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Snares and Delusions – Matthew Farrer

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Word Bearers: The Omnibus’

A Black Library Publication

Snares and Delusions

Matt Farrer

The town surrounds the obscenity, and the obscenity is eating the town. It has no name, this elegant pattern of buildings spread out beneath the wind on the dusty green hills. It is an oddity on this world, this town of dove-grey walls which seem to flow up out of the ground, their smooth lines and gentle angles forcing the eye to look in vain for any tool-marks or signs of shaping. Simplicity of shape and complexity of detail, like outcrops growing unworked from the soil, but natural rock could never grow in the delicate mandala of streets and paths, flowing across the hillside in a design so subtle that the eye can take it in for hours before it begins to understand how much the pattern delights.

Even the violence with which the obscenity has torn its way into the heart of the town has not eclipsed the art of its building, not yet. Despite the craters blasted into the buildings, the smoke in the streets, the dead scattered upon the ground, despite whatever invisible thing it is that is withering the grass and trees and silencing the song of the insects – the place still holds scraps of its beauty, for now.

The town has never needed a name. The Exodites speak of it as they ride their fierce dragons to and fro over the steppes and prairies, but they bring its uniqueness to mind without the coining of a label to go on a sign. For all that they are a warrior race of beast-riding and beast-hunting tribes, their language is the silky melody of all eldar and they are able to speak of the one little town on their world, its historians and artisans and seers, without its ever needing a name.

The obscenity is different. It drives its way out of the ground like the head of a murderous giant buried too shallow, buttresses bulging out from its walls like tendons pulled rigid on a neck as the head is thrown back to scream. Black iron gates gape and steel spines give an idiot glint from the parapets and niches. They are not there to defend. The thing leers and swaggers against the landscape in its power, sure that it is above attack. The spikes are there for cruelty, for execution and display. The obscenity is being built not for subjugating but for the pleasure of the subjugation.

It is growing. As small bands of figures grow from dots across the prairie, advance and join up and form into a procession through streets choked with the stink of death, they can see where buildings are being torn down and the earth beneath them ripped up to furnish more rock for the obscenity. There are rough patches, cavities along the side where new chambers and wings will be added, and the procession – the armoured figures gripping the chains, and the slim cloaked shapes staggering beneath the weight of them – passes the crowds of slaves, toiling in the dust, crying and groaning as the obscenity creeps outward and grows ever taller beneath their hands.

The town does not have a name, but the obscenity does. There is no eldar word for this red-black spear of rock, eating the town from within like a cancer, but it bears a name in the hacking, cawing language of the once-human creatures who drive the slaves ever harder to build it. It is called the Cathedral of the Fifth Blessing, and in its sick, buried heart its master is at prayers.

The air in the Deepmost Chapel was torn this way and that by the screams of the thralls, but Chaplain De Haan paid them no mind. The patterns on the warp-carved obelisk seemed to writhe, the lines and angles impossible by any sane geometry, and De Haan’s eyes and brain shuddered as he tried to follow them. There had been times when he had relished or loathed the sensation in turn, even times when he had screamed when he looked at the pillar just as their mortal serfs were screaming now. That had been in the early days, when the Word Bearers had taken up the banner of Horus himself and Lorgar had still been crafting the great laws of faith in the Pentadict. Those laws had commanded contemplation of the work of Chaos as part of the Ritual of Turning, and now De Haan was calm as he felt the carvings send ripples though his sanity. A lesson in self-disgust and abasement, he had learned in his noviciate. Realise that your mind is but a breath of mist in the face of the gale that is Chaos Undivided. It was a useful lesson.

The time for contemplation was at an end, and he rose. The screams from the chapel floor, beneath the gallery where the Word Bearers themselves sat, went on. Although their mortal thralls were being herded out perhaps a dozen remained, those whose minds had not withstood the gaze at the column, who had begun to convulse on the floor and mutilate themselves. The slave-masters began to drag them toward the torturing pens; they would be adequate as sacrifices later. De Haan walked forward to the pulpit, turned to face the ranks of wine-dark armour and horned helms to begin his first sermon on this new world.

The cycle of worship laid down in the Pentadict decreed that sermon and prayers for that hour were to be about hate. There was a certain expectation in the air that plucked a little chord of pleasure at the base of the Chaplain’s spine. Of all Lorgar’s virtues hatred was the one De Haan prized most, the sea in which his soul swam, the light with which he saw the world. Some of his most beautiful blasphemies had been done in the name of hate. He knew he was revered as a scholar in the field.

The Sacristans moved to the dais below him and reached into the brocaded satchels they carried. They began to array objects on the dais: a banner of purple-and-gold silk tattered and scorched by gunfire in places; a slender eldar helmet and gauntlet in the same colours were set atop it. At the other end of the dais, a delicate crystal mask and a slender sword seemingly made from feather-light, smoky glass, a single pale gem set into the pommel. And beside them, carefully set exactly between the rest, a fist-sized stone, smooth and hard, that shone like a phoenix egg even in the dimness of the chapel. De Haan looked at them, heard the words in his mind: All will be at an end.

An exquisite shudder went through his body. He unclenched his right hand from the pulpit rail, gripped his crozius in his left and opened his mouth to preach. And something happened to the Revered Chaplain De Haan that had never happened to him in his millennia as a Word Bearer: he found himself mute.

High clouds had turned the sky dull and cool as De Haan stood on the jutting rampart outside his war room. His eyes narrowed behind his faceplate as if he were trying to stare through the curve of the planet itself.

‘This race has been allowed to go on, Meer. It has been allowed to spread itself. They drink their wine on their craftworlds and stand under the sky on worlds like this. They crept out across the galaxy like the glint of mildew.’

Meer, chief among his lieutenants, knew better than to respond. He stood at the door which led out onto the rampart, hands folded respectfully before him. He had heard De Haan talk about the eldar many times.

‘Not even the whining Emperor’s puppies are like this. Nor the mangy orks. Tyranids, feh, beneath our dignity. But these things, these are an affront. To be assailed by them – ah! It gnaws at my pride.’ His hand squeezed the haft of his crozius and the weapon’s daemon-head hissed and cursed and spat its displeasure. Only during the rituals would the thing keep quiet. De Haan twisted it around and held it at a more dignified angle. It was a symbol of his office, a chaplaincy in the only Traitor Legion to remember and revere the importance of Chaplains. It did not do to show it disrespect.

De Haan wondered why he had not been able to speak like this in the chapel, why he had stood grasping for words, trying to force thoughts to his lips. A sermon on hate, no less, and yet he had stumbled over the words, choked on maddening distractions, images, snatches of voices, the swirl of memories he was normally able to leave behind at prayer.

‘The eyes of our Dark Master see far, Meer, and who am I to set myself up beside them?’ Meer remained silent, but De Haan was speaking half to himself. ‘The words fled me. My throat was dry and empty. I am wondering, Meer, was it an omen? Do they prey on my mind because they are so near? There was a… a feel to this world, something in the words of our prisoners and spies. Perhaps the Great Conspirator planned from the start that it would end here. To end here, Meer, to bring the sacrament into full flower! Imagine that.’

‘I know you believe your enemy is here, revered,’ came Meer’s careful voice from behind him, ‘but my counsel, and Traika’s, is still that the time was not ripe for you to join us here.’

De Haan’s fist tightened around the crozius again, and the head – now a fanged mouth and eye-stalk; it was always different each time he looked at it – yapped and spat again.

‘The fortifications are still not complete, revered, and only threescore of our own brethren are in this citadel. The battle tanks and Dreadnoughts are still being readied, and the dissonance in this world’s aura has made auguries hard. We still cannot scry far beyond what our own eyes could see. Our bridgehead is not secure, revered. Do you believe this is worth the risk? The reports we had of eldar here seem only to mean these savages, or perhaps mere pirates. We cannot be sure Varantha has passed near this system. We have seen no craftworld eldar here, or–’

De Haan spun around. ‘And I told you, Meer, that it is not suspicions and rumours which have drawn us here this time. I could feel the slippery eldar filth singing to me when I first heard the reports. I saw their faces dancing in the clouds when I looked from the bridge of our ship. What could this psychic “dissonance” you complain of be, but the cowards trying to fog our minds and cover their tracks?’

‘These eldar savages keep a thing called a world-spirit, revered. They–’

‘I know what is a world-spirit – and what is the stink of a farseer!’ De Haan’s voice did not quite go all the way to a roar, but it did not have to. There was a jitter in his vision and a rustle far off in his hearing as the systems in his armour, long since come to a Chaotic life of their own, tried to recoil from his anger. ‘You were not given the sacrament, Meer! You do not carry the Fifth Blessing! I do, and I command you with it. I tell you that Varantha is here, and this is our doorway to it! I have known it in my soul since we broke from the warp!’

Meer bowed, accepting the rebuke, and De Haan slowly, deliberately turned his back. High in his vision he could see a point of light, visible even while the sun was up: their orbiting battle-barge. A space hulk full of Chaos Marines and their slaves and thralls, cultists doped with Frenzon with their explosive suicide collars clamped to their necks, mutants and beastfolk from the Eye of Terror and traitors of every stripe. Seeing it focused his thoughts again.

‘We shall bring down our brethren soon enough. The engines and Dreadnoughts too. For now, fetch Nessun. And have the latest prisoner train brought before me.’

There was a scrape of ceramite on stone as Meer bowed again and turned to go, and by the time Meer had reached the bottom of the stairs De Haan was sinking back into reverie.

He was thinking of the cramped, fetid tunnels within the walls of the giant canal-cities of Sahch-V, where he and Meer and Alaema and barely a half-dozen Word Bearer squads had lived like rats in burrows for nearly two years, as around them their covert missionaries moved out through the cities and along the canals which brought life to the basalt plains, beginning their quiet preaching, their mission schools with their drugs and brainwashing rooms. He remembered the small chamber beneath the thermic pumps outside Vana City where the three of them had listened to their agents’ reports and pored over their ever-spreading web of traitors and catspaws.

He remembered cries in the tunnels, in particular the voice of Belg, the scrawny cleft-chinned cult emissary loud in the coffin-like burrows as he shouted down the passages: ‘We are lost! The missions are dying. Our rebellion is clipped before it begins!’ Someone had shot Belg down in a fury before De Haan had had a chance to hear more, but he remembered the word that had gone flying through the base as the reports began to come in.

Eldar!

And the second, the three syllables that had not yet – he could barely remember the feeling – become sweet poison in his brain, not yet become the black-burning obsession hanging in front of his eyes, the name they had not heard until the Warp Spiders had begun to hunt them through their chambers and drove them out to where the rest of the eldar lay waiting with shuriken and plasma-shot, fusion-beam and wraithcannon. Alaema had gone down with a lightning-wrapped witchblade through his gut, and De Haan had barely managed to drag himself and Meer away to the teleport point.

Varantha.

Oh, he remembered. Twenty-one centuries of remembering.

He remembered the sick anger that had seized him when he first spoke to the Imperial scholar they had captured as the wretch thrashed on the torture rack. Varantha meant ‘Crown of our Steadfast Hopes’. Human traders spoke in awe of the gems it crafted, the rare flowers it bred, the beautiful metals its artisans worked. Varantha that passed through the western galactic margins, scraping the borders of the Halo where not even the Traitor Legions went, Varantha that was supposed to have passed through Hydraphur itself, the home of the Imperial Battlefleet Pacificus, coasting through the system’s intricate double-ecliptic and away again before the whey-faced Imperials had even a suspicion it had been there.

Varantha that hated Chaos with a white heat. Varantha that had held off Karlsen of the Night Lords in his raids on the Clavian Belt until the Ultramarines had arrived, Varantha whose farseers had tricked and feinted to lure the orks of Waaagh-Chobog into falling on the Iron Hands’ fortresses on Taira-Shodan instead of the Imperial and Exodite worlds around them, Varantha whose warriors had driven Arhendros the Silken Whisper off the three worlds he had claimed for Slaanesh.

And Varantha that had balked the Word Bearers on Sahch-V, had unravelled their plans and made sure the great citadels and halls they would have built could never be. A Varantha witch blade had cut down De Haan’s mentor, Varantha wraithships had driven their battle-barges and strikers out of the system. And when they had broken free of the warp outside the Cadian Gate, ready for their final jump back to the Eye of Terror and sanctuary, it had been Varantha craft which had led the fleets of Ulthwe and Cadia, driving into the Chaos fleet like a bullet tearing into flesh.

Fighting Varantha, stalking the craftworld through a quarter of the galaxy, De Haan had discovered a capacity for hate he had never realised that even a Traitor Marine could possess. Every battle against the craftworld had been like a stroke of the bellows, fanning it ever hotter. The orbital refineries at Rhea, where the eldar had lured De Haan and his warband in – then disappeared, leaving the Word Bearers in the abandoned, genestealer-infested satellite compounds. The island chains of Herano’s World where their Doomblaster had smashed the eldar psykers into the ocean at the campaign’s opening, and De Haan had led a joyous hunt through the jungles, mopping up the scattered and leaderless Guardians.

And at the last, the farseer, staggering beneath the red-black clouds of Iante as artillery flashed and boomed across the distant horizon, watching De Haan as he circled it, stepping over its dead bodyguard. The calm resignation in its stance and the cold precision of its voice.

‘So tell me then. What do you see for us, little insect?’ De Haan had taunted.

‘Why, you will set your eyes on the heart of Varantha, and all will come to an end,’ it had replied, before a howling stroke of De Haan’s crozius had torn it in half. He had felt the spirit stone shudder and pulse as he tore it free of the thing’s breastplate with a sound like cracking bone, and he wondered every so often if the creature’s soul was aware of who owned its stone now. He hoped it was.

It had not been long after that that he had been called to receive his sacrament, the Sacrament of the Fifth Blessing. The highest priests of his Chapter had recognised the depth of his spite and had praised him for it: the Fifth Blessing was hate, and the sacrament had appointed De Haan a holy vessel, freed him from his duties in order to lead a crusade that he might express that hate to the utmost, a great hymn to Lorgar carved across the galaxy in Varantha’s wake. He could never think back on his sacrament without the hot red flames of pride flaring deep in what he thought was his soul.

He walked to the edge of his rampart and watched the slaves toiling at the walls far below. His arms convulsed, as though he could already feel eldar souls pulsing and struggling in his fingers, and the wave of malice which surged up his spine made him almost giddy.

‘Revered?’

De Haan started at the voice and spun around. His crozius head, now some kind of grotesque insect, chittered something that sounded almost like words. He ignored it and found his concentration again.

‘What have the threads of Fate brought us, Nessun?’

The other Space Marine hesitated. Nessun was no full-fledged sorcerer as the adepts of the Thousand Sons were, but by Lorgar’s grace he had developed a spirit sight that could scry almost as well as the eldar warlocks they hunted. The mutation that had given him his warp eye had pushed it far out and up onto his brow, making an ungainly lump of his head. The ceramite of his armour had turned glass-clear over it, but De Haan and the others had long ago become used to the way the great milky eyeball pulsed and rolled between the horns of Nessun’s helm.

‘In the way of eldar, revered, there is little I can say for definite. I see shadows at the corners of my vision and echoes that I must interpret. You know that nothing is certain with these creatures.’

‘Describe these shadows and echoes, Nessun. I am patient.’

‘I have kept my gaze on the tribes here in the days since our first landing, revered, and watched as they fought our thralls and Brother Traika’s vanguard force. There is a… texture to them that I have taught myself to recognise, by Lorgar’s grace. But I have caught ripples, something dancing out of sight. I am not sure how I can explain it, revered. Imagine a figure standing just beyond the reach of light from a fire, so that sometimes its shape is touched by the firelight…’

‘I think I understand.’ De Haan wasn’t aware that he had tensed until he felt his armour, alive like his helmet systems, shiver and creak as it tried to find a comfortable position.

‘Revered, I am abased and humble before the foul glory of Chaos, but I must venture the guess that craftworld eldar may be here. Here on this world. I have dimly seen the patterns that the minds of farseers form when they assemble, and I have felt… gaps in my vision that I believe are warp gates, webway gates here and in orbit beyond the planet from our own ship, that have opened and closed and that they have not been able to hide…’ He stopped short as De Haan drove gauntlet into fist, hissing with triumph, sending his armour shivering and flexing from the blow.

‘An omen! My voice was bound in the chapel as an omen!’ And he was about to speak again when Meer called from the war room.

‘Most revered lord, the prisoners await you.’

There was something in Meer’s voice that made De Haan almost run for the doorway.

Two eldar stood in the great hall, heads bowed as De Haan strode to his throne and sat down, crozius across his knees. The arm of one hung brokenly; blood matted the other’s hair. Both were dressed in rough cloth and hide tunics, and their lasers, the power chambers smashed, had been hung around their necks. Traika, the commander of their vanguard and Raptors, bowed to De Haan and made the sign of the Eightfold Arrow with the hand that had fused to his chainsword. Traika’s legs had warped and lengthened too, now bending backward like an insect’s, the armour over them lumpy and stretched. It had made him fleet of foot but gave him an odd, tilted way of standing.

‘We found these in the south-west quarter where the hills steepen. We thought we had cleansed the area, revered, but these were part of an ambush on one of our scouring forces. The fight was fierce but we carried the day.’

‘Praise Lorgar’s dark light and the great will of Chaos,’ De Haan intoned, and the two were led away into the cathedral’s cells. Traika gestured and a third alien was dragged up the steps, limping and tripping. The thrall holding its chains tossed a dead power-lance and a tall bone helm onto the floor. The prisoner did not react, standing slumped with its hair in its face, its long cloak of golden-scaled hide hanging limply around it.

‘The last survivor of a group of Dragon Knights we believe were scouting the northern border of our controlled zone. I will attend the tormenting of this one personally, revered. I had felt sure that our deep raids had gutted the last of the Exodite resistance on the prairies. We must find out how this new raid was organised so soon.’ The thrall began to drag the knight out, and Meer walked over to stand beside the throne.

‘Revered, this is the final prisoner. It was badly wounded, and did not survive the journey back to be brought before you, but we believed you would want to see it. The Raptors brought it down in the river-valley to the south and our bikers brought it here with all haste.’

With a scraping groan of wheels the thralls pushed forward an iron frame with a figure stretched in it, a figure whose rich purple and gold armour caught the sunlight coming through the still-unglazed windows and gave off a burnished glow. Behind it four more – strong beastfolk these, whose muscles rippled and corded with their burden – dragged something into view and dropped it crashing to the floor, stirring the rock-dust that still coated the hall from its building. A jet bike, its canopy cracked open by bolt shells, the drive smashed and burnt from its crash, but the pennons hanging from its vanes perfectly clear: the stylised crown-and-starburst of Varantha.

For a long moment, De Haan was silent. Then he threw his arms wide as though he were about to embrace the corpse, and gave a bellow that echoed through the length of the hall.

‘All will come to an end! Horus’s eye, but the filthy little creature spoke the truth. The craftworld’s heart! It is here! The sacrament ends here, my brethren! I will end it here!’

‘Revered!’ De Haan did not look back. His stride had lengthened as his pace had picked up, and he was practically jogging through the halls to the Deepmost Chapel, Meer and Nessun shouldering one another aside to keep up. The air in the fortress shivered as the great gongs they had hung over the barracks rang out again and again. Under the sound De Haan left a trail of angry murmurs in the air, curses and threats and dark prayers. Every so often he would slash his crozius viciously around him as if to knock the air itself out of his path.

He knew what Meer would be saying. More weak-spirited yapping, more about caution and rashness and the trickery of the eldar. But the warp gate was close. Varantha was close. The time when the heads of Varantha’s farseers were set on spikes atop his Land Raider was a breath away.

Why, you will set your eyes on the heart of Varantha, and all will come to an end.

The heart of the craftworld, the very heart of Varantha! He wondered how it would feel, walking from the webway gate into Varantha itself. The domes where the most ancient of their farseers sat, their flesh crystallised and gleaming like diamond, waiting for the blow of an armoured fist that would send their souls screaming into the warp. The Grove of New Songs, that was what they called the forest-hall deep in Varantha where the few eldar children were born and weaned. De Haan had spent a hundred weeks agonising over whether he would kill the children or take them as slaves after he had poisoned and burned the trees. The infinity circuit, the wraithbone core which held the spirits of a billion dead eldar, had shone through his dreams like a galaxy aflame. Oh, to crack its lattice with his crozius and watch the warp tides pour in! It would need a special ceremony, the culmination of his crusade and sacrament, something he would have to plan.

And was Varantha possessed of engines, a world that could control its drift and sweep through space? He had never been able to discover that, but he began turning the idea over feverishly as he strode down the hallway to the chapel. To take command of Varantha, hollow out its core of eldar souls and fill them with sacrifices and the cries of daemons, to sail the fallen craftworld to the Eye of Terror itself! His head swam with the audacity: a world that would put their daemon-world fortresses and the asteroid seminaries at Milarro to shame. A corrupted world that would carry them through the galaxy, a great blight that would stand as a testament to their faith, their hate, their spite, their unholiness.

The rest of the Traitor Marines began to file in and take their places, and the slave-choir in their cells beneath the chapel floor raised a hymn of howls and cries as the choir-masters puffed drugs into their faces and yanked on the needles in their flesh. De Haan closed his eyes and could see the conquered Varantha still, a great twisted flower of black and crimson, sprawled against the stars. The shapes of the spires and walls, great plazas where the zealous would come to plead for the favour of Chaos, the cells and scriptoria where Lorgar’s holy Pentadict would be copied and studied, the fighting pits where generations of new Word Bearers would be initiated. There would be pillars and statues greater than those they had raised after driving the White Scars from the island chains of Morag’s World. There would be chamber after chamber of altars more richly decorated than those they had seized when they had sacked the treasury of Kintarre. There would be the slaughtering pens for the worship of Khorne, great libraries and chambers for meditating upon the lore of Tzeentch. There would be palaces of incense and music dedicated to Slaanesh, and cess-pits for the rituals of self-defilement dedicated to Nurgle. And all just parts, even as the Chaos Gods were just facets, all parts of the great treacherous hymn, an obscene prayer in wraithbone and carved ceramite. The Sacred City of Chaos Undivided.

De Haan cradled his vision lovingly in his mind, and saw that it was good.

‘Lorgar is with us, Chaos is within us, damnation clothes us and none can stand against us.’ Voices around the chapel echoed the blessing as De Haan held his rosarius aloft and made the sign of the Eightfold Arrow. For the second time that day he looked out over ranks of helms, leaned forward to look down at the bright eyes of the cultists and beastfolk crowded below him. But this time, his thoughts and his words were clear.

‘Be it known to you, most devout of my comrades in Lorgar’s footsteps, that we are gathered here once again in the observance of the Fifth Blessing of Lorgar, the blessing of hate. Bring your thoughts to the sacrament granted to me by the most high of our order, that I might light a dark beacon of spite for all the cosmos to see.’ He paused, looked down again. The eldar artefacts had gone from the dais, locked away again by the Sacristans. It was not important – he did not need them now.

‘Hatred earned me the great and honoured sacrament. Hatred has pleased the beautiful abomination of Chaos Undivided, and shone a light through the warp to Varantha. My beautiful hatred has brought us to their scent. After more than two millennia, the fulfilment of our sacred charter is near.’ The memory of the Varantha Guardian, the knowledge of what they had found here, surged through him afresh: his head spun, his joints felt weak with exhilaration. His crozius head as he raised it was now a contorted nightmare-face, grimacing as if in ecstasy, mirroring his feelings.

‘Soon we will be joined by our brothers, our fellow warriors and bearers of Lorgar’s words. Even now the order goes out to land our machines of war, our bound Dreadnoughts. Within the week, my congregation, this world will have felt the full fury of our crusade and when the Exodites are scoured from it we shall march through the warp gate into the craftworld itself! Hone yourselves, my acolytes, hone your spite and fan your hate to the hottest, most bitter flame. None shall pass us in our devotion, none are as steeped in poisoned thoughts as we!’ His voice hammered out and boomed against the walls of the chapel, intoxicating even with the power of its echoes. De Haan fought back an urge to laugh – this felt so right.

‘In the beginning, even in the days before my pursuit earned me the sacrament, I had spoken to one of the degenerate farseers the eldar claim to revere. At its death the maggot spoke a prophecy that the blessed oracles of our high temples have sworn to be true. Brethren, as I lead you to battle I will set my eyes on the heart of Varantha and then all will come to an end. I will cut down their last farseer, I will break open the seals of their infinity circuit, I will shatter the heart and eye of their home!’ His voice had risen to a roar. ‘All will come to an end! Our crusade, our sacrament fulfilled! The eldar themselves have sworn it will be so. What honours, what glories we will build!’

Above him the gong rang again, and De Haan opened his eyes and leaned forward.

‘Look to your weapons, brothers. I will lead you now in the Martio Imprimis. I tell you this: by the end of even this day we will be at war!’

The chant of the Martio Imprimis was an old song and a good one, crafted by Lorgar himself in the days before the Emperor had turned on his Word Bearers and when even De Haan had been only a youngblood initiate. The words were strange and their meanings almost lost, but they filled him with a beautiful, electric energy. It rang in De Haan’s blood even now. The service in the Deepmost Chapel had been over for an hour but the Word Bearers had caught something of their Chaplain’s mood and as the teleport beam sent thundercracks and sickly shimmers of light through the citadel’s hangar, the Space Marines chanted still as they selected weapons and directed the thralls in moving the crates and engines away.

‘Duxhai!’ The crusade’s chief artisan, still swaying a little from his teleport, turned as De Haan called him. He stepped back into a deep kneeling bow as De Haan strode across the hangar floor and left the moving of the icon-encrusted Razorback tanks to his seconds.

‘Is it true, revered lord? I was told you have received omens and that Varantha itself is in our grip. They are singing hymns in all the halls and chambers of our fortress. Look!’ The old Space Marine pointed to the nearest tank’s turret, where splashes of blood glistened. ‘They have already made sacrifices over our wargear.’

‘It is true, Duxhai, and it is fitting that our brethren in orbit are making their thanks and obeisances. Lorgar has exalted us. I have been shown the way.’

Duxhai had worked on his armour himself over the centuries, making it a glorious construction of red and gold. Chaos had worked on it too: the studs and rivets on its carapace had all turned to eyes, yellow slit-pupilled eyes, which stared at De Haan now but rolled forward to watch Meer walk into the hangar. De Haan pointed to the Razorbacks.

‘Give praise, Meer! See how Brother Duxhai’s skills have transformed these? Captured barely a year ago, and already adorned and consecrated for service! These will carry Traika’s vanguard squads into the teeth of the Varantha lines!’

‘Our revered chaplain’s own Land Raider will be brought down next,’ put in Duxhai, ‘and the transports are being readied to bring down the Dreadnoughts and Rhinos. We will be ready to move soon.’

‘A dark blessing on you, brother, and thanks to the great foulness of Chaos. Revered, I must make a report.’

‘Well?’ De Haan was becoming nettled by Meer’s manner, his shifty-eyed caution. He could see in the corner of his eyes that Duxhai had registered the offhand greeting also.

‘Revered, we have lost contact with our patrols at the furthest sweep of the contested zone. I had our adepts move the communicators onto the outer balconies but there is still no way to raise them. The Raptors who went out to counterstrike at the areas where our own forces were ambushed cannot be reached either, and the bike squadron was due two hours ago but cannot be seen. The psychic haze has thickened, and Nessun’s warp eye is almost blind. He reports a presence like a light through fog, but he cannot pinpoint it.’

‘I will come to the war room, Meer. Wait for me there.’ His lieutenant backed away, bowed and departed. ‘Something in the air on this world turns my warriors to water, Duxhai. They whimper to me of “caution” and “fortification”. Meer is a good warrior, but I should have made you my lieutenant for this world. I need your ferocity by me here.’

Duxhai bowed. ‘I am honoured, revered. Lieutenant or no, I will gladly fight by your side. Allow me to prepare my weapons and I will meet you in the war room.’

De Haan nodded and waited a moment more, allowing the chanting of the Traitor Marines to soothe his ruffled nerves, before he strode away.

Nessun was standing quietly in the war room when De Haan entered, head bowed, warp eye clouded. Meer and Traika were pacing, almost circling each other, clearly at odds. De Haan ordered them to report.

‘Something is coming, revered!’ Meer began. ‘The slaves are restless, there have been revolts on the building crews! The eldar know something! We must prepare for assault!’

‘We must make the assault!’ Traika’s rasping voice. ‘We are Word Bearers, not Iron Warriors! We do not skulk behind walls. We take Lorgar’s blessing to our enemies, His blessings of hate and fire and blood and agony!’ The obscenely long fingers of Traika’s left hand flexed and clenched, as if to claw the tension out of the air.

Listening to them, De Haan hesitated. For the first time he felt a tug, a tilt at the back of his mind that he could not identify. He could not see with Nessun’s precision, no seer he, but ten thousand years in the Eye of Terror had tuned him to the coarser ebbs and flows as it had them all. Something was near. He raised his crozius for silence – its crown a snarling hound’s head now – and looked to Nessun.

‘Speak, Nessun! Stare through these walls. Tell me what you see!’

‘Revered, I… am not sure. There are patterns, something moving… a ring, a wall… closing or opening, I cannot say… a mind… shapes, silent… rushing air…’ His voice was becoming ragged, and De Haan cut him off.

‘It’s clear enough. Meer, Traika: you are both right. The eldar know of us.’ He fought back a chuckle. ‘And they fear us. Catch us off-guard, would they? A quick strike at the head, was it? Drive me off their trail?’ And now he did laugh, feeling the tension lifting from his back.

‘Time for our sortie, my brothers! Have the Razorbacks lowered to the ramp. Traika, assemble your veteran squads! Meer, have our space command ready a bombardment for when we–’

That was when the first plasma blast hit the side of the cathedral with a sound like the sky being torn apart. The thunderous roar died away amid vast dust clouds, the groan of masonry, frenzied shouts from up and down the halls. De Haan stared straight ahead for one speechless moment, then hurled himself to the balcony, the others behind him. And then they could only stand and watch.

The world had filled with enemies. Sleek eldar jet bikes arrowed down from the sky to whip past the walls of the cathedral, and high above De Haan could hear the rumble of sonic booms as squadrons of larger alien assault craft criss-crossed over their heads. With sickening speed each distant blur in the air would grow and resolve into a raptor-sleek grav-tank, arcing in silently to spill a knot of infantry into the town before they rose and banked away again. In what seemed like a matter of heartbeats the fortress was ringed by a sea of advancing Guardians, their ranks dotted with gliding gun-platforms and dancing war-walkers, and the air swarmed with the eldar craft.

The aliens’ assault started to be answered. Thumps and cracks came from the walls as the Word Bearers brought heavy weapons to bear and threads of tracer fire began reaching out to the purple-and-gold shapes that danced past on the wind. De Haan pushed to the edge of the balcony, heedless of the shapes above him and greedy for the sight of fireballs and smoke-trails, but he had time for no more than a glance before Meer and Traika pulled him away from the edge.

‘Revered! With us! You must lead us. We cannot stay!’ He cursed and almost raised his crozius to Meer, but the first laser beams had begun sweeping the balcony, carving at the rock and sending molten dribbles down the walls behind them. He nodded grimly and led them inside.

In the debris-swathed halls all was din and confusion. The slave-masters bellowed and flailed with their barbed whips, but their charges would not be ordered. De Haan realised someone had set off the Frenzon too early. Their thralls ran to and fro, shrieking and swinging their clubs, pistols spitting and making the stone chambers a hell of sparks and ricochets. Bullets spanged off De Haan’s armour as he shouldered his way through the crowd of naked, bleeding berserkers.

‘To me! They are upon us, we will cut them down here! To me!’ and De Haan began the chant of the Martio Secundus. All around him Word Bearers turned and began to fall in behind him, dark red helms bearing down on him above the sea of bobbing cultist heads. Roars and growls began to mix with the cries of the mortals; the beastfolk were following too. De Haan gave a snarling grin behind his faceplate. In Lorgar’s name, we will make a fight of this yet.

Reaching the great stair, they found that a whole part of the wall had gone, simply vanished leaving smooth stone edges where a piece had been erased. A distort-cannon crater – and the ceiling above it was already beginning to groan and send down streams of dust. He ignored the danger, sent his chant ringing out again and charged through the crater to the hall beyond; the hangar and teleport dais were close.

Then, swooping and darting though the breaches their cannon had made, came the eldar, Aspect Warriors all in blue, thrumming wings spreading from their shoulders. Lasers stabbed down into the throng underneath them and grenades fell from their hands like petals.

‘Fight!’ De Haan bellowed, and now that he was in battle he roared the Martio Tertius and sent a fan of bolt shells screaming through the squadron, smashing two Hawks backwards into the wall in clouds of smoke. His crozius, twisted into the head of a one-eyed bull, was belching streams of red plasma that hung in the air when he moved it; it had not boasted the blue power-field of the Imperial croziae for eight thousand years.

The remaining Hawks tumbled gracefully in the air and glided towards the ruined wall, now with other shots chasing them, but then the braying of the beastfolk changed note. De Haan whirled to see three of them, firing wildly, looking about them in panic, caught in a silvery mist. All three seemed to twitch and heave and fall oddly out of shape before they collapsed into piles of filth on the stone floor. Beyond them, the two Warp Spider warriors sucked the filament clouds back into the muzzles of their weapons. While shells from De Haan and Meer took one apart, the other stepped back. With a gesture, the air flowed around it like water and it was gone.

Down the hall and up the broad stairs, running hard, Duxhai came pounding out of the smoke, plasma gun clutched in his hands. The hangar was filled with smoke and flashes of light.

‘The hangar is gone, lord, taken. We opened the gates to take the tanks down the ramp to the ground, but they drove us back with their strange weapons, and their heavy tanks are bombarding us. The teleport platform is destroyed. I have said the Martio Quartus for our fallen, and my brothers have dug in to hold them at bay. But we cannot stay here.’

De Haan almost groaned aloud. ‘I will not be driven like an animal! This is my fortress, I will stand to defend it!’ But his soldier’s instincts had taken charge and were giving the lie to his words: he was already moving back down the stairs to meet the last of the Space Marines and a gaggle of thralls struggling up to meet him. He looked at them for a moment, and did not flinch as a Fire Prism fired through the hangar doors, opened a dazzling sphere of yellow-white fire over their heads.

‘The Deepmost Chapel, then, and the Great Hall. We will cut them down as they enter, until our brothers can land. When the transports land the rest of our crusade the battle will turn soon enough.’

They hammered down the stairs. Beside them a glare came through the window-slits and then the rock wall flashed red-hot and crumbled as the Space Marines next to it hurled themselves away. The sleek alien tank which had opened the breach rose out of sight and the jet bikes behind it – no Guardian craft these but the smoky grey-green and bright silver of the Shining Spears – threw a delicate cat’s cradle of lasers through the opening. Thralls yowled and fell, while the beastfolk sent bullets and shot blasting out of the opening as the jet bikes peeled off and rose out of sight.

Then the Word Bearers were in the chapel, the shadowy space and echoes calming De Haan, the familiar shape of the warp obelisk giving him strength. They fanned out into the chamber, around the upper gallery and the floor itself, needing no orders: within seconds the doors were covered. The pack of thralls and beastfolk huddled and muttered in the centre of the chamber, clutching weapons.

‘Revered, we… we are beset on every side.’ Nessun’s voice was flat and hoarse with anger. ‘I feel them at the gates, fighting our brothers and slaves. But they are above us too, they are breaching the upper walls and stepping onto the balconies from their grav-sleds. And, and… most revered lord…’

Suddenly Nessun’s voice was drenched with misery, and even the heads of the warriors around him were turning. ‘Our battle-barge. Our fortress. I see it reeling in space, revered… it is ringed by the enemy… their ships dance away from our guns… our brothers were preparing their landing, the shields had been lowered for the teleport to work. The eldar are tearing at it… my vision is dimming…’

There was silence in the chapel for a moment after Nessun’s voice died away. De Haan thought of trying to reach the sensoria array in the spires above them, then pushed the useless thought away. The upper levels would be full of eldar scum by now, and by the time they could fight their way there his ship would indeed have been blasted from the sky.

He looked around. ‘Alone, then. Alone with our hatred. I will hear no talk of flight. They will break against us as a wave against a cliff.’

‘Lorgar is with us, Chaos is within us, damnation clothes us and none can stand against us.’

As they all said the blessing De Haan’s eyes moved from one to the next. Meer cradling his bolter, seemingly deep in thought, Duxhai standing haughtily with plasma-gun held at arms, Traika glaring about him for any sign of weakness in the others, chainsword starting to flex and rev. De Haan raised his crozius and strode from the chapel, the others following, and as if on a signal they heard the bombardment outside begin again.

It was only fitting that De Haan and his retinue marched into the north end of the ruined Great Hall at the same time that the eldar filled its south. They had blown in the walls and shot the bronze doors apart and were fanning out through the ruins. De Haan leapt down the steps into the hall, letting the dust and smoke blur his outline as shots clipped the columns around him and his men returned fire from the archway. A plasma grenade exploded nearby, an instant of scorching whiteness that betrayed the eldar: in the instant that it blinded them the Word Bearers had launched their own advance, scrambling and vaulting over the rubble. There were insect-quick movements ahead and De Haan fired by reflex, plucking the Guardians out of their positions before he had consciously registered their location. The soft thrum of shuriken guns was drowned out by the hammer-and-yowl of the Word Bearers’ bolt shells.

A stream of white energy flashed by De Haan’s shoulder as Duxhai felled two more eldar, but there were Dire Avengers in the eldar positions now, with quicker reflexes and a hawk-eye aim to catch Duxhai before he could move again. The shuriken were monomolecular, too fast and thin to properly see, but the air around Duxhai seemed to shimmer and flash. Blood and ceramite gouted from his back as his torso flew apart, the eyes on his armour glazing over. He staggered back and De Haan jinked around him, launching himself into battle.

A grenade went off somewhere to his left and shrapnel clipped his armour. The Word Bearer felt the moist embrace of the plates around his body jump and twitch with the pain. He brought his crozius up and over, its wolf’s head yowling with both joy and pain and belching thick red plasma. It caught the Avenger square on its jutting helmet and the creature twitched for a moment only before the glowing crimson mist ate it down to the bone. His bolt pistol hammered in his hand and two more eldar crashed backward, twitching and tumbling. Just beyond them, Traika cleared a fallen column in a great leap and landed among yellow-armoured Striking Scorpions whose chainswords sang and sparked against his own. In the rubble, Meer led the others in laying down a crossfire that strewed alien corpses across a third of the hall.

De Haan sang the Martio Tertius in a clear, strong voice and shot the nearest Scorpion in the back. Traika screamed laughter and swung at another, but as it back-pedalled another Scorpion, in the heavy intricate armour of an exarch, glided forward and whirled a many-chained crystalline flail in an intricate figure that smashed both Traika’s shoulders and left him standing, astonished and motionless, for a blow that stove in his helm and sent ceramite splinters flying. De Haan bellowed a battle-curse and his crozius head became a snake that lashed and hissed. Two short steps forward and he lunged, feinted and struck the flail out of the creature’s hand. It reeled back into Meer’s sights, the plasma eating at it even as shells riddled it, but in the time it took for De Haan to strike down the last Scorpion the hall was alive with eldar again, and Meer and Nessun were forced back and away from him by a shower of grenades and sighing filament webs as the blast from a distort-cannon scraped the roof off the hall and let in the raging sky.

Even as De Haan charged, fired and struck again and again, some distant part of him groaned. Faint, maddening alien thoughts brushed his own like spider-silk in the dark, and shadows danced at the upper edge of his vision as jet bikes and Vypers circled. The air around him was alive with shuriken fire and energy bolts. The eldar melted away as he struck this way and that. Ancient stone burst into hot shards as he swung his crozius, but rage had taken his discipline and, like a man trying to snatch smoke in his fingers, he found himself standing and roaring wordlessly as the hall emptied once more and the shots died away.

There were no voices, no cries from his companions. De Haan did not have to turn to look to know that this last assault had taken them all. Meer and Nessun were dead, and behind him he could hear the boom of masonry as his citadel began to crumble. The Prayer of Sacrifice and the Martio Quartus would not come to his numb lips, and he nodded to himself. Why should not his rites unravel along with everything else? The Chaos star set in his rosarius was dead, lacklustre. He looked at it dully, and that was when he began to feel something tugging at his mind.

It was like an electrical tingle, or the distant sound of crickets; the way the air feels before a storm, or the thrum of distant war-machines. De Haan’s warp-tuned mind rang with the nearby song of power. He remembered Nessun speaking of the pattern that farseers’ minds made when they assembled.

You will set your eyes…

Suddenly he was running again. No screams now, just a low moan in his throat, a tangle of savage emotions he could not have put a name to if he had tried. Blood trickled from his lips and his crozius thrummed and crackled. The gates of the cathedral hung like broken wings. He ducked between them to stand on the broad black steps of his dying fortress.

…on the heart of Varantha…

His crozius’s head had fallen silent, and he looked at it in puzzlement. It had formed itself into a human face, mouth gaping, eyes wide. A face that De Haan recognised as his own, from back in the days before his helm had sealed itself to him.

Turn, De Haan. Turn And Face Me.

The voice did not come through his ears, but seemed to resonate out of the air and throughout his bones and brain. It was measured, almost sombre, but its simple force almost shook him to his knees. Slowly, he raised his head.

…and all will come to an end.

More than twice De Haan’s height, the immense figure stood with its spear at rest. It took a step forward out of the smoke that had wreathed it, to the centre of the plaza. De Haan watched the blood drip from its hand and stain the grey stones on the ground. It stood and regarded him, and there was none of the expected madness or fury in the white-hot pits of its baleful eyes, only a brooding patience that was far more terrifying.

He took a step forward. All the fury had gone like the snuffing of a candle: now there was just wrenching despair which drove everything else from his mind. He wondered how long ago Varantha’s farseers had realised he was hunting them, how long ago they had begun cultivating his hate, how long ago they had begun to set this trap for him. He wondered if the farseer whose prophecy he had thought to fulfil was laughing at him from within its spirit stone.

He stood alone on the steps, and the air was silent but for the hiss of heat from incandescent iron skin and the faint keening from the weapon in one giant hand.

Then the lines from the Pentadict danced through his mind, the lines with which Lorgar had closed his testament as his own death came upon him.

Pride and defiant hate, spite and harsh oblivion. Let the great jewelled knot of the cosmos unravel in the dust.

He looked up again, his mind suddenly clear and calm. He raised his crozius, but the salute was not returned. No matter. He took a pace forward and down the steps, that volcanic gaze on him all the time. He walked faster, now jogging. He worked the action on his pistol with the heel of his hand. Running, its eyes on him.

Charging now, feet hammering, voice found at last in a wail of defiance, Chaplain De Haan ran like a daemon across his last battlefield to where the Avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine stood, its smoking, shrieking spear in its vast hands, waiting for him.

About the Author

Matthew Farrer is the author of the novella ‘The Inheritor King’, which appears in Sabbat Crusade. He also wrote the Warhammer 40,000 novels Crossfire, Legacy and Blind, along with numerous short stories, including ‘The Headstone and Hammerstone Kings’ for Sabbat Worlds and the Horus Heresy tales ‘After Desh’ea’ and ‘Vorax’. He lives and works in Australia.

An extract from Word Bearers: The Omnibus.

Kol Badar glared across the expanse of the cavaedium. The arena of worship, located deep within the heart of the strike cruiser Infidus Diabolus, was large enough to allow the recently swollen ranks of the entire Host to stand in attendance. Its curved ceiling stretched impossibly high, and immense skeletal ribbed supports met hundreds of metres above. The kathartes perched along the bone-like struts, daemonic, skinless harpies that flickered in and out of the warp. But Kol Badar’s gaze did not rise to look upon the carrion feeders.

No, his scowling features were focused on the last of the warriors filing into the enormous room. From his vantage point, just one step from the top of the sacred raised dais that none bar the most holy of warriors would occupy, he could see the last of the Host’s champions leading their warriors into the cavaedium, to take their places for the coming ceremony. The expanse was almost full. The entire Host had been gathered. Kol Badar let his gaze wander over the serried ranks, glorying in the strength and power that his warriors exuded. None could hope to stand against such a force of the devout, and his warriors would soon prove their worth once again.

His warriors. He grunted at his own hubris. They were not his warriors. If anything, they were the warriors of the Dark Apostle, though in his words they belonged only to Chaos in all its glory. The Dark Apostle claimed that he was merely the instrument through which the great powers directed these noble warriors of faith, and that Kol Badar was his primary tool to enact the great gods’ will.

Kol Badar was the Coryphaus. It was a symbolic title, granted to the most trusted and capable warrior leader and strategos of the Host. His word was second only to that of the Dark Apostle. The Coryphaus was the Dark Apostle’s senior war captain, but more than this, he was the voice of the congregation. The mood and opinion of the Host was delivered to the Dark Apostle through him, and it was his duty to lead the chanted responses and antiphons from the gathered Host in ceremonies and rituals. It was also his role to lead the responses within the true house of worship of the dark gods: the battlefield.

The processional corridor that ran down the middle of the nave remained clear as the cavaedium filled. Almost half a kilometre long and laid with black, immaculate carpet consecrated in the blood of thousands, none dared to step upon this hallowed ground, bar those deemed worthy, on pain of immortal torment. There were no seats within the nave; the warriors of the Legion received the word from the Dark Apostle standing, armed and armoured. Dozens of smaller sanctuaries and temple-shrines branched off from the ancient stone walls of the cavaedium, containing statues of daemonic deities, ancient texts and the interred remains of holy warriors who had fallen during the constant, long war.

An almost imperceptible, ghostly chanting whispered around the room. Lazily swooping cherubiox circled in the air, skeletal, winged creatures with sharp fangs set within childlike mouths, each carrying a flaming iron brazier. Odorous incense descended from the tusked maws of daemon-headed gargoyles towards the gathered Host. The clouds of smoke eddied and roiled in the wake of the gently weaving cherubiox.

Kol Badar stepped heavily down the altar steps, the joints of his massive, ornate Terminator armour hissing and steaming. He passed through the gates of the ikonoclast, the spiked metal barrier that separated the altar from the openness of the nave. Its wrought iron frame was decorated with dozens of ancient banners, twisted icons and trophies dedicated to the gods of Chaos, and upon its spiked and barbed tips were impaled the heads of particularly hated foes.

He prowled along the base of the altar, glaring at the warrior-brothers filing into the room, as if daring any of them to dishonour him in any way. The warriors of the Legion stood unmoving once they had taken up their positions. Almost two thousand warriors of the Word Bearers stood in absolute silence, and Kol Badar stalked back and forth along their ranks.

Two thousand was a particularly large number of warrior-brothers for a single Host. The ranks of the Host had swollen a century past, when the warriors of another Dark Apostle had been amalgamated into its ranks after their holy leader had been slain in battle. Ceremonies of mourning had lasted weeks as the Legion honoured the passing of one of its religious fathers. Jarulek had, of course, ordered the execution of all the captains of the leaderless Host for having allowed such a sacrilege to take place. It was deemed by the Dark Council on the revered daemon-world of Sicarus, the spiritual home of the Word Bearers Legion and the throne world of the blessed Daemon Primarch Lorgar, that Jarulek take in the leaderless Host, for he had an apprentice, a First Acolyte who would soon be ready to bear the mantle of Dark Apostle. When, and if, the First Acolyte became worthy of the title of Dark Apostle, then Jarulek would split the Host once more into two.

The thick features of Kol Badar’s face darkened at the idea. The very thought of the bastard whoreson Marduk bearing the exalted title of Dark Apostle made Kol Badar’s rage and bitterness burn fiercely within him.

The Anointed, the warrior-cult of the most favoured warriors within the Host, stood in neat ranks surrounding the raised pulpit of the Coryphaus, and Kol Badar approached them. The Anointed looked like statues, utterly still and wearing their fully enclosed, ancient suits of Terminator armour. Each suit was a relic of holy significance, and to don the armour was a great religious honour. Once a warrior-brother entered the ranks of the Anointed, he was a member for life, and with lifespans extended indefinitely through a combination of their Astartes conditioning, bio-enhancement and the warping power of the gods of the Ether, the Anointed were only replaced on the rare occasion that one of their cult fell in battle. Many of them had fought alongside Kol Badar and their holy Daemon Primarch Lorgar at the great siege of the Emperor’s palace, and he knew of no finer fighting force. Unsurpassed warriors with the hearts of true fanatics, the cult of the Anointed had won countless battles for the Legion. Their glories were sung in the flesh-halls within the temples of Sicarus, and their deeds recounted in the grimoire historicals housed in the finest scriptorums of Ghalmek. Kol Badar stalked through the ranks of the elite warriors and climbed the steps to his pulpit, there to await the arrival of the Dark Apostle.

The Dark Apostle; Jarulek the Glorified; Jarulek the Blessed, a divine warrior who heard the whispered words of the gods, and communed with them as their vessel. One of the favoured servants of the immortal daemon primarch Lorgar, Jarulek truly was a bearer of the word. His furious passion and belief had brought countless millions into the fold. Countless millions more, ignorant and resistant to the words of truth, had been slain in holy war upon his order.

As much as it furthered the cause of the Word Bearers for more systems to be brought under the sway of Lorgar’s word, Kol Badar much preferred the worlds that resisted. He enjoyed the killing.

Thin, spider-like limbs extended from the pulpit towards his exposed face. Fine, bladed hooks at their tips emerged and pushed into his flesh, latching beneath the skin. He closed his eyes. A large proboscis uncurled, and he opened his mouth to accept it. It entered his throat, and small barbed clamps latched onto his larynx. The proboscis expanded to fill his throat. His voice, enhanced by the apparatus, would not only carry through the vast expanse of the cavaedium, but also through the entire Infidus Diabolus, so that all within the cruiser might intone the correct responses.

He recalled the conversation he had had with the Dark Apostle mere hours earlier, and his face flushed with the thought of the rebuke he had received.

‘Speak as the Coryphaus, Kol Badar, not as yourself,’ Jarulek had scolded him gently.

Kol Badar had clenched his heavy jaw tight, looking down. ‘What would you have me say, Dark Apostle?’ he had asked, his voice sounding course and crude in his ears after Jarulek’s velvet words.

‘I would have you speak for the Host, as the Coryphaus. Does the Host accept him?’

‘The Host follows your word without fault, my lord.’

‘Of course. Meaning?’

‘Meaning that they embrace and revere him, for it is your will for them to do so,’ he had said, his voice thick.

‘And speaking as yourself?’ Jarulek had asked, softly.

‘He is an upstart newborn risen beyond his position. He has not been with us from the start. He did not fight at our side as we assailed the cursed False Emperor’s lapdogs on Terra,’ Kol Badar had fumed. ‘You should have let me kill him.’

Jarulek had chuckled at that. ‘A newborn, I have not heard you call him that before. He has fought against the False Emperor mere centuries less than you and I, old friend.’

Kol Badar’s face had darkened. ‘He was not there at the start.’

‘No, but a long time has passed since then: ten thousand years in the world of mortals.’

‘We do not live in the realm of mortals,’ Kol Badar had replied. Time held no sway over the warp; a warrior may spend a month within its unstable boundaries, emerging to find that the galaxy had changed, that countless decades had flown by. To Kol Badar, the siege of the Emperor’s palace felt like mere centuries ago, not the staggering ten thousand years that had passed since that time, and his memories of it were strong.

‘He has been chosen by the gods,’ Jarulek had said. ‘Do not struggle against their will, Kol Badar. They are unforgiving masters, and a soul like yours would be an exquisite plaything. You are my most loyal and honoured warrior – do not let your hatred of him be your ruin.’

A mournful, tolling bell echoed across the expanse of the cavaedium. Silence descended, and not a movement stirred through the massed ranks of the Word Bearers. This was the start of the exhortation, and the entire Host stood in silence, awaiting the arrival of the Dark Apostle.

Kol Badar was a warlord, a killer and a destroyer of worlds. But, along with the rest of the Host, he would wait, patient, unmoving and in silence, for the arrival of the holy Dark Apostle. If it took a minute or a week, he would stand immobile. And so he waited.

‘Go,’ said the voice over the comm-channel. Reacting instantly, black-armoured figures of the Shinar enforcers stepped out of the gloom of the narrow alleyway. Lieutenant Varnus levelled and fired his combat issue shotgun at the heavy locking mechanism of the rusted door. The sound of the weapon echoed deafeningly, and a fist-sized hole was punched through the metal. Varnus slammed a heavy boot into the door, swinging it violently open, and surged through, the other enforcers close behind him.

The door opened to a refuse strewn corridor, dully lit by humming glow-globes. A man sitting with his feet up on the crude synthetic table looked up, eyes wide, lho-stick hanging limply from his mouth. A second blast from the shotgun threw him backwards, slamming him against the wall in a spray of blood.

‘Entrance gained,’ said Varnus, opening up the comm-channel.

‘All teams have entered the complex. Proceed as planned,’ said the captain in reply.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Varnus. He mouthed an obscenity under his breath once the comm-channel was closed.

Moving in a half crouch up the corridor, he stepped quickly over the scattered piles of twisted metal and broken masonry.

‘Smells like a damn sewage pit,’ muttered one of the enforcers. Varnus was forced to agree. He indicated sharply to a closed door as he passed it. A pair of enforcers behind him took up positions to either side of it. One kicked it open, and the two of them moved in, shotguns raised. The sharp, focused beams of light from their helmets swung around to locate any threats. The other two enforcers in the team moved up in support of Varnus. He paused at the end of the corridor, and glanced quickly around the corner: another empty, sparse corridor, this one with a single door leading from it. Glow-globes overhead flickered weakly.

Varnus stepped around the corner and moved forwards cautiously, the focused beam from his helmet piercing the dark corners that the weak illumination of the glow globes failed to light. Rodents scurried away from the brightness. The stench was overpowering.

‘Who in the Emperor’s name would want to hide out here?’ remarked one of his team, swearing colourfully.

‘Those who don’t want to be disturbed,’ said Varnus sharply. ‘And cut the chatter, Landers. I’m sick of your whine.’ The enforcer muttered something under his breath, and Varnus resisted the urge to turn on the big man. Focus, he told himself, and stepped towards the closer of the two doors. He heard the sound of muffled voices, a shout. He swore.

Varnus slammed his heavy boot into the door, and it collapsed inwards, its hinges long corroded. A pair of men were raising a heavy metal hatch in the floor of the room. One, his eyes filled with fear, dropped down into the darkness of the bolt-hole. The other raised an autopistol, face twisted in hatred, and raking fire spat from the end of the stub-nosed weapon. Varnus’s shotgun barked, even as the bullets from the pistol ripped across his chest, and the man’s head exploded in a splatter of gore.

Varnus fell back from the impact of the projectiles on his carapace armour. ‘Get the other one,’ he wheezed.

‘I can’t fit down there,’ remarked Landers, shrugging his shoulders. He nodded towards the smallest of the four enforcers, a grin on his face.

‘One of you damn well go! Now!’ roared Varnus, pulling himself to his feet. The slight enforcer swore, seeing the eyes of the whole team on him. He placed his shotgun on the floor of the room, drew and cocked his autopistol and dropped into the darkness of the bolt-hole. The sound of the man scrambling through a metal duct echoed loudly beneath them.

Still wheezing, Varnus opened up his comm-channel.

‘They are running. Undisclosed bolt-holes. Orders?’

Varnus pulled the bullets from his chest-plate as he waited for a response. He could feel the heat from the bullets through the leather of his gloves.

‘Captain?’ he said with some impatience. ‘Did you hear me? What are our orders?’

There was a muffled grunt of pain from the bolt-hole, and then the sound of three gunshots. The enforcer reappeared a moment later. ‘Bastard stuck me,’ he said, his hand gripped around his left arm, blood seeping between his fingers.

‘Hold position. Awaiting new intel,’ came the captain’s terse response, finally.

‘Hold position? They will have cleared out by the time we wait for new intel!’

‘Hold your position, lieutenant.’ The comm-bead clicked closed in his helmet.

‘Frek that,’ said Varnus. Yanking the last of the autopistol bullets from his chest plate, he threw them to the ground. ‘Right, let’s move.’

‘Lieutenant?’ questioned one of the enforcers.

‘The bastards are getting away. We close on the target position, now. If the Emperor wills it, we may yet salvage something from this mission. Move!’

‘That’s what the captain’s orders are, are they?’ asked Landers, disbelief clear on his face.

Varnus turned quickly, stepping in close to the bigger man, and slammed a clenched fist into his face. Landers fell back, a cry more of shock than pain escaping his lips.

‘I am your lieutenant, damn you, you slimy arse licker, and you will do as I damn well say,’ snarled Varnus. ‘Now, all of you, let’s move out.’

Leading the way, Varnus pushed on deeper into the stinking, crumbling complex. He heard the others falling in behind him, and heard Landers muttering to himself. He grinned. He had wanted to punch that man for months.

The enforcers moved on, covering each other as they ghosted through the corridors and down corroded metal stairways. Varnus heard running footsteps ahead, and raised a hand, crouching low. He turned off the light on his helmet, the other enforcers following suit, and they plunged into dim, semi-light. A figure ran lightly around a corner, and Varnus reared up, slamming the butt of his shotgun into the figure’s head. There was a crunching sound, and the figure dropped. Clicking his light back on, he saw it was a woman, her hair clipped short. Her eyes were open and staring, and blood seeped from her head where Varnus had struck her. An autogun was clasped in her dead hands.

‘We are close,’ said Varnus.

Carefully descending another flight of metal stairs, the enforcer team could see a flickering of orange light coming from below. The stink of promethium filled their nostrils.

Reaching the landing below, the team was faced with a single, heavy door standing slightly ajar, its plasglass window smashed through. Flames could be seen on the other side.

‘Quickly,’ hissed Varnus, and the enforcer team entered the room. It was a large, square space, and one of the glow-globes in the ceiling exploded as flames touched it. Couches and chairs were ablaze, as was a low table covered in papers and documents. The walls were lined with bunks and desks, and a makeshift kitchen had been constructed in the eastern corner. The figure of a man, oblivious to the sudden appearance of the enforcers, was liberally upending the contents of a metal can across a table on the far side of the room.

Varnus hissed, motioning for his team to lower their weapons. ‘Take him, no guns,’ he mouthed to Landers. The enforcer nodded, the confrontation of minutes earlier forgotten, and moved swiftly towards the figure. Feeling the presence behind him too late, the man turned just as Landers’s thick arms wrapped around his neck, locking him firmly. He was dragged back across the room, and slammed face first onto the floor, his arms held painfully behind his back. The man struggled in vain, and Landers dropped his knee into the man’s back, pinning him in place.

Varnus ran across the room and picked up one of the sodden papers that covered the promethium doused table. It was a detailed schematic map. He swore as he saw what it detailed.

‘Get these damn flames out now! This whole place could go up at any second!’ Varnus hollered. He opened up his comm-channel. ‘Captain, this is Lieutenant Varnus. You need to get in here. Now,’ he said, moving back towards Landers and the captive.

He knelt down beside the pinned captive and turned his face roughly towards him. The man’s features were twisted in hatred and pain.

‘What in the Emperor’s name were you planning here?’ Varnus said quietly.

The captive spat, eyes blazing with fury.

‘What do you make of these, lieutenant? Gang markings? I don’t recognise them,’ said one of the enforcers.

Varnus looked to where the man motioned with his head. A crude tattoo was visible where the captive’s dark brown overalls had been torn at his left shoulder. Ripping the heavy cloth fully away from the man’s body, he gazed upon the emblazoned design: a screaming, horned daemon head surrounded by flames.

‘I don’t recognise it either, but it looks like some kind of damn cult marking to me,’ said Varnus. He swore silently to himself.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Inferno! Issue 16 in Great Britain in 2000.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

Snares and Delusions © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Snares and Delusions, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

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

ISBN: 978-1-78999-613-5

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.