soon.’

  From long acquaintance Corax could sense Branne holding his temper in check, with some effort.

  ‘Reactor readings are reaching critical,’ the commander eventually responded. ‘The reactor will reach meltdown if we do not seize control of it. We can deal with the Word Bearers once the ship is secure.’

  ‘Agapito, what is causing your delay?’ the primarch demanded, irritated by the commander’s tardiness in completing his mission.

  ‘I…’ Agapito’s voice trailed away. When he spoke again a moment later, there was contrition in his voice. ‘Apologies, Lord Corax. We will make all haste to the reactor chamber.’

  ‘As you should have already, commander. We will speak of this later.’

  ‘Yes, Lord Corax. Forgive my distraction.’

  ‘If we are still alive in ten minutes, I will consider it,’ Corax replied. He knelt down next to the imprisoned Navigator and spoke gently. ‘I am sorry, but I must attend to another matter first. Be strong.’

  He stood up and turned to Soukhounou.

  ‘See what you can do to slow the reactor overload from here,’ the primarch said, pointing to the engineering station where a rheumy-eyed servitor murmured a monologue of status reports. ‘I want this ship taken intact.’

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  First published in Great Britain in 2018.

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  Cover illustration by Mikhail Savier.

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