Manflayer - Josh Reynolds Read online

  More Chaos Space Marines from Black Library

  • FABIUS BILE •

  by Josh Reynolds

  Book 1 – PRIMOGENITOR

  Book 2 – CLONELORD

  Book 3 – MANFLAYER

  • BLACK LEGION •

  by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  Book 1 – THE TALON OF HORUS

  Book 2 – BLACK LEGION

  • AHRIMAN •

  by John French

  Book 1 – AHRIMAN: EXILE

  Book 2 – AHRIMAN: SORCERER

  Book 3 – AHRIMAN: UNCHANGED

  SHROUD OF NIGHT

  by Andy Clark

  SONS OF THE HYDRA

  by Rob Sanders

  NIGHT LORDS: THE OMNIBUS

  by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  (Contains the novels Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver and Void Stalker)

  KHRN: THE RED PATH

  by Chris Dows

  WORD BEARERS: THE OMNIBUS

  by Anthony Reynolds

  (Contains the novels Dark Apostle, Dark Disciple and Dark Creed)

  STORM OF IRON

  An Iron Warriors novel by Graham McNeill

  SPACE MARINE BATTLES: THE SIEGE OF CASTELLAX

  An Iron Warriors novel by C L Werner

  PERFECTION

  An Emperor’s Children audio drama by Nick Kyme

  CHOSEN OF KHORNE

  A World Eaters audio drama by Anthony Reynolds

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Two

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Warriors and Warlords’

  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.

  Prologue

  Gardens of Hell

  140.M31

  Melusine danced in the gardens of hell.

  The soft, silver grasses smoked and sparked beneath her feet, burning them to the bone. The air was sweet enough to steal her breath, and the wind was like claws, scraping red reminders on her skin. But she danced on, for to cease doing so was to die. To end one dance, to begin another, these were forbidden. On this world, beginnings and endings were the only taboo.

  It was not a true planet, so much as the shadow of one, cast upon the firmament by the light of a dying sun. A pleasure world, crafted from the dreams of maddened psykers and zealots, and given solidity by the whim of a god. It had no name, or perhaps many names. Melusine knew it only as Callax, though whether that was the world itself or merely the place she found herself in, she couldn’t say. Regardless of what it was called, it was in constant flux, changing itself to suit the desires of its inhabitants. The oceans were as blood one day and as pomegranate juice the next. Forests rose and fell like slow waves, bursting into flame as the sun rose high in the sky, and calming to cindered trunks in the evening. By morning, the greenery had sprouted anew and the cycle began again.

  She danced until her lungs quivered and her limbs were like rubber. She danced until her muscles tore and the soles of her feet were raw and numb. She danced until her heart spasmed and her vision blurred. On and on, she spun across the silver grasses, beneath nodding trees of platinum and gold.

  Through it all, an audience of the lost and the damned kept time. Daemons and darkling souls clapped and laughed, stamped their feet and shrieked insults. Blightchild. Clonewhelp. Obscene instruments spat erratic accompaniment, filling her with unnatural desires, invigorating her flagging body past the point of collapse.

  Other dancers joined the cavalcade and fell away one by one, claimed by exhaustion or overeager audience members. Only Melusine could keep up with the music, much to the growing frustration of the audience.

  They wanted her to fail. To fall, and be dragged away into the mindless confusion that dominated the rest of the garden. She caught glimpses of the damnable celebration as she spun and whirled. Of ecstasies and torments beyond the most febrile imaginings. Discordant symphonies duelled on the incense-laced air, warring for attention. Monstrous couplings took place beneath golden boughs, as artists strove to capture such moments in unnatural mediums. Flowers with human mouths trilled obscenities as they were trampled by heedless cavorters, and strangely hued birds flocked and screeched in the tangled canopies above. Everywhere, braziers spewed mephitic clouds of incense and perfume.

  The garden itself seemed to stretch forever and a day, extending past the limits of her vision in all directions. It had been a city once, she thought. There was a harsh industrialism beneath the floral shroud. Structures lined with vine-strewn balconies rose to infinite heights, and great statues bedecked in blossoms and effluvia leered down at the celebrants with cold, unyielding malice.

  More souls seemed to arrive with every passing moment. Some of them, she knew, were like her – pilgrims, in search of the master of this place. The Castellan of Pleasure, the Chatelaine of Delight – the Illuminator and the Water-Bringer. Unlike them, she had not come for herself, but on behalf
of another.

  She liked to think that her father would understand why she had left him, why she had sought out this place and bargained for the means of entrance. She liked to think that he would be proud of her – perhaps even grateful. But she knew him too well for that. There was no gratitude to be had from Fabius Bile. Not a drop, not a mote. Even so, she would do what she had come to do. For him.

  Whether he wished it or not.

  A dancer stumbled and fell, nearly tripping Melusine. She leapt, and landed badly. Only vat-born reflexes spared her injury. Her father had made her strong and durable as well as smart. But even his genius had its limits. She was at the edge of her endurance. The price of entry had been a dance – but it was a dance without end. Daemons had no concept of mortal frailty. They did not – could not – understand the limits of the human body. Her father said this was because they did not possess the ability to think. Rather, they were merely reflections of the thoughts of the mortals they tormented. Melusine had seen enough to know that while that might be true where Fabius was concerned, it was not the case here and now. The creatures around her were as intelligent as she, and ­cunning as only things that had lived for millennia could be.

  The fallen dancer – a man in an environmental bodyglove, painted in eye-watering colours – was dragged screaming into the crowd and torn to ribbons. Another dancer – this one a woman, dressed in crystalline robes and a mask made of beaten copper – turned to run, even as an equine daemon bore her to the ground, tearing at her throat. Propriety fled as the other dancers attempted to scatter.

  The daemons had grown tired of waiting. They came for her next. A few at first, and then many. Crustacean claws clacked eagerly, as prehensile tongues coiled and writhed. Slavering jaws snapped at the air. She avoided the first grasping talon, and drove the heel of her palm into the face of a trilling daemonette. Unnatural bone crunched and the creature fell away with a gurgle.

  A long tongue snared her arm, and acidic spittle burned her flesh. She screamed and wrenched the length of pinkish flesh taut, before ripping it free in a welter of ichor. She fought, as she had been taught to fight by those her father laughingly called ‘uncles’. Though she bore no weapon save her hands and feet, and exhaustion weighed on her limbs, she drove them back again and again.

  Soon, ichor stained her pale flesh and matted her hair. It stung her eyes, making it hard to see. But she kept moving, kept fighting. As her uncles had taught her. What would Arrian think to see her now? Or Honourable Tzimiskes? Would they cheer her on, or shake their heads at her foolishness?

  No answer came to her. She drove her elbow into a drooling creature’s oscillating maw, and her flesh was stung by dentine shrapnel. She pivoted, snagging a bulbous throat-sac and tearing it from its owner with a sound like ripping sailcloth. The mutant staggered, choking on its own bile. But for every one that fell away, two more seemed to take their place. She staggered back, trying to find an opening to flee, but wherever she looked a monstrous face leered at her. She had made a mistake. There was no salvation to be had, here. No respite. Only death and damnation.

  Something long and gelatinous caught her ankle and she fell. She tried to rise, but a hoof caught her in the chest, knocking her flat. Daemons leaned down, cackling, murmuring, laughing. Promising her an eternity of pain. She spat curses, refusing to cower.

  A silver flash startled her. A daemonette collapsed, its skull cleft by the crackling edge of a heavy power axe. A hulking figure tore the blade loose and turned, sweeping the weapon out in a killing arc. ‘Away from her,’ the newcomer roared. Where he had come from, she could not say. Perhaps he had been among the audience the entire time – if so, why had he waited so long to intervene? And why had he chosen to do so now?

  For a moment, hearing the inhuman baritone, Melusine thought that he might be her father. But when had her father ever worn armour of such weight and mass? Tartaros-pattern. The thought came unbidden to her mind, a legacy of her father’s hypno-conditioning programmes. Whatever it was called, the ceramite plates of the armour were scorched and faded, but its old heraldry of white and purple was still there, however faint. The gleaming power axe in the warrior’s hand sputtered and screeched as it tore gaping wounds in the daemonic ranks.

  ‘Up, woman,’ the newcomer growled. ‘On your feet – quickly!’

  Melusine scrambled to her feet. The warrior pulled her aside with one hand, while plying his axe with the other. This close, she could see that his armour had endured what looked like an eternity of war – impact craters and gouges marred its curves; power cables had been rerouted and spliced, coolant hoses patched; armour plates were missing, or had been replaced by more primitive shielding.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  The warrior ignored her, his attention on his foes. The daemons had regrouped, and now circled them, jeering and murmuring amongst themselves. They showed no concern for their fallen fellows.

  ‘You will not have her,’ the warrior said. ‘She is not yours.’

  ‘No. She is not theirs. She is mine.’

  The voice was at once soft and thunderous. Like the growl of some great beast, crouched just beyond the fire’s edge. The daemons drew back fearfully. A greater terror had come among all the little horrors, and they scattered into the garden, shrieking and wailing in frustration. The party dissolved into a nightmarish cacophony as daemons and lost souls fled in all directions. Something massive undulated into the braziers’ light.

  It resembled an enormous serpent, but in place of a head was the muscular torso of a titan. Four long arms extended, each clothed in golden bracers and scarves of damask. Golden chains draped the body, and hung from a chest-piece of wrought silver, crafted to resemble an androgynous face – like that of a laughing infant. The daemon’s visage was… beautiful, but in a way that was frightening rather than comforting. Regal features peered from amidst an artfully tangled mane of silver-white hair, and amethyst eyes gleamed with a haunting radiance. Great horns rose from amidst its hair, and iridescent tattoos marked its flesh.

  ‘Well,’ it purred. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’

  The Space Marine looked up at the towering, serpentine form. ‘Father,’ he murmured.

  Eyes like sulky lamps flared. ‘Do I know you, little pilgrim?’

  ‘I am Narvo Quin, Father. I stood beside you at Byzas. And at Isstvan.’

  ‘Ah. I know you.’ The daemon paused. ‘You died. One of Ferrus’ sons took your life at Isstvan, even as I took my brother’s.’

  Quin lowered his axe. ‘Death is a matter of perception, I’m told.’

  ‘Why did you save her?’

  Quin hesitated. He glanced at her. Though his face was hidden behind his featureless helm, she could sense his confusion. ‘I… acted on instinct.’

  The daemon laughed. ‘Ah, Narvo. Ever the hero.’ It shook its head. ‘You should not be here, my son. This garden is not for your delight.’

  ‘I came to find you, Father. Your sons require guidance.’

  ‘Guidance?’ the daemon said, with a laugh. ‘I have given them victory! Was not the triumph at Thessala enough of a parting gift from a father to his sons?’

  ‘It has been twenty years since Thessala, Father. Much has happened while you were… elsewhere. I have come to bring the Phoenix home to his sons.’ Quin held up a hand, as if beseeching the being before him. ‘We crumble beneath the weight of our own lusts, unable to see past the desires of the moment. Perfection draws ever farther from our grasp as we waste blood and steel on endless wars against our fellow travellers. Our leaders are in disarray since your departure… Eidolon… Lucius… Fabius… they are at odds.’

  Fabius. Melusine looked up, eyes wide. The daemon saw her reaction and a slow smile spread across its face. ‘Ah. I thought your soul smelled familiar.’

  Quin looked at her. ‘What? Who is she?’

  ‘No one you need
concern yourself with. Our audience is at an end for the moment, pilgrim. Get thee hence. Back to the harsh realm that birthed you and trouble me no more in my idyll.’ Fulgrim gestured, and the sweet-smelling air seemed to collapse about her saviour, swallowing him up as if he had never been. He was gone in the blink of an eye.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Melusine looked up. The eyes were like great pools of amethyst ­liquid, drawing her up and in. ‘You… you are the Phoenician,’ she said, her voice hoarse.

  ‘Yes. I am Fulgrim the Illuminator. And you are Melusine. I thought you destroyed long ago. But here you are. It is fate. I have won a great victory, and as such am bestowed a prize beyond worth.’ Enamelled talons caressed her sweat-tangled locks, and their gilded tips drew thin trails of blood from her scalp and neck. ‘Like Achilleus, I am given my Briseis…’

  ‘Achilleus lost Briseis.’

  Fulgrim paused, eyes shifting from lavender to yellow to red and back again. ‘So he did. Did your father tell you that story? I am surprised. Fabius never struck me as one for such displays of paternal attention.’

  ‘My father taught me many things.’

  Fulgrim’s scales rattled, as if in amusement. ‘Did he teach you about me?’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  Fulgrim frowned. ‘That wasn’t what I asked.’ He slithered about her, enfolding her in his shimmering coils. He caught her chin and tilted her face up. ‘You look like him. I doubt anyone but myself can see it, but it is there. His skull beneath your skin. His eyes. His… disdain.’

  He brought his face close to hers. Small eyes sprouted on his cheeks and brow, and fixed upon her. His breath smelled of something sour, overlaid with sweetness.

  ‘You think you are my superior, don’t you? Even in this moment, so close to destruction, your arrogance is astounding.’ He drew back, a cruel smile stretching across his too-perfect features. ‘Some traits breed true.’

  Melusine did not reply. She tried to meet the multifarious gazes of the daemon prince, but could not. The smell, the colours, it all served to make her eyes water and her lungs burn. She wanted to collapse, to sleep – to die. Instead, she stood. And waited.