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The Corpse Road – Graham McNeill

About the Author

A Black Library Publication

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The Corpse Road

Graham McNeill

Now it is the time of night,
That the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite
In the corpse-road paths to glide.

This far from Terra, the light of the Astronomican was little more than a spot of distant illumination. The Eastern Fringe was at the farthest extent of the Emperor’s Light, enough to guide a ship, but not much more.

The swirling warp light beyond the segmented, crystalflex blister in which Tolvan reclined was a whorl of unnameable colours and emotions rendered in unlight.

A window into madness for most mortals, quotidian to a Navigator.

Tolvan had once plied the ebbs and swells of Segmentum Solar, where the Astronomican’s radiance was so blinding, so pure, that he could steer a ship’s course even with his third eye concealed.

And no matter how many times the House Novators reminded Tolvan that it was an honour to be seconded to Ultramar, this current duty didn’t feel much like an honour.

The Shendao was an old ship, even by the standards of the Imperium, where vessels might serve for tens of thousands of years. Its bones were tired, groaning and creaking with each manoeuvre. Its soul was cantankerous, its hull pitted with micro-impacts from millennia of dust carried by celestial winds. The fleets of Ultramar comprised many great and noble vessels, but the Shendao wasn’t one of them.

It was a corpse-hauler, a vast transloader with a hundred vaulted holds filled with the dead, stacked high in chilled cryo-holds.

The war against the daemon lord’s Bloodborn army had seen untold billions die, men and women of the Defence Auxilia, civilians and Adeptus Astartes.

The Space Marines would be interred upon Macragge, and some of the mortal dead had been returned to lie in the crypts of their ancestors. But many more had no one to claim them.

Those bodies travelled the Corpse Road to Nakilla.

The cemetery world lay just beyond the edge of Ultramarian space, across the liminal border that separated the living from the dead. An ancient superstition of betwixt and between, but one the passage of millennia had failed to erase.

The warp was restive in the wake of the war’s ending, and Tolvan was having to hold fast to the Astronomican’s light. Vicious swirls of purple-red anger roared hard against shoals of grey grief, and veils of sickly yellow hopelessness bled into everything. Tolvan ignored the torrents of weeping faces that formed and dissipated in the void. Phantoms all, but no less potent for that.

His spider-like fingers drifted across the brass dials and rheostatic levers of his Astrolabe Ephemeris, sending course corrections to Captain Matang on the bridge. The jump from Calth’s Mandeville Point to Nakilla was a relatively short one, but still required his total concentration.

To be lost in the warp aboard a ship full of corpses had all the makings of a scare story told around low-burning fires, and Tolvan had no wish to be part of such a tale.

He exhaled slowly, gently nudging the Ephemeris, and cursed as he heard a hiss of pressurised air. Someone had entered his private space. A gross intrusion under normal circumstances, and a violation of basic safety protocols during warp-transit.

Cold filled the Navigator’s blister and the bare skin of Tolvan’s arms puckered to gooseflesh. His breath misted as he heard a heavy footfall behind him. He didn’t dare turn his gaze from the kaleidoscopic maelstrom beyond.

‘Whoever you are, get out,’ snapped Tolvan. ‘You have no business being here.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said the intruder with the sonorous cadence of a Space Marine. Tolvan knew of three Ultramarines aboard the Shendao, but this wasn’t one of them.

‘Who are you? I don’t recognise your voice.’

A heavy gauntlet settled upon Tolvan’s shoulder, and he felt strength that could snap him in two. The metal’s surface shimmered like mercury trapped in glass and was limned with hoarfrost.

As though its wearer had clawed up from the depths of a glacier.

Or a cryo-hold.

‘My name’s Honsou,’ said the voice at his ear.

Black was the predominant colour on the bridge of the Shendao, as befitted its role as a conveyor of the dead. The arched walls were of black iron and the lumens suspended over the crew pits were kept dim. Even the hololiths and slates were kept at their lowest setting.

Captain Matang’s long frock coat was black and she kept her close-cropped hair dyed to match. A black sash ran diagonally across her chest, with a single cobalt blue streak at the shoulder. Her skin had the ashen pallor common to those who spent the majority of their lives aboard starships.

The transit to Nakilla was almost over, and for that Matang was thankful. The funereal runs of the Shendao were made along outlying routes, the so-called Corpse Roads. Sometimes called bad-luck ships, other star-farers shunned such vessels and were unwilling to share the void with the dead.

Matang didn’t blame them, but she enjoyed the quiet of the Corpse Roads. Even the piratical reaver clans that hid in the guts of hollowed out asteroids never dared attack such ships.

‘Ma’am?’ said her Master of Astrogation.

‘Yes, Master Zenab?’ she asked. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘I’m not sure,’ replied Zenab. ‘It’s probably nothing, but I’m getting course corrections from Navigator Tolvan that are taking us from our prescribed route.’

‘To my station,’ said Matang, unfolding the data-slate from the side of her command throne. Skirling distortion filled the slate until elliptical lines representing the Shendao’s course swam into focus. The Corpse Road was a predictable path, one she had travelled many times, but what she was seeing made little sense.

‘What the hell is Tolvan playing at?’ she said.

‘Maybe he thinks he’s found a short cut?’ suggested Zenab. ‘You know what he’s like.’

Matang shook her head. ‘No, this won’t take us anywhere near the Nakillan Lych-station.’

A low moan of groaning metal echoed through the bridge, the deformation of the ship’s superstructure as it protested at the rapid change of direction.

‘We’re altering aspect, captain,’ said Zenab. ‘Coming to heading one-three-nine, vector theta-prime.’

Matang gripped her throne’s armrests. ‘Countermand! Get us back on course.’

‘Negative, captain,’ said Zenab, scrolling down through the astrogation commands. ‘The course alterations are prefixed with Nobilite overrides. I can’t even cut the warp engines for an emergency translation!’

Matang opened a vox-link with the Navigator’s blister.

‘Mister Tolvan, would you care to explain where the hell you’re taking my ship?’

A grating hiss of static crackled from the augmitter. The Navigator didn’t respond, but Matang could hear his breathing.

‘Mister Tolvan?’

‘You’d be Matang then?’ said a gruff voice that sounded like rusted metal bars grinding together.

‘Captain Matang.’

‘I don’t have much to do with fancy titles.’

‘Who are you and what have you done with Navigator Tolvan?’ demanded Matang, waving the bridge security detail over. Five armsmen, equipped with low-velocity slug-throwers. Not enough to take on the threat she now believed had secreted itself aboard the Shendao.

‘I’m Honsou, and your little Navigator’s still alive for now,’ said the voice. ‘But he won’t be for much longer if you don’t comply.’

‘Go ahead and kill him,’ said Matang. ‘I’ve plied this route often enough to not need a Navigator.’

‘You and I both know that’s a lie,’ said Honsou. ‘We’re in the warp, and if I kill Master Tolvan, your ship’s lost forever. I can survive here, but you and your crew won’t.’

‘Perhaps that’s a chance I’m willing to take.’

‘Perhaps,’ allowed Honsou. ‘I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?’

‘So where are you taking my ship?’

‘We’re not going to your charnel world, captain, we’re making a diversion.’

‘A diversion?’

‘Yes. Now that M’kar’s been destroyed, Ultramar’s become a little too dull for my liking.’

Matang muted the vox and turned to her armsmen.

‘Alert Brother Anvoram and his squad,’ she ordered. ‘We’ve got an Iron Warrior aboard.’

The vox went dead and Honsou knew the captain would be ordering her security forces to the Navigator’s blister. He’d seen the funeral ships leaving Highside City and guessed there’d likely only be a handful of Ultramarines aboard.

Three or four most likely.

Certainly no more than five.

‘Anvoram will kill you,’ said the cowering Navigator. Beads of sweat ran down Tolvan’s face, but he hadn’t yet taken his gaze from the warplight licking the surface of the dome.

‘Anvoram, who’s he?’ asked Honsou. ‘Some slab-headed security drone?’

‘He’s Ultramarines,’ said Tolvan.

‘I can kill one of Calgar’s lickspittles easily enough.’

Tolvan grunted with amusement. ‘He’s not alone. He has two of his battle brothers with him.’

‘Excellent, so it’s three,’ said Honsou. ‘I was wondering how many Ultramarines were aboard. One. Three. Doesn’t matter. They’ll all be dead soon anyway.’

The Navigator groaned and Honsou laughed at his horror of having fallen for so elementary a ploy. Tolvan finally tore his gaze from the seething miasma of the warp, but Honsou clamped his gleaming silver palm onto the Navigator’s shaven skull.

‘You keep that nasty little third eye of yours pointing where it belongs,’ said Honsou. ‘Out there.’

He felt the Navigator struggle beneath his grip. Courageous, but useless. He was weak, even for a mortal, and couldn’t hope to break Honsou’s grip.

Brother Mydon took the left, Brother Syloson the right. Anvoram stood before the angled entrance to the Navigator’s blister compartment. Every squad of the Chapter took it in turns to escort the dead to Nakilla, but none of them relished the task.

Not when there were still enemies to drive from Ultramar.

Now one of those enemies was revealed, and Anvoram had the chance to strike back. He’d fought at the Four Valleys, and had spilled his share of traitor blood, but this was a chance to kill Honsou, the murderer of Tarsis Ultra and bane of the Ultramarines.

Mydon placed the breaching charge on the door. He didn’t care if the door was locked or not, the charge would give them precious fractions of seconds to take the Iron Warrior down. Anvoram had made no promises concerning Tolvan’s survival, but Captain Matang was confident she could break the Nobilite codes keeping her out of the warp drive controls.

Making the Navigator’s survival irrelevant.

Anvoram held up three fingers.

Two, one.

He made a fist.

The breaching charge detonated with a flat, dull bang, hurling the door back against the walls of the narrow compartment within. Fyceline smoke filled the narrow corridor, triggering the fire-suppression systems. Oxygen-depleting gasses streamed from overhead pipes in billowing, white clouds.

Syloson spun around and pulled his trigger twice in quick succession. The Navigator’s compartment filled with an expanding storm of metal fragments. Regular bolt shells would go straight through the crystalflex dome, so Syloson had loaded Tempest rounds.

Mydon swept through the door, hunched low, bolter pulled in tight to his shoulder. Classic assault stance.

He ran right into a solid wall of battleplate.

The Iron Warrior stood with his back to them, unbowed by the storm of red hot fragments embedded in his armour. A slashing elbow cannoned into Mydon’s faceplate, hurling him back with his neck broken.

Honsou turned and thrust Master Tolvan out before him. Syloson snapped his bolter up, but stiffened as he looked straight into the Navigator’s uncovered third eye. Anvoram heard the warrior’s strangled cry of horror as he stared deep into whatever abyss lay within the Navigator’s eye.

Honsou dropped Tolvan and charged straight at him with his shimmer-steel arm held up before him. Anvoram braced his back foot and put three quick shots into the Iron Warrior.

The first two impacted on his upraised arm, the third on the traitor’s battered gorget. Honsou staggered but, incredibly, didn’t stop. His arm should have been a bloody stump of flayed meat and bone, yet in the instant before the Iron Warrior slammed into him, Anvoram saw that it was entirely untouched.

The two Space Marines slammed together with the sound of a sledgehammer striking steel. Honsou’s fist crunched into Anvoram’s helm. He rolled with the blow, slamming the butt of his bolter into Honsou’s gnarled augmetic skull.

Metal struck metal, and Anvoram blocked another savage series of blows. Too close for bolter work, he slammed a fist into Honsou’s face. Blood spattered the walls as they barged back and forth across the smoke-filled corridor, punching and grappling, each looking for an opening.

He hooked his arm under Honsou’s and all but lifted him from the deck with a roar of hate. He rammed Honsou into the opposite bulkhead and smashed a thunderous head-butt into the traitor’s skull.

Metal and bone crumpled. Honsou spat blood into his face with a sneer.

‘Have to hit harder than that,’ he hissed.

‘Contact!’ shouted Zenab. ‘I have an unknown contact.’

‘Give me a bearing,’ demanded Matang, striding from the command throne to the Master of Astrogation’s plotter.

‘Dead ahead and closing fast.’

‘What is it?’

‘Unknown.’

‘One of ours?’

‘Unknown.’

‘Well find out, damn it!’

Honsou drove a knee into his opponent’s side. A pistoning elbow followed. The Ultramarine staggered, his armour split by the force of the blow. Honsou dived across the corridor to retrieve the weapon of the first Ultramarines warrior he had killed. He scooped up the dead man’s bolter and fired a three round burst.

His bolts detonated within the walls.

Barely had the shock of him missing his target registered than he saw Anvoram through the fire-suppression smoke, a bolter aimed squarely between his eyes.

‘You’re fast,’ said the Ultramarine. ‘I’m faster.’

Before he could pull the trigger, the Shendao rocked under the force of a terrific impact. Alarm klaxons brayed and warning lights bathed the corridor in a blood-red glow. The corridor lurched to the side, canting to an angle of almost forty-five degrees.

Anvoram and Honsou crashed into the wall, but the Iron Warrior recovered quickest. He sighted over the barrel and blasted a single round straight through Anvoram’s right eye-lens.

The warrior slumped back, sliding down the angled wall, smearing a trail of brain matter.

Honsou let out a breath and spat a mouthful of blood as another thunderous explosion shook the Shendao.

He took a chainsword from one of the dead Ultramarines and gathered up their magazines of bolt-rounds.

Rearmed, he slung the unconscious form of the Navigator over his shoulder and made his way to the nearest airlock.

‘You took your time,’ said Teth Dassadra as they watched the Shendao’s stripped-down hull burn through Warbreed’s viewing bay. ‘Another month and I’d have taken us back to the Maelstrom.’

‘You wouldn’t have dared.’

‘You’d like to think that,’ said Dassadra, ever ready with a cocksure reply.

Honsou had last seen Dassadra in the moments prior to his assault into the depths of Calth. His final order to him had been to get off-world and take the Warbreed out to Ultramar’s edge. Following Honsou’s escape from the underground arcologies, a single frequency-specific burst from Ultimus Prime told Dassadra the name of the ship to look for.

The rest had been up to Honsou.

‘Who’s he?’ asked Dassadra.

‘A Navigator,’ said Honsou. ‘Figured he could be useful.’

‘Best get a hood for that eye of his before he comes round.’

Honsou nodded and handed the unconscious form of Navigator Tolvan off to a waiting thrall before taking a breath of the bitter, metallic air within the strategium.

It smelled of hot iron, burnt oil and beaten metal. He tasted Cycerin’s foul Mechanicum chemicals, the bubbling death-fluids that kept the hybrid servitor-beasts alive.

He grinned as Dassadra asked, ‘So where to now? And don’t tell me we’re staying here.’

‘We’re not,’ said Honsou. ‘I’m done with Ultramar.’

‘Even though it didn’t fall?’ sneered Dassadra.

‘It didn’t fall, but let’s be honest, did we really expect it to?’

‘Then why did we even come here?’

‘To show them we could,’ said Honsou. ‘We humbled the realm of Uriel Ventris and damn near brought to its knees, which is more than anyone else has managed.’

‘So what’s next?’ asked Dassadra.

What next, indeed?

The Warbreed was Honsou’s, and he its captain. He had a crew and the means to go where he desired. Yes, he was done with Ultramar, so there was really only one place to go now.

‘Medrengard,’ said Honsou. ‘We’re returning to Medrengard.’

‘Medrengard? Why?’

‘Because I want to see the Lord of Iron,’ said Honsou. ‘I want to see Perturabo.’

About the Author

Graham McNeill has written many Horus Heresy novels, including Vengeful Spirit and his New York Times bestsellers A Thousand Sons and the novella The Reflection Crack’d, which featured in The Primarchs anthology. Graham’s Ultramarines series, featuring Captain Uriel Ventris, is now six novels long, and has close links to his Iron Warriors stories, the novel Storm of Iron being a perennial favourite with Black Library fans. He has also written a Mars trilogy, featuring the Adeptus Mechanicus. For Warhammer, he has written the Time of Legends trilogy The Legend of Sigmar, the second volume of which won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award.

Witness the rise of Honsou from hated half-breed to mighty Warsmith in his first classic appearance!

A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2014
This eBook edition published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-536-4

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