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Cover

Apex Predator – Gavin G Smith

About the Author

An Extract from ‘Kingsblade’

A Black Library Publication

Apex Predator

Gavin G Smith

Screaming woke Sethana; it was the ambient sound of Turris.

It took her a moment to understand where she was. The sleeping pit dug in the cold earth felt like a shallow grave.

There was someone standing over her.

Sethana’s ripper pistol was in her hand before she pulled focus and recognised the robed, multi-limbed silhouette that was Malachi. Originally the sacristan for the fallen Tears of the Golem, Malachi was now the lance’s sole remaining sacristan. He was responsible for the maintenance, such as it was, of all the battle-scarred Knights.

Sethana sighed and lowered the pistol.

‘What?’ she asked. Her body ached from sleeping in the armoured suit she wore to pilot Heartsbane, her Warden Questoris-class Imperial Knight.

Malachi, his reconstructed face shadowed by his torn hood, pointed north. Sethana turned to look. The shattered spires of the broken hab towers looked like a forest of splintered, blackened bones against the blood-red flames. The northern front had fallen. The whole of the horizon was on fire.

Sethana picked her way through standing water, knee-high sucking mud and the general filth of the trenches. She waded past hull-down Leman Russ battle tanks, and Basilisk and Bombard artillery pieces. The vehicles were a mixture of those belonging to the 114th Morassian Street Fighters regiment of the Astra Militarum, and Turris’ own Home Guard. The vehicles and artillery were crewed by emaciated, terrified men and women, many of them barely older than children. They watched her pass without a flicker of hope on their faces, but they hadn’t succumbed to the Ruinous Powers yet, and they remained strong enough to hold a lasrifle. Many of the Home Guard had seen their parents and siblings die, or become the very same mutant warp spawn they fought. They were survivors. Everyone left alive on Turris fought now; everyone had picked a side. Sethana had tried not to listen to the rumours of cannibalism in the trenches, though her pilot suit hung loose on her frame and hunger gnawed at her innards as well. There was some whimpering from the survivors huddled round their fires trying to keep warm, but nobody spoke.

‘Is Oakspear’s ion shield working again?’ Sethana asked.

‘After a fashion,’ Malachi answered.

Sethana turned to glare at the sacristan.

‘It is only due to the Omnissiah’s bounty that I was able to do that much.’

Sethana bit back the urge to snap at him, to tell him to do better. She knew Malachi was doing exceptionally without access to a sanctum or a machine shrine.

‘And Sir Dugness?’ she asked.

‘He awakes screaming, as do you all…’

‘Has his nerve gone?’ This time she did snap.

‘That is beyond my field of responsibility and my understanding, I’m afraid.’

They were using the ruins of one of the hab towers as shelter, an ad hoc sanctum without the facilities, for what was left of her lance. The hab tower had been cored, hit during the orbital bombardment early in the conflict. Looking up they could see a cross section of the various levels where the inhabitants had lived and worked. The Knights stood in shadow, titanic warriors whose history was written on their battle-scarred armour. Sir Harvan’s Knight Crusader, Oakspear; Lady Melodia’s Knight Paladin, Green Hell; Sir Dugness’ Knight Errant, The Huntsman; and her own Knight Warden, Heartsbane. Even on the worst days on Gryphonne IV, Sethana had always been eager to pilot Heartsbane. Now it was only her zeal that provided her with the energy to make the long climb.

‘What will you do?’ Malachi asked.

Out of the shadows behind the sacristan the other three pilots shambled towards them. They were as physically exhausted as Sethana but they managed to hold their heads high.

‘Head north, look for survivors, try and protect them so they can regroup,’ she told Malachi, but both of them knew the war was over. It angered her. She was one of the few who had survived the tyranids, only to be stranded here because the astropaths had been among the first to fall and now there was no way of calling for aid.

‘They’re still out there,’ Sir Dugness said, joining them.

Sethana could hear it in his voice: he was on the edge. He was a good pilot, a valiant Knight, but everyone had only so much to give. Sethana knew she wouldn’t be able to fully trust him in what was to come. She could not believe she was even having these thoughts – a measure of what Turris had done to him, done to them all.

‘They killed Tears of the Golem and The Harvester,’ said Dugness. ‘Karane and Verna were both experienced pilots, veterans of Gryphonne IV, yet they were just cut down, hunted like prey.’

‘Get a grip of yourself,’ admonished Sir Harvan, the oldest of their number, and Sethana’s second-in-command. Once he had been a jowly, fleshy man, but now his skin hung loose, the result of the privations of campaign. ‘You’ve spent too long unchallenged by a real fight. The Golem and The Harvester were both significantly outnumbered. We can–’

‘We don’t know what happened!’ Lady Melodia broke in. ‘And they still outnumber us. They’re hunting us one by one.’ She had been small and wiry; now she was just gaunt and drawn, like the rest of them. Melodia was the youngest. This was her first campaign, and it would probably be her last.

‘What do you want to do?’ Sethana asked, trying not to let her exhaustion sap her own will. She needed a stimulant, and she needed the Throne Mechanicum to reinforce her own flagging resolve. ‘These Knights are in the service of the Ruinous Powers, the most insidious enemy of the Imperium, of humanity. We either fight or we fall,’ Sethana told them, but Melodia and Dugness were right in that they were facing a truly formidable foe. The lance of Heretic Knights, spawned by the warp itself, had appeared just over two standard weeks ago. They had destroyed the other two Knights in Sethana’s lance, and she knew they would be coming for the rest of them. They were led by a Knight Tyrant the Morassians had named the Death of Hope.

Sethana only slipped the once on the long climb to Heartsbane’s cockpit, finding herself dangling thirty feet above the jagged rubble by one hand.

Inside, the cockpit had once felt safe, like home, despite it being where she rode into combat. Now it just felt cold and empty as she sank down into the Throne Mechanicum. All that mattered was killing as many of the Heretic Knights as they could before they themselves were destroyed. Sethana found herself smiling as she suppressed her exhaustion and felt the tendril-like cables slither out of the throne and into her interface plugs…

…bright sunlight filled the cockpit as Sethana saw the contrails from the rocket motors of all six of Heartsbane’s Ironstorm missiles streak ahead and then explode against the ion shield of a huge, blue Knight Castellan. This was insanity! To fight a Castellan, one-on-one, with a Warden!

What am I doing? In her exhausted brain, it took Sethana a moment or two to work out what was happening. How she had been transported, and where she was. She was just a passenger now, in the memory of Lady Isabella of Swinford Hall, who piloted Heartsbane in the tourney field at Golem Keep. She had no time for this, but it appeared that the ghosts in the Throne Mechanicum had something to show her.

Lady Isabella, laughing for the joy of it, ran her Knight Warden into the buffeting fireball rising up and around the Castellan’s ion shield. Sethana hated this feeling of being trapped. She needed to take control of the familiar Knight. It was madness to use Ironstorms at this range, and pointless against a Knight with a functioning ion shield. But Sethana was just along for the ride. Fire surrounded Heartsbane, then Sethana felt her stomach lurch, as the Warden left the ground. There was a moment’s dawning horror and then the sickening crash as the two Knights collided. The Castellan staggered. Heartsbane landed and then pushed her advantage. Strike after strike with twin Reaper chainswords, forcing the Castellan back, never letting it recover its balance, never giving it the chance to bring any of its weapons to bear.

Until the Castellan started to topple. It was like watching one of the huge Raisan oakwoods being felled. Sethana felt the impact as the Castellan hit the ground. Heartsbane put one knee on her opponent’s scored and dented chest, forcing it back down as it tried to rise. The Knight Warden crossed the twin Reapers and held the huge chainswords to the Castellan’s neck joint. There were huge fountains of sparks as spinning teeth bit into adamantium.

‘Yield!’ Lady Isabella shouted over the vox-horns between her laughter. It was the first real chance Sethana had to get a good look at the Castellan through Isabella’s eyes. It was blue in colour, and bore a red serpent symbol on its armoured carapace.

‘This is an affront!’ an answering hail from the Castellan began, but Heartsbane just exerted more pressure and the Reapers bit deeper. Sethana could feel Lady Isabella’s savage joy at her victory. Her ancestor would not hesitate to decapitate the Castellan, tourney field or no.

‘Yield! Yield!’ the Castellan’s pilot cried over the vox-horns, to the cheers of those watching the combat from behind the plasteel screens of the audience chamber.

Sethana was expecting this to be the end of it. A lesson taught by one of the ghosts that resided in Heartsbane’s Throne Mechanicum. A possible tactic for a smaller Knight to overcome a monster like a Castellan, though Sethana couldn’t shake the feeling that Lady Isabella was a lunatic. There was more, however.

Lady Isabella knocked on her uncle’s door. It was to be an informal meeting; there were no servants to announce her, though she nodded to the two liveried guards either side of the double doors. She entered when called.

Baron Godfrey, was tall, with a solid build, his dark hair silvering at the temples. High cheekbones and an ornate augmetic eye added to an aristocratic bearing that could have easily been seen as haughty or arrogant had he not smiled so easily. He sat behind his polished oakwood desk sipping raenka from a resin tumbler.

On the other side of the desk, seated in one of the well-upholstered armchairs, was a powerfully built, balding man, his frame just going to seed, in the blue ceremonial uniform of House Lucaris. Sir Ivandar, the pilot of Reign of Iron, the Knight Castellan she had fought and defeated in the tourney earlier in the day. This was the first time they had met. It was considered bad form for two Knights to meet before they fought for the first time. He, too, had a tumbler of raenka, and judging by the redness of his face, it wasn’t the first of the day either. A smouldering lho-stick filled the baron’s study with thick, sweet smoke.

‘My niece, Isabella, who represented us on the field today,’ the baron said by way of introduction.

‘A pleasure to meet you,’ Lady Isabella said, giving a small informal bow.

‘I wish I could say the same,’ Sir Ivandar said, turning away. ‘Really, baron, the tactics this young woman employed today are not the done thing.’

Isabella rolled her eyes. She had heard it all before. She moved over to the raenka decanter on the tantalus and helped herself to a generous tumbler of the spirit.

‘Effective, though,’ Godfrey said.

‘There are forms to be respected,’ Sir Ivandar huffed.

Isabella leaned against the wall, looking out the window as she took a sip of her drink, enjoying the sweet burn. She could feel the stone hearts of the xenos golems that the keep had been built from against the palm of her hand.

‘Forms that provide you with an advantage?’ Isabella asked. She was looking up at the sky. Half the night was filled with the stars of the Segmentum Tempestus, the other half only the blackness of the empty void beyond the galaxy.

Her uncle chuckled.

‘Had you tried that on a battlefield you would have most assuredly been destroyed. Such tricks do a lady of your standing no credit.’

‘How will I ever find a husband?’ Isabella mocked. She was looking at the huge trees of the forest that covered much of Raisa’s surface. They looked like a silent army of guardians beyond the clear-cut area surrounding Golem Keep. She was eager for the next hunt, to stalk the abhuman tribespeople under that dark canopy.

‘If winning is so important to you then you may notch this woman’s borderline cheating up to a victory if you please, but–’

‘Call me a cheat once more,’ Isabella invited him with mock sweetness as she turned from the window to look at him. It was only polite to meet one’s opponent after a bout, but Isabella wasn’t enjoying the experience.

‘Really, Sir Ivandar, is this the sort of behaviour you feel should represent House Lucaris?’ the baron asked. ‘You’re not being very gracious.’

‘I apologise, baron, it’s just that when I see the tenets of chivalry flouted in such a way… but we have more important things to discuss. Perhaps if Lady Isabella would leave us?’

Baron Godfrey studied Sir Ivandar for a moment or two. His face was expressionless, though all traces of his easy good humour had disappeared.

‘No, I don’t think so. Anything you have to say, you may say in front of my niece.’

Isabella crossed the room and perched on the side of her uncle’s desk. She would have quite liked to leave, as she didn’t relish Sir Ivandar’s continued company. It seemed, however, that the baron saw some advantage to her presence, even if that was just in needling a rude house guest.

‘Really, baron, this is a delicate matter…’

‘Then perhaps House Lucaris should have sent someone with manners,’ the baron suggested.

Sir Ivandar’s face hardened. ‘Careful, baron,’ he warned.

‘If you do not wish to discuss it in front of my niece then perhaps this meeting is at an end,’ the baron said and started to get up.

‘The Emperor has betrayed us–’

Isabella leaned forward, staring at Ivandar.

The baron sat back down again. ‘The Emperor has betrayed you, you mean? I’ve always found our dealings with the Imperium quite equitable. After a fashion, anyway.’

‘The Emperor has betrayed humanity–’

‘Those are not your words. Say what you have to say,’ the baron snapped. Now it was clear why her uncle had wanted her to stay. He needed a witness to this conversation, so there could be no possible misunderstanding of his position in the future.

‘The Warmaster Horus–’ Ivandar tried again.

‘Is a dog who has turned on his master.’

‘You have ever felt yourself independent of the Imperium! Why would you, of all the houses, defend a man who has turned His back on humanity to hide on Terra?’ Ivandar was shouting now, his already red face darkening.

‘Because I hold true to the treaties I have signed, agreements I have made, and oaths I have sworn. If House Lucaris wishes to turn traitor, that is your concern. I pray you don’t meet my niece across a battle line, for your own sake.’

‘How dare you!’ Ivandar was on his feet.

Isabella straightened up, wishing she had something more substantial than a ceremonial dagger riding her hip.

‘Choose your next words very carefully. Do not add the quality of foolishness to that of gracelessness,’ the baron warned, his hands steepled in front of him.

‘She is a disgrace, and you are a minor house of savages. You will find yourself ground underfoot unless you accept our generous offer!’ Ivandar’s hands were on the baron’s desk now. He was drooling onto the polished wood.

There was a look of naked disgust on the baron’s face.

‘Leave now,’ Isabella said quietly.

Ivandar cast a look of contempt in her direction before making his way across the study. He turned back to face them both at the door. Isabella saw the needler in his hand. She started to move, knowing she could never reach him in time as he aimed the weapon at her uncle. The needler whispered as she interposed herself in front of the baron.

Isabella hit the floor, the crystallised neurotoxin surging through her blood. She saw one of the guards go down by the door, Ivandar’s running feet disappearing down the corridor. She felt the baron gathering her up in his arms, heard him calling for a medic. The last thing she remembered was her uncle carrying her to the Chamber of Echoes, in the sanctum. Laying her down on the Throne Mechanicum so she could die with honour and merge with Heartsbane, becoming one with the Knight Warden’s machine-spirit.

‘Sethana!’

‘Sethana!’ It was Harvan’s voice over the vox.

Sethana’s eyes were wide open. She saw Heartsbane’s cockpit overlaid with information from the Knight’s auspex. According to her systems, mere moments had passed. Plugged in she effectively became Heartsbane – pilot, machine-spirit and the ghosts of pilots past becoming greater than the sum of all their parts. Instead, she had been taken away to relive the memories of a distant ancestor gone some ten millennia.

‘Sethana, answer me!’ There was urgency in her second-in-command’s voice.

She closed her eyes. The connection to Heartsbane had reinvigorated her to a degree, though even that was dimmed by her fatigue. Frustrated by physical limitations that struggled to live up to what her duty required of her, she knew she would have to stimm again.

‘Heartsbane to Oakspear, I’m fine. Just a little feedback from the throne. Lead them out, Harvan.’

The front collapsing had not resulted in an orderly retreat. Unfortunately it had meant that the Home Guard and Morassian survivors were the ones who’d broken first, the cowards fleeing the continent-wide rout. Sethana and her lance had voxed instructions to the survivors, ordering them to coordinates where they could regroup. The House Cadmus lance protected the retreating forces from the cultists and mutants. As a result the Knights of the House Cadmus lance were so far apart that they were effectively operating as independent units.

As Sethana kicked over an enemy Chimera, her mind returned to the death of Lady Isabella. She wondered why had she been shown that particular memory, as she stamped on the traitor Astra Militarum that spilled from the armoured transport like ants. The obvious thought was that Isabella’s ghost wanted to show her unorthodox tactics for taking on super-heavy Knights, such as the Death of Hope. Despite his arrogance, however, Ivandar had been right. Such tactics didn’t work on the battlefield. Particularly not when you were low on resources with no real hope of resupply. And why show the murder? she wondered, as she felt the vibration of the underarm heavy stubber through the superstructure. The rounds from the anti-personnel weapon tore apart the fleeing traitors, splattering them all over the blackened rubble. She wondered what had happened to House Lucaris, why she had never heard of them, though she felt faint glimmers of recognition through her connection to the Throne Mechanicum and some of the older ghosts that resided there within.

The vox crackled to life, interrupting her tired thoughts.

‘They’re here!’ She could hear the panic in Melodia’s voice, all pretence of vox discipline forgotten. Then the vox-channels were filled with screaming.

Sethana checked Green Hell’s position. She was closest.

‘All Knights, converge on Green Hell, now!’

Heartsbane started to move, but Sethana knew they would never make it in time.

Green Hell was on the ground, the hunched, spiked, heavily armoured form of the Knight Tyrant Death of Hope kneeling on her chest. Twin hooked Reaper chainswords were peeling the Paladin’s armour back, layer by layer. The rest of the heretic lance consisted of five Knights, each one a mutated hulk of warped armour, a twisted parody of an Imperial Knight, their existence a mockery of their brethren untouched by Chaos. The Heretic Knights surrounded the ongoing mutilation. They were looking away from the Death of Hope’s work, providing three hundred and sixty-degree cover with overlapping fields of fire.

Heartsbane was hidden behind an old mulch silo. Sethana was watching Green Hell’s murder through a crack in the rockcrete, utterly helpless, torn, knowing she couldn’t help. Whatever else, the pilots of the heretic lance knew their business. To try and save Green Hell meant death, even if Harvan and Dugness got there in time, which they wouldn’t. Melodia was still screaming in terror over the vox. Sethana knew those screams of terror would soon turn to agony when they cut through into her cockpit.

‘We will corrupt her throne! Her ancestors will fall to torment! They will serve Chaos in their agony! We will warp metal, mutate armour, turn your Knight to the service of true power! The woman will know a daemon implanted into her very flesh, her very soul, and she will help to hunt you down!’

The words were broadcast from the Death of Hope. It left Sethana wondering if he knew she was there. Auspex was unreliable amongst the broken towers of the city, however, and it was just as likely the pilot of the Knight Tyrant enjoyed the sound of their own voice.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sethana whispered. She had to deny Green Hell to the heretics, but more than that she had to end Melodia’s suffering. She leaned Heartsbane around the edge of the mulch silo, trying to leave as much of the Warden in cover as possible, using the narrow arc of her ion shield to protect that which was exposed, and opened up with the Avenger gatling cannon. There was a ripping noise as one report merged with another from the rapid-fire weapon. She sent round after round into Green Hell as the heretic lance started to move. The cannon wasn’t meant for targets as heavily armoured as a Knight, but Sethana knew where to aim her shots and Green Hell was already badly damaged. The cannon fire forced two of the Heretic Knights to interpose themselves between her and Green Hell, using their own ion shields to protect their victim. It was the distraction Sethana needed. She sent two Ironstorm missiles arcing over the Heretic Knights and into Green Hell’s adamantium carcass, and Melodia’s screaming stopped. Then she angled her ion shield behind her and fled in a hail of cannon, laser, plasma and melta fire, accompanied by the sound of incoherent rage screamed over a vox-horn. A torturer denied its victim.

‘You killed Green Hell? Melodia?’ Harvan demanded.

He had been a rock, he had never before questioned her orders, but everyone had their breaking point. Sethana had just killed a member of her own house and destroyed a Knight that had been old before the Imperium had been founded. She had murdered its machine-spirit and the ghosts of her ancestors that had resided within.

‘What choice did I have?’ Sethana asked.

Harvan had no answer.

They stood once more in the ruins of their ad hoc sanctum, in the shadow of the three remaining Knights. Even in the dim light Sethana could see just how bloodshot Harvan’s eyes were, and he was swaying a little.

Dugness was just staring at her. His eyes were empty, devoid of hope.

‘For all we know Tears of the Golem and The Harvester now walk with the Death of Hope,’ she told them.

‘They would never–’ Harvan started.

‘Of course they would!’ Sethana shouted at him. She rubbed her eyes. The after-effects of the stimm she’d used to get through the last patrol were exacerbating her exhaustion. She knew that Harvan was trying to remain loyal to the memory of fallen comrades. ‘Everyone breaks, or dies. Even if our fallen Knights do not walk with them now, they may lie on some dark forge-shrine in the immaterium where they are broken and remade in a form more pleasing to the Ruinous Powers. I would not see that fate befall Heartsbane, and I know Melodia would not have wanted it for Green Hell.’

‘But if you’d just waited!’ Harvan protested.

‘Even if you had both been there,’ Sethana told them, ‘they would have outnumbered us two to one.’

‘Then we split them and take them down,’ Harvan cried.

‘They hunt in a pack,’ Dugness said, then spat. ‘Like we do with the abhumans back on Raisa.’

More than anything it just brought home to Sethana that defeat was inevitable. She was sure that the next time she climbed into Heartsbane it would be her last. She had no tears left; this ashen planet had taken them all.

She could hear screams and gunfire within the camp. It was one of the fallback points for the routed northern forces. As such, they’d had their fair share of infiltrators. Harvan and Dugness were watching her as though waiting for something. She was in command, after all. The smile on her lips was utterly devoid of humour. The possibility of death seemed like a well-earned rest. The possibility of being turned to the Ruinous Powers, less so.

‘I want to find a way to deny the thrones and our Knights to the enemy. I need to speak with Malachi,’ she told them. ‘We need to find a way to poison their meat.’

Sethana was unsurprised by the look of distaste on Harvan’s face. Leaving poisoned food for the abhuman tribes they hunted back on Raisa was one of the more-frowned upon tactics used by lesser hunters.

Loading Heartsbane’s cockpit with all the demolition charges that Malachi had been able to scavenge did not feel right. It made sound strategic sense. She had to deny her Knights to the Ruinous Powers and, if possible, damage the heretics in the process, but it was a violation of the bond that existed between her and Heartsbane.

Sethana sat forward on the throne. She was missing something. There had to have been a message in the vision of the past that she had been shown. She was too tired to think, however. Even if she stimmed again it wouldn’t help. She sighed and lay back in the throne. The interface jacks snaked into her plugs and another memory was waiting for her.

‘Repeat, we are under attack by–’ the message was broken by the sound of bolter fire, ‘Renegade Knights, taking heavy losses and request immediate reinforcements.’ Despite the sounds of battle the Angels Revenant sergeant sounded perfectly calm.

Heartsbane crashed through the managed woodland, the spinning Reaper chainsword held out in front of her turning thick branches into clouds of splinters. Sethana found herself the passenger again. She could feel Lady Maria of House Cadmus’ thoughts, the adrenaline surging through her body, the excitement, the fear repressed by her link to the throne and an eagerness to do her duty. Sethana could hear her ancestor wondering where the enemy Knights had come from, particularly as Lady Maria had never heard tell of Knights in the service of the Ruinous Powers.

Heartsbane’s auspex reached out towards the ambush site. Maria read the story straight away. A convoy of three Rhino transports supported by a Land Raider had been hit by the enemy Knights. The Land Raider had been destroyed, and one of the Rhinos had been overturned. The surviving Angels Revenant Space Marines had disembarked from their vehicles. Maria had seen the Adeptus Astartes in action; their arrogance notwithstanding they were superb warriors. They were, however, horribly outgunned. She checked the position of the rest of her lance. The others were fast approaching, but she would close with the enemy first.

Heartsbane burst into the clearing. This was no time for subtlety, sheer aggression was the only hope the Angels Revenant had. Even then, the form of the Heretic Knights gave her pause.

A Knight with a face like an elongated metal skull, its endostructure bursting through its armoured carapace, fired strobing lines of light from its laser destructor as it strode amongst the Angels Revenant, turning the dirt to superheated glass and slicing open one of the Rhinos, silencing the transport’s storm bolter. Maria wasn’t sure if she was imagining it or not but she could have sworn the armoured ribcage structure below its dripping skull was rising and falling, as though the thing was breathing.

The second Knight had a toothed maw. It snatched up one of the Angels Revenant in its Thunderstrike Gauntlet, silencing the Space Marine’s bolter, then the Knight squeezed, crushing ceramite, squirting pulped transhuman flesh through the rents in the Space Marine’s armour. The Knight smeared the body of the Space Marine against its own jagged armour. The remains snagged amongst the small forest of spiked corpses that already decorated the Knight’s carapace.

It was the third Heretic Knight that got Maria’s attention, however. It was an ambulatory fortress, baleful green light flickering around its plasma exhausts. Its hunched form bristled with the kind of weapons normally used for assaulting fortifications. For a super-heavy Knight, it was oddly configured, however, as it was equipped with twin hooked Reaper chainswords. The super-heavy Knight was kneeling on the upturned Rhino, shrugging off fire from the Space Marines as it cut into the armoured transport with one of its Reapers. This configuration reminded Maria of something. A story of an ancestor, a tourney champion whose life had been cut short. She was aware of one of the ghosts trying to tell her something but she had to focus, drive out distractions. Sethana, however, was listening. Every instinct was telling her that the super-heavy Knight was the threat.

All of this had taken but a moment to register.

‘Heartsbane to Angels Revenant, the rest of my lance is inbound, I’m going to try and draw the big one away,’ Maria said over the vox even as she was rapidly targeting her weapon systems. ‘Concentrate your fire on the others.’

‘Acknowledged,’ the Angels Revenant sergeant replied.

What she didn’t understand was why the Heretic Knights hadn’t opened fire. Their auspex systems must have picked up her approach. Then the super-heavy Heretic Knight turned from the Rhino to look at her. The mass of pipes that covered the lower part of its face flexed briefly.

‘Your suffering is my reward!’ The words rang out across the farmed forest, the malice audible even through the vox-horn.

Lady Maria didn’t even wonder why this abomination sounded as though it knew her. She just opened up. Moving to one side in a bid to bypass the enemy’s ion shields, she fired her Avenger gatling cannon at the Knight with the elongated skull. Contrails filled the air as Maria tried to angle her Stormspear rockets into the back of the super-heavy Knight, shrouding it in explosions.

As the Heretic Knights angled their ion shields to face this new threat, Maria was aware of the Angels Revenant moving to take advantage. With superhuman speed, Space Marines bearing heavy weapons moved to fire on unshielded parts of the enemy war machines.

Maria felt the earth shake and Heartsbane staggered back as cannon round after cannon round impacted into her ion shield. The super-heavy Knight, Reapers held high like the claws of a mantis, emerged from the blossoming explosions that had surrounded it, and charged her.

Maria took a moment to check her auspex and then ran. She had thought she would have to work harder to draw the super-heavy Knight towards her. Its fury felt very personal.

‘Tears, Harvester, you need to go to those Space Marines now,’ she said over the vox. Both the Knights were some seven hundred feet east of her and closing fast.

‘Lady Maria, you are being pursued–’ Sir Varn started.

‘I am well aware of that! Do as I tell you!’ Sometimes Varn was too gallant for his own good, Maria thought as she angled Heartsbane’s ion shield to the rear. She remained surprised that the super-heavy Heretic Knight had given chase so easily. ‘Lady Rose, we’re coming to you.’

‘Understood,’ Rose replied. Green Hell, The Huntsman and Oakspear were further out but closing at speed as well. The pursuing Heretic Knight had to be aware of this but still he gave chase.

‘I will turn your agony into music!’ Her pursuer screamed over the vox-horn. It was clear that this was somehow personal. It didn’t make any sense. She had no idea who they were, or where they had come from. Sethana was starting to see, however; starting to understand the lessons the ghosts were trying to teach.

Trees exploded all around her as cannon shells slid off her ion shield. Her Knight Warden was much faster than the Heretic Knight, so she risked stopping to fire a long burst from the Avenger and loose a few more rockets. The pursuing Heretic Knight sprinted through the cannon fire and explosions as though they were not there, his twin Siegebreaker cannons firing relentlessly as he did so. Maria shifted her shield and started running again. She was aware of Tears of the Golem and The Harvester reaching the Space Marines and engaging with the skull- and maw-faced Heretic Knights.

The pursuing Heretic Knight fired one of its Shieldbreakers. Corrupted empyric cascade micro-generators caused the missile to flicker in and out of reality, bypassing Heartsbane’s ion shield. The missiles exploded against the Knight Warden’s carapace. Maria screamed, feeling Heartsbane’s pain as her carapace was cracked open by the force of the explosion, and it took the Warden off her feet, sending her crashing through the thick trunks of trees. Suddenly the Heretic Knight was looming over her, the Reapers falling towards Heartsbane like twin guillotines. The mass of pipes that formed the Heretic Knight’s face seemed to be smiling. The twin Reapers bit into Heartsbane’s armoured metal superstructure and Maria screamed out as though it was her own flesh. Even as a passenger in a memory, Sethana found herself doing the same. Maria managed to roll Heartsbane onto her back and get a foot between her and the Heretic Knight, straightening one huge mechanical leg just far enough to bring the Avenger to bear. Then she started firing and didn’t stop. Ricochets tore the forest apart as the Heretic Knight used its ion shield to block incoming rounds from the gatling cannon. Maria jammed her own Reaper into the heretic’s metal flesh. Sparks cascaded from both Knights but Maria knew the heavier Knight’s twin Reapers would win this war of attrition. Through the dirt, corrosion and dried blood Maria could see that the Heretic Knight had once been blue in colour. Even through the agony of the twin chainswords eating into her flesh she could make out the red serpent painted on its carapace, though she did not recognise the symbol. Sethana, watching through Maria’s eyes, did recognise it, however.

The grinning pipes of the Heretic Knight’s ‘mouth’ drooled some kind of ichor onto Heartsbane.

‘I am going to enjoy this!’ Even through the vox-horn the words were a cruel mockery of an intimate whisper.

Then Maria was buffeted by explosions as Ironstorm missiles impacted into the Heretic Knight. Beams of thermal energy and cannon fire followed the missiles. It was too much for the Heretic Knight’s ion shield to protect it from, as Green Hell, The Huntsman and Oakspear closed with them. Howling curses from his vox-horns, the Heretic Knight fled.

Sethana cursed herself for a fool. She knew she would have seen the connection earlier if it hadn’t been for the fatigue. The Death of Hope’s pilot had once been the pilot of Reign of Iron; the two Knights were the same. Perhaps arcane technology or Chaos sorcery had kept Ivandar alive for ten millennia – though from what little she understood of such matters, time moved differently within the immaterium. It all fit, however: the twin Reapers that aped Lady Isabella’s tourney configuration, the hatred for Heartsbane. She hadn’t got close enough to see the colours of the heretic lance that terrorised Turris’ battlefields but she was willing to bet that under all the soot, grime and dried blood she would find the red serpent of House Lucaris.

‘Sethana?’ Harvan asked from his Knight Crusader, Oakspear.

Sethana opened her eyes. The machine runes and hologlyphics overlaid her view of the cramped cockpit packed with explosives.

‘Sethana?’ Harvan asked again. This time she could hear the concern under his weariness.

She had known this was wrong. Poisoning the bait was a poor tactic for a hunter, but they weren’t hunting here. They had made themselves the prey.

‘Sethana, are you all right?’ this was from Dugness in his Knight Errant, The Huntsman.

‘Dismount,’ she told them both over the vox. Hunting abhumans had become too easy, made them soft, but it had not always been thus on Raisa.

‘Heartsbane was named for the stone hearts taken from the golems,’ Sethana explained, ‘the same stone hearts that were used to construct Golem’s Keep back home.’

Harvan and Dugness had joined her in the shadow of their Knights, as had Malachi, answering her vox summons.

‘The golems were huge, easily the size of a Knight, often stronger and very hard to kill. They would work together, as well.’

‘So?’ Dugness asked.

Sethana forced down her irritation.

‘So, when you hunted golems you were not the apex predators,’ Malachi suggested.

‘You mean to change tactics?’ Harvan asked.

‘We didn’t have tactics before,’ Sethana said, ‘we offered martyrdom.’

‘And now?’ Malachi asked.

Lady Isabella had taught her that Ivandar was proud, easily offended, easy to anger. Lady Maria had taught her the simplest plan was the best, and that the mere sight of Heartsbane could bait him.

‘We need to offload the explosives, and we need a snare,’ she said, looking up.

Heartsbane, Oakspear and The Huntsman were positioned in front of the hab tower that had been their ad hoc sanctum. They were looking down a long, ruined boulevard bordered by the remains of various industrial complexes so badly damaged that it was impossible to guess what their function had once been. The hab tower was at the south end of the boulevard. Before the remnants of the Home Guard and Morassian forces had pulled out, they had used the earth-moving blades attached to the Leman Russ tanks to pile the rubble as high as they could on either side of the road. The hastily assembled rampart wouldn’t stop a determined Knight, but it did make the boulevard the path of least resistance.

They waited and they waited.

The auspex picked them up first, faint movement out amongst the ruins, the dead city interfering with their instruments. Then Sethana saw movement. It looked almost furtive. Less like armoured war machines and more like a pack of scavenging wild dogs, slowly surrounding their weakened prey.

‘Ivandar of the disgraced House of Lucaris, you are a fool, a coward and a weakling, always bested by my ancestors no matter how much advantage you had!’ Sethana broadcast from her vox-horn, her voice echoing through the ghost of the city. It was a gamble. It relied on Ivandar actually being the pilot of the Death of Hope.

Auspex traces and peripheral movement were the only answer to her call.

‘They’re checking the area,’ Harvan said, ‘looking for other ways in.’

Looking for the trap, Sethana thought, willing Ivandar to take the bait. Hoping that his hatred of Heartsbane, his superiority in numbers and his arrogance would be enough.

It was. They saw the movement over the top of the skeletal remains of the buildings. Two Knights, their heads like the helmets of some ancient warriors, their forms a twisted mockery of a Knight Warden, came from the east. They had been designated Despoilers. With them was a toothed-maw Knight known as a Rampager. From the west came two more Knights with elongated skull heads: Desecrators. And finally the super-heavy Knight Tyrant they called the Death of Hope, but which had once been called Reign of Iron.

Well, iron rusts, it is weak, Sethana told herself, not quite believing it.

‘How many millennia have you been trying to kill me?’ Sethana asked over the vox-horn. She felt a thrill of anticipation run through the Throne Mechanicum. It was as though she could see the actual ghosts of all her ancestors standing beside her.

‘You think too well of yourself! You are nothing!’ the Death of Hope answered over his own vox-horn. That was when Sethana knew for sure. She could hear his anger. The petty vengeance of a petty man.

‘Tell me, slave, how do your masters feel about your constant failure?’ The ghosts of Lady Maria and Lady Isabella joined in her question. The answering roar from the Death of Hope’s vox-horn was nothing more than incoherent rage.

The six Heretic Knights charged.

‘Now,’ Sethana said over the vox.

The Basilisk artillery pieces started firing from their heavily camouflaged positions two miles out in the ruined city. The Bombard mortars started to do the same from equally well-camouflaged but closer positions. The Imperial soldiers and the Home Guard troops were exhausted, their morale was poor, but somehow they managed to do their job delivering a close artillery strike, even allowing for the speed of the charging Heretic Knights. High-explosive and concussion shells battered the heretic lance, buckling armour plate, sending them staggering. Even Heartsbane, Oakspear and The Huntsman felt the waves of force from explosive overpressure.

Then the Leman Russ tanks started firing from their camouflaged defilades out amongst the ruins, far behind the enemy lance. Except the remaining five tanks were concentrating their fire on just one of the Heretic Knights. They fired round after armour-piercing high-explosive round into one of the Desecrators. The tanks poured on fire with their secondary weapons as well. The Desecrator was wreathed in explosions as the Heretic Knights all but disappeared into the cloud of grit and flying rubble thrown up by the artillery bombardment. Sethana saw the targeted Desecrator stumble and go down.

‘Concentrated fire!’ Sethana cried. Her Avenger gatling cannon opened fire with a savage tearing noise. The Huntsman fired his thermal cannon, turning the barely visible Despoiler’s adamantium armour to so much slag for Heartsbane’s cannon rounds to splash through. It was Oakspear’s Questoris and rapid-fire battle cannons, however, that did the most damage. They had gambled that the tank attack would force the Heretic Knights to angle their ion shields behind them. It had paid off. Sethana watched as the Despoiler was blown apart, Oakspear’s explosive cannon rounds detonating inside of it.

‘Pull back!’ Sethana shouted over the vox. It was an order for both the tank squadron and the artillery batteries. They had done their bit.

The House Cadmus lance angled their ion shields to the back of their Knights, as one by one they turned and moved rapidly towards the hab tower. The Huntsman, then Heartsbane, and finally Oakspear. Sethana felt hit after hit ricochet off her shield. The amount of incoming fire from the surviving Heretic Knights as they emerged from the cloud of powdered rockcrete was such that some of the shots were making it past the narrow fields of their shields. She cried out in pain as Heartsbane took a cannon round in the back, and stumbled. The Knight Warden almost fell but Sethana managed to keep moving into the shadow of the cored hab tower.

Oakspear was not quite so lucky. As he reached the crack in the hab tower’s external rockcrete wall his ion shield failed. The sheer volume of incoming fire, now all concentrated on him as the last viable target, took him down. The Knight Crusader’s noble head was melted as las-fire cut him open and explosive shells tore apart his metal innards. Sethana knew she should be appalled, devastated by the death of her oldest comrade. Instead her exhaustion was replaced by a cold, calculating anger. She would gladly give her own life to see Ivandar dead.

She felt a ripple of excitement through the ghosts in her throne.

Heartsbane was moving as fast as her servos could carry her. Chasing The Huntsman. Making their way round the first level of the vast tower, which had been some kind of loading deck. They were both making for a ramp that led to the next level.

As the Heretic Knights appeared below them Heartsbane let rip with the Avenger. She fired one of her Stormspear rockets from the pod on the top of her Warden’s armoured carapace as well. The Huntsman drew a line of haze from his thermal cannon to the Death of Hope and added an Ironstorm missile for good measure. Sethana watched the missiles and the cannon fire ricochet off the ion shield, and the heat from the thermal cannon washing across it. The Death of Hope responded with its Siegebreaker cannons, threatening to destroy the already unstable rockcrete floor under the two House Cadmus Knights.

Take the bait! Sethana willed the Tyrant. If it didn’t then all was for nought. Her heart surged with savage joy as the Death of Hope and the Rampager gave chase. The other two surviving Heretic Knights remained on the ground level, firing their weapons at Heartsbane and The Huntsman. Rubble was falling from the upper levels, the larger pieces crashing through the floors below them, threatening to crush them.

The two House Cadmus Knights reached the cargo ramp and headed up onto the second level, into a storage area. Sethana was concentrating her Avenger cannon fire on the Despoiler below, aiming for its thermal cannon, trying to force the pilot to position its ion shield in the way of their own weapon system. It was a difficult shot on the run, but the sheer volume of fire that the Avenger could put out helped. At the same time she was firing her rockets intermittently at the Death of Hope as it chased her.

The Huntsman was doing similar with the Desecrator, targeting it with its thermal cannon, trying to lessen the incoming fire that threatened to destroy the damaged rockcrete floor, and firing Ironstorm missiles at the pursuing Rampager.

The Despoiler’s laser lanced through the rockcrete as cannon shells exploded in the air all around them, buffeting them with waves of concussive force, loosening more rubble from above. Ahead of her Sethana could make out the Knight-sized hole in the wall, presumably damage from the same orbital strike that had cored the tower early in the conflict. Today they would use it to their advantage.

Ahead of her The Huntsman had almost reached the hole.

Heartsbane took another step and her foot went through the rockcrete, which had been turned to near-liquid by thermal cannon fire. Her heart lurched, and Sethana cried out as her Warden went down but didn’t fall through the floor.

She was aware of the Tyrant closing in behind her. She could hear the buzz of its twin Reapers. She fought down panic as she tried to free herself, to climb out of the hole, all too aware of just how vulnerable, how exposed she was.

Rocket contrails shot over Heartsbane, and she heard and felt explosions behind her as The Huntsman launched the rest of his Ironstorm missiles.

Then The Huntsman was there, by Heartsbane’s side. Pouring fire from his thermal lance down on the Despoiler. Reaching down with his Thunderstrike Gauntlet to help her out of the hole.

‘Go!’ Sethana cried as soon as she was back on her feet, staggering forward as her ion shield tried to absorb the cannon rounds from the Death of Hope’s twin cannons. Heartsbane and The Huntsman made it to the hole in the wall and the Knight Errant jumped.

‘Now, Malach–’

Sethana’s vox-message was cut off as the Shieldbreaker missile skipped through the warp, bypassed her ion shield, and caught Heartsbane in the back. The explosion blew the Knight Warden out of the hab tower.

Everything seemed to slow down, and Sethana caught a glimpse of The Huntsman sliding down the bulldozed slope ahead of her. Then the pile of rubble rushed up to meet Heartsbane. Everything went dark.

Sethana awoke in a sea of red warning hologlyphs. Heartsbane was badly damaged, but alive. The feeling of relief and, for the first time in a long time, hope flooded through her. The Knight Warden was lying at the base of the pile of rubble. Everything was grey outside, and the atmosphere was thick with powdered rockcrete from the hab tower they had dropped on the Heretic Knights. Under Malachi’s supervision, the Morassian sappers had set the demolition explosives to act as cutting charges against the hab tower’s supports. Staggering the explosions from south to north, they had tried to ensure that the remnants of the huge building had collapsed along the boulevard, away from the House Cadmus Knights’ escape route. Though, as Malachi had pointed out, it was far from an exact science.

Through her barely functioning auspex, Sethana was aware of The Huntsman standing over her. Despite his morale, despite his nerves seemingly being shot, Sir Dugness had done his duty every step of the way. Even coming back for her. To her mind, his ability to function despite his mental state was a true mark of courage, a true mark of strength.

Sethana tried to move Heartsbane, and every single part of her hurt. She felt like crying with relief, however, when the Knight Warden, despite all the damage it had taken, responded.

The running lights of the Warden and the Knight Errant cut through the murk of the powdered rockcrete dust. Where the hab tower had stood was now a vast pile of rubble that would have to stand as Sir Harvan’s and Oakspear’s grave, for the time being at least. Heartsbane had to be careful where she put her foot as her auspex functionality was intermittent at best, and Sethana knew the Morassian sappers and forward observers were combing the rubble pile, as was Malachi.

‘Lady Sethana,’ Malachi said over the vox, his voice almost swamped by static. ‘We have detected movement under the rubble in the southernmost section, close to where you egressed the building.’

That made sense, as the Tyrant and the Rampager hadn’t been that far behind them. The Huntsman and Heartsbane, the latter with a pronounced limp, made their way to Malachi’s position.

The Rampager emerged first. It was on its back, using its Reaper and Thunderstrike Gauntlet to dig and claw its way through the rubble. The Huntsman used one huge armoured foot to halt the Heretic Knight’s movement. He levelled the thermal cannon at the Heretic Knight and fired, again and again, until he had made a hole of slagged metal through the centre of the Rampager. The Huntsman may as well have been despatching a rabid dog.

Sethana was ready when the top of the badly damaged Tyrant appeared. She was not feeling as merciful as Sir Dugness. Instead she used her Reaper to cut into the Death of Hope. It was not an execution. It was surgery. In a fountain of sparks she cut down, through, and carefully into the cockpit. Then she dismounted.

It was only as she climbed down from Heartsbane, with more than a little difficulty, that she realised how badly hurt she was. She struggled to breathe, she was drooling blood down her chin, and her entire body felt like a bruise. She made it down and hobbled across the rubble, her suit protecting her from the dust cloud.

Malachi was waiting for her, a shadow in the murk. She was aware of the Morassian sappers around her, lasrifles at the ready, providing security. They, like Malachi, were all wearing filter masks. Sethana held out a hand and Malachi passed her his combat shotgun. She brought it to her shoulder, using the flashlight mounted on the weapon to cut through the murk as she approached the rent in the inert Tyrant.

Sethana assumed she was hallucinating, either from the head wound or sheer exhaustion, because she could see figures, all of them dressed like her, standing around the wreckage of the Death of Hope.

Sethana felt disgust as she saw the pulsating fusion of armour and skin that somehow formed the carapace of the fallen Chaos war machine. Her disgust intensified as she shone the flashlight into the rent she had made in the Tyrant.

Whatever Ivandar had once been, he was now a mutated mess of flesh and machine, well and truly fused with his corrupted Throne Mechanicum. The creature that was Ivandar was obviously badly wounded and in no little pain. It stared at her with undiluted hatred, spitting black ichor up onto its own face. Its malice-filled eyes remained the most human thing about it.

‘Remember that you were not worthy of death in combat,’ she told it.

It looked as though it was trying to speak.

Sethana raised the shotgun again and put it out of its misery.

She knew that the war was far from over, as she limped back towards Heartsbane, but at least they were the apex predators once more.

About the Author

Gavin G Smith is the Dundee-born author of, amongst others, the science fiction novels Veteran and War in Heaven, the survival horror novel Special Purposes: First Strike, the fantasy novella Chivalry and the short story collection Crysis Escalation. 'Apex Predator' is his first story for Black Library.

An extract from Kingsblade.

Danial Tan Draconis, kingsward of House Draconis and heir to the throne of Adrastapol, willed himself not to throw up. He was strapped firmly into his throne mechanicum at the heart of his Knight Errant, Oath of Flame. His throne’s neural jacks were plugged into his cranial augmetics and its armaplas webbing cradled his body tight. The Knight itself – a forty-foot-tall, roughly humanoid war machine – was mag-locked within its armature, one of a dozen looming metal giants dominating the debarkation deck of the drop keep. Still, Danial was shaken like a ragdoll. The turbulence of the combat drop was savage, the pressure of gravity scarcely less so. And then there was the disorienting sensation of the ghosts within his throne. It was a little like standing alone with his back to a curtain, knowing that just beyond it crowded dozens of whispering strangers who might at any moment reach through to grab his shoulder. There again, it was like staring into a mirror and feeling his reflection looking back through his own eyes. Then it felt like embracing myriad thoughts and dreams, only to endure the jarring dislocation of realising that not one of those mental fragments was his. It was like all those things, but not them. Every effort he made to rationalise the sensation only added to his nausea. Danial battled the sickness with the grim desperation of a drowning man clinging to his last spar of driftwood. If he couldn’t even win the fight with his own biological failings, or master his throne before his first true engagement, how was he to win a real battle on the glorious field of war? Besides, he wasn’t about to give Markos the satisfaction of seeing him fail.

‘A bracing plunge, isn’t it, Da?’ Luk’s voice crackled over the vox-net. Exhilarated. Of course he was. Nothing fazed Luk Tan Chimaeros. At least nothing Danial had seen yet.

‘It is,’ he managed, biting out the words.

‘Hah! That a little drop sickness I hear in your voice, Da?’

‘Not at all,’ Danial replied, before pressing one gloved fist to his lips in desperation. His Knight’s machine-spirit responded with a sympathetic churning of internal gears, a slight shudder running through its hull-plates.

‘Honoured ward of House Chimaeros,’ came a firm, female voice over the vox. ‘We are about to enter a live warzone. I would ask that you refrain from any further squiresyard banter at my brother’s expense.’

‘Apologies, lady’ responded Luk, only slightly mollified. His Knight, Sword of Heroes, inclined its helm with a whine of servomotors. ‘You’re right, Jen. No distractions.’

‘Her title,’ came a heavy, gravelly voice over the vox, ‘is Jennika Tan Draconis, Gatekeeper of the Exalted Court. When in panoply I would remind you to address her as such, lad.’ Danial grimaced at the curtness of the exchange. Markos Dar Draconis, herald of the Exalted Court and his father’s first Knight. Not one for tact, or bandied words. Danial knew his friend like a brother; Luk would take that reprimand badly.

Danial’s train of thought was interrupted as the soft emerald light within his Knight’s cockpit flashed an angry red. A dolorous chime rang through the debarkation deck of the drop keep, carried to the ears of each Knight by the audio-pickups on their warsuits’ hulls. Danial gritted his teeth as the drop keep’s landing thrusters fired in sequence, increasing the pressure further. Ingrained training kicked in, and he began final checks, floods of information flowing through his neural jacks as he communed with Oath of Flame. Runes scrolled across his retinas, and his vision expanded to take in everything that the Knight’s external sensorium arrays could see. To an untrained mind it would have been a violently overwhelming experience, a pseudo-sentient and maddening mechanical violation. For Danial it was a sort of ascension. Adrenaline surged, then focused to a bright point. Nausea fled, along with the feeling of the webbing and straps that encased him. Danial’s body became plasteel and ceramite. His heart beat as a thundering plasma furnace. His senses became auspex readouts and inload shunts. In that moment Danial Tan Draconis became one with his Knight, and knew its hunger for battle.

The drop keep hit bedrock with a titanic boom, sending a shockwave through Danial’s metal body. Ahead, behind and to both sides, his fellow Knights disengaged the plasteel cages of their armatures. Gas vented in hissing streams and runelocks flashed from amber to green as the huge bipedal war machines shook off their fetters and prepared for war. From the shadows edging the cavernous deck, electrobraziers lit with roaring flames. Muffled by the thick plates of the drop keep’s outer hull, Danial heard an automated fanfare blaring, throaty and glorious. It was accompanied by a staccato thunder that he realised must be the keep’s weapon batteries opening fire. They were shooting at enemy targets, just outside. In moments he would face the foe himself. His heart thumped and threatened to shake his focus, but with an effort of will the young warrior held steady.

‘Knights of Adrastapol,’ a regal voice rolled through the vox network, filling Danial with fierce pride. His father, High King Tolwyn Tan Draconis, addressed the assembled hosts. ‘Noble sires of Houses Draconis, Chimaeros, Minotos, Wyvorn and Pegasson. Honoured allies of the Astra Militarum, of Tanhollis and Mubraxis and Cadia. Today we do the Emperor’s bidding. Today, we are the cleansing flame. This world of Donatos has known the insidious touch of the mutant. The heretic. The traitor.’ The High King spat the words with such disgust that Danial’s own hatred for the enemy burned hot. ‘But no more! Today the Knights of Adrastapol will march forth and show these turncoats what becomes of those who shun the light of the Imperium. Honoured sires, for Adrastapol and the Emperor. Let them know no mercy, only death!’

‘Only death!’ roared the assembled Knights, their voices carrying across the vox from the debarkation decks of twenty separate drop keeps. Danial’s voice was joined with those of the warriors around him, and he felt stronger in that moment than he ever had before. The ceramite portcullis at the front of the drop keep rattled upwards. The thunder of battle washed over Danial’s Knight. Infernal light spilled inwards, accompanied by a scattered hail of las-bolts and bullets that ricocheted from the red and black armour of his comrades’ steeds.

‘In Excelsium Furore,’ cried Sire Tolwyn to his House Draconis comrades.

‘Wield the fires within,’ they shouted back, the ancient battle cry of their Knightly House. With that, they willed their machines forward to war.

Danial watched the Knights in front of him engage their motive systems and advance. Hydraulic tendons flexed. Gears whirred to speed. Spumes of smoke and incense boiled from exhaust vents atop armoured carapaces, filling the debarkation deck with churning fumes. The Knights’ helm-lumens shone in the gloom, and Danial was reminded of the mythic dracon that gave their house its name. Suddenly the way before him was clear, Sires Daeved and Garath smoothly walking their Knights forward into battle ahead of him. Danial felt a moment of panic as every lesson he had ever learned fled his mind. For a second his Knight hesitated, shuddering on the spot. Angrily, the young kingsward thrust the feeling aside and engaged his motive actuators. Oath of Flame took a long stride, and then another that carried it to the edge of the assault drawbridge. Another, and he was out into the fiery light of a strange world. A fierce grin spread across his face as he stomped down the drawbridge and into the maelstrom of battle.

Danial drank in the data feeds and imaging returns of his auspex. The drop keep had landed right on target, demolishing a guildhall as it slammed down amidst the northern commerce district of Pentakhost. Others like it had crashed down to the east and west. They had unfurled their house banners, begun their rolling fanfares and unshrouded their servitor gun-towers, forming a line of towering fortifications that choked off the neck of the peninsula. The traitor foe was trapped between the wildfires and the Knights, just as King Tolwyn and Viscount Gerraint had planned. As Oath of Flame ventured onto the cracked plaza before the guildhall, Danial saw a jumbled skyline silhouetted against the inferno. Smoke rose in thick black pillars that seemed to hold up the lowering clouds like titanic columns.

Over his Knight’s head fluttered flights of servo-cherubim, the grotesque little creatures winging their way into the sky on grav-impellers and rotor-wings. Released from each drop keep, the cherubs would form a low-altitude sensor-web that would greatly enhance the auspex acuity of the Knights below. The Sacristans called them the Heavenly Host, and were clearly proud of their macabre progeny. The infant servitors made Danial uncomfortable, and sad somehow.

Ash fell like snow, coating the grubby buildings that crowded in around the plaza and swarmed with enemy contacts, revealed by Danial’s pinging auspex runes. From his high vantage they were tiny, insects scurrying from one ineffectual scrap of cover to the next. Some waved tattered banners bearing unclean sigils, and many were visibly mutated.

‘They’re like rock-roaches,’ said Luk over the vox, his Errant moving up alongside Danial’s as they both lit their ion shields and searched for targets. The contempt in the young Knight’s voice was clear, and Danial found it hard to argue. The sense of power rushing through his body was immense. The foe seemed small and weak by comparison. Already their comrades were engaging, tilting their ion shields expertly to absorb the hail of small arms fire that stuttered from broken windows and vehicle wrecks.

To Danial’s right, Sire Olric’s Crusader-pattern Draconsflame opened up with all guns. The scream of his avenger gatling cannon was deafening, its torrent of shells chewing along the front of a refectorum and leaving rubble and bloody corpses in its wake.

To the left, Sire Daeved’s Knight Gallant, Pyrefang, advanced through hails of autogun fire. His reaper chainsword carved out the front of a building to send rubble thundering down on the screaming cultists below.

‘Why are they even trying to fight?’ Danial said aloud. ‘Guns like that can’t harm Knights.’

‘Hate? Panic? Desperation?’ came his sister’s voice in reply, Jennika’s Fire Defiant striding past Danial’s flank. ‘Don’t try to fathom the motives of heretics, little brother. Just kill them. And don’t underestimate them either.’ As if to underpin her words, a missile streaked out from a nearby rooftop and exploded against Jennika’s ion shield. The energy field flashed blue as the warhead’s force dissipated harmlessly, and a second later Fire Defiant’s battle cannon boomed twice. The rooftop erupted in flame and shrapnel, obliterating the luckless heretics and their tank-busting weapon.

‘Kingsward,’ said Sire Markos across the vox, ‘form lance on Lady Jennika. Take Tan Chimaeros with you. Both of you try to learn something, and keep your damned shields up. I’ll not be the one to explain to either of your fathers why a rabble like this managed to unseat their precious sons.’

Danial obeyed swiftly, feeding power to his servomotors and feeling acceleration as his steed strode forward. The ground shook beneath his tread, and targeting data filled his thoughts as his thermal cannon powered up. Luk’s Knight followed, the green and grey of House Chimaeros incongruous amongst the crimson and black heraldry of his Draconis comrades.

‘You know you’re both Exalted Court, yes?’ said Luk resentfully over a private channel. ‘He’s no authority over you, Da.’

‘But he’s a veteran of a dozen wars and more,’ replied Danial, lengthening his stride to keep up with his sister. ‘This is our first. We don’t know what we’re doing yet, not really.’

‘Maybe you don’t,’ Luk answered, a moment before a massive heat bloom lit Danial’s auspex.

Click here to buy Kingsblade.

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2019.
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 Catherine O’Connor.

Apex Predator © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Apex Predator, 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: 978-1-78999-795-8

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.