[Night Lords 01] - Soul Hunter Read online

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  SOUL HUNTER

  Night Lords - 01

  Aaron Dembski-Bowden

  (An Undead Scan v1.0)

  Katie, will you marry me?

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants—and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  TRAITORS’ UNITY

  PART ONE

  “My sons, the galaxy is burning.

  We all bear witness to a final truth—our way is not the way of the Imperium.

  You have never stood in the Emperor’s light.

  Never worn the Imperial eagle.

  And you never will.

  You shall stand in midnight clad,

  Your claws forever red with the lifeblood of my father’s failed empire,

  Warring through the centuries as the talons of a murdered god.

  Rise, my sons, and take your wrath across the stars,

  In my name.

  In my memory.

  Rise, my Night Lords.”

  —The Primarch Konrad Curze,

  at the final gathering of the VIII Legion

  PROLOGUE

  A GOD’S SON

  It was a curse, to be a god’s son.

  To see as a god saw, to know what a god knew. This sight, this knowledge, tore him apart time and again.

  His chamber was a cell, devoid of comfort, serving as nothing more than a haven against interference. Within this hateful sanctuary, the god’s son screamed out secrets of a future yet to come, his voice a strangled chorus of cries rendered toneless and metallic by the speaker grille of his ancient battle helm.

  Sometimes his muscles would lock, slabs of meat and sinew tensing around his iron-hard bones, leaving him shivering and breathing in harsh rasps, unable to control his own body. These seizures could last for hours, each beat of his two hearts firing his nerves with agony as the blood hammered through his cramping muscles. In the times he was free from the accursed paralysis, when his reserve heart would slow and grow still once again, he would ease the pain by pounding his skull against the walls of his cell. This fresh torment was a distraction from the images that burned behind his eyes.

  It sometimes worked, but never for long. The returning visions would peel back any lesser torment, bathing his mind once more in fire.

  The god’s son, still in his battle armour, rammed his helmed head against the wall, driving his skull against the steel again and again. Between the ceramite helmet he wore and the enhanced bone of his skeleton, his efforts did more damage to the wall than to himself.

  Lost in the same curse that led to his gene-father’s death, the god’s son did not see his cell walls around him, nor did he detect the data streaming across his retinas as his helm’s combat display tracked and targeted the contours of the wall, the hinges of the barred door, and every other insignificant detail in the unfurnished chamber. At the top left of his visor display, his vital signs were charted in a scrolling readout that flashed with intermittent warnings when his twin hearts pounded too hard for even his inhuman physiology, or his breathing ceased for minutes at a time with his body locked in a seizure.

  And this was the price he paid for being like his father. This was existence as the living legacy of a god.

  The slave listened at his master’s door, counting the minutes.

  Behind the reinforced dark metal portal, the master’s cries had finally subsided—at least for now. The slave was human, with the limited senses such a state entailed, but with his ear pressed to the door, he could make out the master’s breathing. It was a sawing sound, ragged and harsh, filtered into a metallic growl by the vox-speakers of the master’s skull-faced helm.

  And still, even as his mind wandered to other thoughts, the slave kept counting the seconds as they became minutes. It was easy; he’d trained to make it instinctive, for no chronometers would work reliably within the warp.

  The slave’s name was Septimus, because he was the seventh. Six slaves had come before him in service to the master, and those six were no longer among the crew of the glorious vessel, the Covenant of Blood.

  The corridors of the Astartes strike cruiser stood almost empty, a silent web of black steel and dark iron. These were the veins of the great ship, once thriving with activity: servitors trundling about their simple duties, Astartes moving from chamber to chamber, mortal crew performing the myriad functions that were necessary for the ship’s continued running. In the days before the great betrayal, thousands of souls had called the Covenant home, including almost three hundred of the immortal Astartes.

  Time had changed that. Time, and the wars it brought.

  The corridors were unlit, but not powerless. An intentional blackness settled within the strike cruiser, a darkness so deep it was bred into the ship’s steel bones. It was utterly natural to the Night Lords, each one born of the same sunless world. To the few crew that dwelled in the Covenant’s innards, the darkness was—at first—an uncomfortable presence. Acclimatisation would inevitably come to most. They would still carry their torches and optical enhancers, for they were human and had no ability to pierce the artificial night as their masters did. But over time, they grew to take comfort in the darkness.

  In time, acclimatisation became familiarity. Those whose minds never found comfort in the blackness were lost to madness, and discarded after they were slain for their failure. The others abided, and grew familiar with their unseen surroundings.

  Septimus’ thoughts went deeper than most. All machines had souls. This he knew, even from his days of loyalty to the Golden Throne. He would speak with the nothingness sometimes, knowing the blackness was an entity unto itself, an expression of the ship’s sentience. To walk through the pitch-blackness that saturated the ship was to live within the vessel’s soul, to breathe in the palpable aura of the Covenant’s traitorous malevolence.

  The darkness never answered, but he took comfort in the vessel’s presence around him. As a child, he’d always feared the dark. That fear had never really left him, and knowing the silent, black corridors were not hostile was all that kept his mind together in the infinite night of his existence.

  He was also lonely. That was a difficult truth to admit, even to himself. Far
easier to sit in the darkness, speaking to the ship, even knowing it would never answer. He had sometimes felt distant from the other slaves and servants aboard the vessel. Most had been in service to the Night Lords much longer than he had. They unnerved him. Many walked around with their eyes closed, navigating the cold hallways of the ship by memory, by touch, and by other senses Septimus had no desire to understand.

  Once, in the silent weeks before another battle on another world, Septimus had asked what became of the six slaves before him. The master was in seclusion, away from his brothers, praying to the souls of his weapons and armour. He had looked at Septimus then, staring with eyes as black as the space between the stars.

  And he’d smiled. The master rarely did that. The blue veins visible under the master’s pale cheeks twisted like faint cracks in pristine marble.

  “Primus,” he spoke softly—as he always did without his battle helm—but with a rich, deep resonance nevertheless, “was killed a long, long time ago. In battle.”

  “Did you try to save him, lord?”

  “No. I was not aware of his death. I was not on board the Covenant when it happened.”

  The slave wanted to ask if the master would have even tried to save his predecessor had the chance arisen, but in truth he feared he knew the answer already. “I see,” Septimus said, licking his dry lips. “And the others?”

  “Tertius… changed. The warp changed him. I destroyed him when he was no longer himself.”

  This surprised Septimus. The master had told him before of the importance of servants that could resist the madness of the warp, remaining pure from the corruption of the Ruinous Powers.

  “He fell by your hand?” Septimus asked.

  “He did. It was a mercy.”

  “I see. And the others?”

  “They aged. They died. All except for Secondus and Quintus.”

  “What of them?”

  “Quintus was slain by the Exalted.”

  Septimus’ blood ran cold at those words. He loathed the Exalted.

  “Why? What transgression was he guilty of?”

  “He broke no law. The Exalted killed him in a moment of fury. He vented his rage on the closest living being. Unfortunately for Quintus, it was him.”

  “And… what of Secondus?”

  “I will tell you of the second another time. Why do you ask about my former servants?”

  Septimus drew breath to tell the truth, to confess his fears, to admit he was speaking into the ship’s darkness to stave off loneliness. But the fate of Tertius stayed trapped within his forethoughts. Death because of madness. Death because of corruption.

  “Curiosity,” the slave said to his master, speaking the first and only lie he would ever say in his service.

  The sound of booted footfalls drew Septimus back to the present. He moved away from the master’s door, taking a breath as he glanced unseeing down the hallway in the direction of the approaching footsteps.

  He knew who was coming. They would see him. They would see him even if he stayed hidden nearby, so there was no sense running. They would smell his scent and see the aura of his body heat. So he stood ready, willing his heartbeat to slow from its thunderous refrain. They would hear that, too. They would smile at his fears.

  Septimus clicked the deactivation button on his weak lamp pack, killing the dim yellow illumination and bathing the corridor in utter blackness once more. He did this out of respect to the approaching Astartes, and because he had no wish to see their faces. At times, the darkness made dealing with the demigods much easier.

  Steeled and prepared, Septimus closed his now-useless eyes, shifting his perceptions to focus entirely on his hearing and sense of smell. The footfalls were heavy but unarmoured—too widely spaced to be human. A swish of a tunic or robe. Most pervasive of all, the scent of blood: tangy, rich and metallic, strong enough to tickle the tongue. It was the smell of the ship itself, but distilled, purified, magnified.

  Another demigod.

  One of the master’s kin was coming to see his brother.

  “Septimus,” said the voice from the blackness.

  The slave swallowed hard, not trusting his voice but knowing he must speak. “Yes, lord. It is I.”

  A rustle of clothing, the sound of something soft on metal. Was the demigod stroking the master’s door?

  “Septimus,” the other demigod repeated. His voice was inhumanly low, a rumble of syllables. “How has my brother been?”

  “He has not emerged yet, lord.”

  “I know. I hear him breathing. He is calmer than before.” The demigod sounded contemplative. “I did not ask if he had emerged, Septimus. I asked how he had been.”

  “This affliction has lasted longer than most, lord, but my master has been silent for almost an hour now. I have counted the minutes. This is the longest he has been at peace since the affliction first took hold.”

  The demigod chuckled. It sounded like thunderheads colliding. Septimus had a momentary trickle of nostalgia; he’d not seen a storm—not even stood under a real sky—in years now.

  “Careful with your language, vassal,” the demigod said. “To name it an affliction implies a curse. My brother, your master, is blessed. He sees as a god sees.”

  “Forgive me, great one.” Septimus was already on his knees, head bowed, knowing that the demigod could see his supplication clearly in the pitch darkness. “I use only the words my master uses.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Septimus. Stand. You are fearful, and it is affecting your judgement. I will do you no harm. Do you not know me?”

  “No, great lord.” This was true. The slave could never tell the difference in the demigods’ voices. Each one spoke like a predator cat’s low snarls. Only his master sounded different, an edge of softness rounding out the lion-like growls. He knew this recognition was due to familiarity, rather than any true difference in the master’s tone, but it never helped in telling the others apart. “I might guess if told to do so.”

  There was the sound of the demigod shifting his stance, and the accompanying whisper of his clothing. “Indulge me.”

  “I believe you are Lord Cyrion.”

  Another pause. “How did you know, vassal?”

  “Because you laughed, lord.”

  In the silence that followed those words, even in the darkness, Septimus was certain the demigod was smiling.

  “Tell me,” the Astartes finally spoke, “have the others come today?”

  The slave swallowed. “Lord Uzas was here three hours ago, Lord Cyrion.”

  “I imagine that was unpleasant.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “What did my beloved brother Uzas do when he came?” The edge of sarcasm in Cyrion’s voice was unmistakable.

  “He listened to the master’s words, but said none of his own.” Septimus recalled the chill in the blackness as he stood in the hallway with Uzas, hearing the demigod breathe in harsh grunts, listening to the thrum of his primed battle armour. “He wore his war-plate, lord. I do not know why.”

  “That’s no mystery,” Cyrion replied. “Your master is still in his own war armour. The latest ‘affliction’ took hold while we were embattled, and to remove the armour would risk waking him from the vision.”

  “I do not understand, lord.”

  “Don’t you? Think, Septimus. You can hear my brother’s cries now, but they are muffled, filtered through his helm’s speakers and further constrained by the metal of his cell. But if one wished to hear him with a degree of clarity… He is screaming his prophecies into the vox-network. Everyone wearing their armour can hear him crying out across the communication frequencies.”

  The thought made Septimus’ blood run cold. The ship’s demigod crew, hearing his master cry out in agony for hours on end. His skin prickled as if stroked by the darkness. This discomfort—was it jealousy? Helplessness? Septimus wasn’t sure.

  “What is he saying, lord? What does my master dream?”

  Cyrion res
ted his palm against the door again, and his voice was devoid of the humour he’d hinted at before.

  “He dreams what our primarch dreamed,” the Astartes said in a low tone. “Of sacrifice and battle. Of war without end.”

  Cyrion was not entirely correct.

  He spoke with the assurance of knowledge, for he was all too experienced with his brother’s visions. Yet this time, a new facet was threaded through the stricken warrior’s prophecies. This came to light some nine hours later when, at last, the door opened.

  The demigod staggered into the hallway, fully armoured, leaning against the opposite wall of the corridor. His muscles were like cables of fire around molten bones, but the pain wasn’t the worst part. He could manage pain, and had done so countless times before. It was the weakness. The vulnerability. These things unnerved him, made him bare his teeth in a feral snarl at the sheer unfamiliarity of the sensation.

  Movement. The god’s son sensed movement to his left. Still pain-blind from the wracking headache brought on by his seizures, he turned his head towards the source of the motion. His ability to smell prey, as enhanced as every sense he possessed, registered familiar scents: the smoky touch of cloying incense, the musk of sweat, and the metallic tang of concealed weaponry.

  “Septimus,” the god’s son spoke. The sound of his own voice was alien; scratchy and whispered even through the helmet’s vox speakers.

  “I am here, master.” The slave’s relief was shattered when he saw how weak his lord was. This was new to them both. “You were lost to us for exactly ninety-one hours and seventeen minutes,” the slave said, apprising his master in the way he always did after the seizures struck.

  “A long time,” the demigod said, drawing himself up to his full height. Septimus watched his master stand tall, and was careful to angle away the dim beam from his lamp pack, casting its weak illumination onto the floor. It still provided enough light to see by, bringing a reassuring gloom to the hallway.