Born of Flame Read online

  BACKLIST

  Book 1 – HORUS RISING

  Book 2 – FALSE GODS

  Book 3 – GALAXY IN FLAMES

  Book 4 – THE FLIGHT OF THE EISENSTEIN

  Book 5 – FULGRIM

  Book 6 – DESCENT OF ANGELS

  Book 7 – LEGION

  Book 8 – BATTLE FOR THE ABYSS

  Book 9 – MECHANICUM

  Book 10 – TALES OF HERESY

  Book 11 – FALLEN ANGELS

  Book 12 – A THOUSAND SONS

  Book 13 – NEMESIS

  Book 14 – THE FIRST HERETIC

  Book 15 – PROSPERO BURNS

  Book 16 – AGE OF DARKNESS

  Book 17 – THE OUTCAST DEAD

  Book 18 – DELIVERANCE LOST

  Book 19 – KNOW NO FEAR

  Book 20 – THE PRIMARCHS

  Book 21 – FEAR TO TREAD

  Book 22 – SHADOWS OF TREACHERY

  Book 23 – ANGEL EXTERMINATUS

  Book 24 – BETRAYER

  Book 25 – MARK OF CALTH

  Book 26 – VULKAN LIVES

  Book 27 – THE UNREMEMBERED EMPIRE

  Book 28 – SCARS

  Book 29 – VENGEFUL SPIRIT

  Book 30 – THE DAMNATION OF PYTHOS

  Book 31 – LEGACIES OF BETRAYAL

  Book 32 – DEATHFIRE

  Book 33 – WAR WITHOUT END

  Book 34 – PHAROS

  Book 35 – EYE OF TERRA

  Book 36 – THE PATH OF HEAVEN

  Book 37 – THE SILENT WAR

  Book 38 – ANGELS OF CALIBAN

  Book 39 – PRAETORIAN OF DORN

  Book 40 – CORAX

  Book 41 – THE MASTER OF MANKIND

  Book 42 – GARRO

  Book 43 – SHATTERED LEGIONS

  Book 44 – THE CRIMSON KING

  Book 45 – TALLARN

  Book 46 – RUINSTORM

  Book 47 – OLD EARTH

  Book 48 – THE BURDEN OF LOYALTY

  Book 49 – WOLFSBANE

  More tales from the Horus Heresy...

  CYBERNETICA

  SONS OF THE FORGE

  WOLF KING

  PROMETHEAN SUN

  AURELIAN

  BROTHERHOOD OF THE STORM

  THE CRIMSON FIST

  PRINCE OF CROWS

  DEATH AND DEFIANCE

  TALLARN: EXECUTIONER

  SCORCHED EARTH

  BLADES OF THE TRAITOR

  THE PURGE

  THE HONOURED

  THE UNBURDENED

  RAVENLORD

  CORAX: SOULFORGE

  TALLARN: IRONCLAD

  THE SEVENTH SERPENT

  Many of these titles are also available as abridged and unabridged audiobooks. Order the full range of Horus Heresy novels and audiobooks from blacklibrary.com

  Audio Dramas

  THE DARK KING & THE LIGHTNING TOWER

  RAVEN’S FLIGHT

  GARRO: OATH OF MOMENT

  GARRO: LEGION OF ONE

  BUTCHER’S NAILS

  GREY ANGEL

  GARRO: BURDEN OF DUTY

  GARRO: SWORD OF TRUTH

  THE SIGILLITE

  HONOUR TO THE DEAD

  WOLF HUNT

  HUNTER’S MOON

  THIEF OF REVELATIONS

  TEMPLAR

  ECHOES OF RUIN

  MASTER OF THE FIRST

  THE LONG NIGHT

  IRON CORPSES

  RAPTOR

  CENSURE

  THE EAGLE’S TALON

  GREY TALON

  THE EITHER

  THE HEART OF THE PHAROS /

  CHILDREN OF SICARUS

  RED-MARKED

  ECHOES OF IMPERIUM

  ECHOES OF REVELATION

  THE THIRTEENTH WOLF

  VIRTUES OF THE SONS /

  SINS OF THE FATHER

  THE BINARY SUCCESSION

  DARK COMPLIANCE

  BLACKSHIELDS: THE FALSE WAR

  BLACKSHIELDS: THE RED FIEF

  Download the full range of Horus Heresy audio dramas from blacklibrary.com

  Also available

  MACRAGGE’S HONOUR

  A Horus Heresy graphic novel

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  The Horus Heresy

  PROMETHEAN SUN

  Dramatis Personae

  SCORCHED EARTH

  Dramatis Personae

  ARTEFACTS

  IMMORTAL DUTY

  SONS OF THE FORGE

  Dramatis Personae

  The Vow

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  The Broken Chalice

  Afterword

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Wolfsbane’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  THE HORUS HERESY

  It is a time of legend.

  The galaxy is in flames. The Emperor’s glorious vision for humanity is in ruins. His favoured son, Horus, has turned from his father’s light and embraced Chaos.

  His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, are locked in a brutal civil war. Once, these ultimate warriors fought side by side as brothers, protecting the galaxy and bringing mankind back into the Emperor’s light. Now they are divided.

  Some remain loyal to the Emperor, whilst others have sided with the Warmaster. Pre-eminent amongst them, the leaders of their thousands-strong Legions are the primarchs. Magnificent, superhuman beings, they are the crowning achievement of the Emperor’s genetic science. Thrust into battle against one another, victory is uncertain for either side.

  Worlds are burning. At Isstvan V, Horus dealt a vicious blow and three loyal Legions were all but destroyed. War was begun, a conflict that will engulf all mankind in fire. Treachery and betrayal have usurped honour and nobility. Assassins lurk in every shadow. Armies are gathering. All must choose a side or die.

  Horus musters his armada, Terra itself the object of his wrath. Seated upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor waits for his wayward son to return. But his true enemy is Chaos, a primordial force that seeks to enslave mankind to its capricious whims.

  The screams of the innocent, the pleas of the righteous resound to the cruel laughter of Dark Gods. Suffering and damnation await all should the Emperor fail and the war be lost.

  The age of knowledge and enlightenment has ended.

  The Age of Darkness has begun.

  PROMETHEAN SUN

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The XVIII Legion, ‘Salamanders’

  VULKAN , Primarch

  NUMEON, Captain, First Company and leader of the Pyre Guard

  VARRUN, Pyre Guard

  ATANARIUS, Pyre Guard

  GANNE, Pyre Guard

  LEODRAKK, Pyre Guard

  SKATAR’VAR, Pyre Guard

  IGATARON, Pyre Guard

  HEKA’TAN, Captain, 14th Company

  KAITAR, Battle-brother, 14th Company

  LUMINOR, Apothecary, 14th Company

  ANGVENON, Battle-brother, 14th Company

  TU’VAR, Battle-brother, 14th Company


  ORANOR, Battle-brother, 14th Company

  BANNON, Sergeant, 14th Company

  GRAVIUS, Captain, Fifth Company

  VENERABLE BROTHER ATTION, Dreadnought

  The XIV Legion, ‘Death Guard’

  MORTARION, Primarch

  The X Legion, ‘Iron Hands’

  FERRUS MANUS, Primarch

  GABRIEL SANTAR, Captain, First Company

  The 154th Expeditionary Fleet

  GLAIVARZEL, Remembrancer, imagist

  VERACE, Remembrancer

  Imperial Army

  888TH PHAERIAN, Army division, including cadre of overseers and discipline-masters

  Of ancient Nocturne

  N’BEL, Blacksmiter of Hesiod

  BREUGHAR, Metal-shaper of Hesiod

  GORVE, Plainskeeper of Hesiod

  REK’TAR, Hornmaster of Hesiod

  BAN’EK, Tribal king of Themis

  Other

  ‘THE OUTLANDER’

  ‘I don’t understand. You raised me. You taught me how to hunt with spear and bow. I lived in your house and worked in your forge. Yet you ask me to believe that I am not your son?

  So who is my father?’

  – Vulkan of Nocturne

  No one saw him die. The jungle just came alive and took him. Soundlessly, the trooper was simply gone. His slayer moved as a blur, blending with the shadows until it was lost in the heat haze. Scant light penetrated the dense leaf canopy above. Men, shouting and panicking in a tightly packed column, went for their lamp packs. It was stifling in the heady gloom. Heat thickened the air, but the troopers’ bodies cooled with growing fear. Stabbing light beams sent night-beetles scurrying for dark hollows. Vine serpents hung inert in mimicry of their namesakes in hope of being overlooked. If only the men could play dead like that and the predator would pass… Flat leaves, that were not really leaves at all, heaved and pulsed, but there was no sign of the monster. Cries of panic subsided, usurped by a quiet tension as the jungle swallowed voices and stole the soldiers’ resolve. The discipline-master of the 888th Phaerian Imperial Army held up a clenched fist.

  Still. Stay still… and listen. If we listen, we will live.

  His brocade and jacket seemed incongruous amongst his bare-and barrel-chested charges. Phaerian death-worlders were brutish, slab-muscled men used to deltas and trackless swamps. Skulls jangled on their bandoliers, the rictus mouths clacking as if in amusement. Camo tattoos striped their pugnacious faces but couldn’t hide their fear. This was supposed to be their element.

  Hearts beating in two thousand chests made a louder clamour than the entire jungle in that moment. The forest held its breath.

  Lifting his puniter-stave, the discipline-master was about to order the advance when the cyber-hawk perched on his shoulder shrilled. The warning was too late. As if exhaling again, the jungle opened its maw and the discipline-master disappeared. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. Just like the trooper. They were being picked off.

  Snap fire from a dozen rifles chased the hole left by the discipline-master but the trail was cold before the soldiers had time to realise they were aiming at nothing. Order went with him, Army overseers powerless to prevent the two thousand-strong infantry group from unleashing carnage with their auto-carbines and scatter-locks. Hot las and solid shot spat out in all directions as the men vented their fear until their mags ran dry. Sections of Rapier and Tarantula gunners added heavier firepower to the barrage. The thick jungle in the immediate vicinity became a mulched flatland in under a minute. Electro-goads and vox-amplified orders bellowed at ear-bleeding volume eventually brought the madness under control.

  A dumb quietude fell, undercut by heavy breathing and nervous whispers.

  The cessation was brief.

  Out of the darkness came monsters. Vast beasts, their ululating cries louder than any augmented overseer, crashed into the column of men, killing Phaerians by the score. On one flank, the line bent and broke as hulking, scaled things with horned snouts armoured by bony carapace drove into it. The first Phaerians to die were ground to paste, whilst those that came next were thrown into the air or gored to death. Other beasts, smaller but still many times larger than a man, bullied in alongside the hulks. Saurian like their larger cousins, but avian in nature and aspect, they cantered and sprang amongst the shattered platoons, rending with dewclaws. With their coherency so brutally broken, the scattered Phaerians were easy meat. Hooded riders snapped off shots with long, alien rifles, their conical helms gleaming pearlescent white.

  From above, a shriek split the air and a second later, the leaf canopy was broken by a flock of winged lizards. A lucky burst of Rapier fired chewed up the membranous wings of one, sending rider and beast into a fatal dive, but the rest of its kindred reduced the jubilant Army gunners to a visceral mist.

  The air was thick with blood and screaming as the tattered regiment consolidated into the clearing they’d made. Not so much a column now, the slowly diminishing circle of bodies offered feeble resistance to the aliens and their scaled beasts. It was no place for a last stand, and soon the Imperial Army was running again, back through the darkness. Branch tendrils came alive snagging wrists and ankles, sucking bogs opened up to swallow men whole. Insect hordes rallied, filling mouths and ears as the entire jungle animated to repel the interlopers.

  ‘Forward for Terra!’ an overseer began, before his throat was speared by an alien lance. Its bearer shucked his body free with a desultory jerk before rearing over a band of wounded Phaerians on its saurian steed. The meaning in the alien’s glowering gaze was clear.

  Death to intruders.

  It charged. A reverberant war cry shot through the jungle like lighting, calling its rider kindred, and in moments the Phaerians were engulfed by a stampede. The crack of scatter-locks and auto-carbines was brief and ineffectual. Rear rankers, far enough from the fighting to not yet be skewered, crushed or shredded, just ran. These men, these death-worlder brutes, wailed as they scrambled through the heat and the mire. Winged beasts, let loose in the rein, dived on prey at leisure, picking off morsels wherever they appeared, all to the grim satisfaction of their eldritch masters.

  It was a massacre, the humans were a flesh feast for the cold-blooded saurian monsters.

  High above, the forest was an ocean of fire. Leaves of red and ochre filled the swollen canopy like veins of blood rippling on water. Hunting pterosaurs were visible darting through the unseen fissures in the solid orange sea.

  A voice echoed in the darkness of a ship’s belly.

  ‘They have engaged the Army vanguard, my lord.’

  A large figure near the back of the hold breathed in the scent of ash and cinder. Somewhere behind him, the last embers of a ritual fire were slowly fading. Brazier-flame lit his eyes as he looked up. In the gloom, he appeared as scaled and saurian as the monsters in the jungle below.

  Abyssal deep, his reply was emphatic.

  ‘Send in the Legion.’

  A heavy engine throb forced its way into the jungle. Below, where the chaos played out and the reaping of human life went unabated, a few surviving Phaerians looked up. As if by some unseen hand, the canopy parted to reveal the slab-sided base of a gunship. Its boarding ramp was down and the darkness within the Stormbird’s belly lit up with a host of firered lenses as its occupants concluded their oaths of moment.

  The first of the warriors hit the ground with a thunderous boom. Chainblade whirring, the giant in forest-green levelled his bolt pistol.

  ‘Rally! For the freedom of humanity and the glory of Terra!’

  Like thunderbolts striking the earth, he was joined by others, armour-clad crusaders bearing the symbol of the snarling drake on their shoulder guards.

  We are fireborn.

  They roared as one.

  ‘Vulkan!’

  He had fought the eldar before, though not like this. Attached to the 154th Expeditionary Fleet, he’d been charged with fighting off piratical raiders, an entirely different alien breed to
the jungle-dwellers. They had been succubus horrors, draped in leather and festooned with charnel blades. Emerging from space as if an autonomous part of the void had detached itself from the whole, the raiders had gutted two frigates before the XVIII Legion intervened and repelled them. Nocturneans called them ‘dusk-wraiths’. They were phantoms, soul-thieves, and he hated them with all the ingrained cultural memory of his people.

  Heka’tan had not crossed blades with the dragon-riders before this battle. These forest-bound aliens were not as technologically advanced as their cousins but they were still eldar. And they were fast.

  ‘Cutting left.’ The warning vocalised through his squad’s comm-feed also displayed as an icon in his retinal lens. His bolt pistol was still scanning, spitting out semi-auto at an enemy so fleet of foot his targeter couldn’t keep up. Foliage split apart under the barrage.

  ‘Burst fire.’

  The legionaries stopped aiming and focussed on areas instead. A furious combined salvo brought down the rider and three of its kindred.

  Heka’tan saw Brother Kaitar kneel and daub a finger of ash down his shoulder guard from the smouldering remains of one of the fires littering the clearing.

  ‘Unto the anvil, captain.’

  Heka’tan smiled behind his faceplate and gave Kaitar a curt salute. He opened up the company-band feed.

  ‘All of the Fourteenth. Advance.’

  Multiple Stormbirds had broken through the forest canopy, bringing warriors of the XVIII Legion to relieve the beleaguered Army. They consolidated quickly and methodically, Vulkan’s sons as exacting as their father when it came to warmaking.

  Several squads from Heka’tan’s company came together and a wall of bolter fire lit up the jungle, chasing back the darkness and chewing up trees into kindling. The eldar vanguard withered before it. Pterosaurs took flight, spearing through gaps in the leaf canopy, calling out vengeance. A blockade of stegosaurs emerged from behind a fleeing screen of raptor riders in an attempt to impede the legionaries.

  With clipped battle-sign, Heka’tan brought up a division of heavies.

  Capacitors powered from a soft drone to a hard thrum as the conversion beamers reached fire-ready status. A crackling foom rushed from the aiming nozzles as the energy weapons sliced foliage apart to detonate with purpose against the stegosaurs. An explosion engulfed the beasts, leaving nothing behind but wet bone chunks.

  Two fingers snapping forwards in a quick chop-chop motion brought up the bolters again. Heka’tan led the line, holstering his pistol as the Salamanders took control of the battlefield. Slowly, the resolve of the Army units was returning. The appearance of the Legiones Astartes had emboldened them as the Salamanders marched implacably through the shaken Phaerians.