Daemon World Read online

  A WARHAMMER 40,000 NOVEL

  DAEMON WORLD

  Ben Counter

  (An Undead Scan v1.1)

  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 Emperor’s 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.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Some say that Arguleon Veq came to the world of Torvendis when the Maelstrom was still young—a long time ago, for that jewelled wound in reality is old indeed. Others maintain that his deeds on the planet were within a breath of living memory, and that he fabricated the weight of history to turn his life into a legend. Most, however, agree that it was during the time of the Blind Crusade, when the mindless herds of humankind were united in the Imperium of the Corpse-God, that Veq began his conquest. Perhaps one hundred and fifty centuries passed between that time and the current age, and yet the legacy of Arguleon Veq still covers Torvendis like a thousand scars.

  There are many stories of Arguleon Veq, some of the time before he arrived in the Maelstrom, and some (told by liars) from the time afterwards. But most concern the battle with the Last, the power that held Torvendis in the face of blessed Chaos. For centuries the fight raged, with Arguleon Veq pitting his cunning and devotion to Chaos against the sheer strength and arrogance of the Last, and there were more stories forged in the heat of that contest than could ever be told. But the story that really matters tells of how, with the Last finally defeated and slain, Arguleon Veq claimed Torvendis in the name of the Chaos gods, and turned that world of symbolic and actual power into a place alive with the celebration of Chaos.

  Where once the planet had been barren and drained by the malignancy of the Last, now it was flooded with life that pooled in the scars left by the battle. Barren wastes were covered by teeming oceans. Mountains of shattered rock rose. New moons were drawn into orbit by the magnetism of Torvendis’ newly-released power. The Dark Gods looked on the place with envy and with every new master the landscape changed once again. New layers were added to the strata of history that built up around the planet like skins waiting to be shed.

  This, then, is Torvendis—a world made of legends, delivered to the dread gods of Chaos by a champion of myth and fought over by violence, stealth and deception for more than ten thousand years since. Everywhere are wounds of history that bleed stories, and the sky still rains blood from time to time as if in memory of all those who died, or worse, to win mastery of Torvendis. Every rock and snowflake and drop of blood is a story waiting to happen, and every breath of every living thing is a legend that will one day be unlocked.

  Cold. Bloody cold. Golgoth had scaled these peaks once before, to prove that he was man enough to endure the freezing storms and isolation, and the hallucinations that sometimes rode on the winds that came before a blizzard. It was the initiation that every true warrior of the Emerald Sword tribe had to undergo—and though he would never admit it to anyone, Golgoth had barely survived. Now, even with the massive lupine skin wrapped around him over the layers of padded leather, it felt as if death was trying to drag his bones away. Though he was not much more than twenty winters old he was a big man with ropes of muscle wrapping his arms, and yet the wind cut right through to his soul. Despite his youth, with his wild, uncut hair and beardless face turning to a dark dust of stubble, Golgoth knew he looked like a leader—and he could not let the men who followed him see that the mountains were wearing him down.

  The sky was clear above him, scattered with the sharp cold stars and the smears of nebulae that some said were the bloodstains of the gods. The Canis Mountains, hard and unforgiving, stretched all around him in towering blades of stone. The chasms between them were so dark they looked bottomless. Golgoth had lived his whole life in these peaks, but he had never ventured this far into the interior of the mountain range, and even he was impressed by the sheer majesty of the hostile peaks.

  The Slaughtersong, a bright silver star named after the legendary steed of Arguleon Veq, was high in the sky—a good omen for swift travel and stealth. For a moment Golgoth forgot the throat-rawing cold and saw himself as chieftain, taking the pride of place when the Emerald Sword tribe gathered to contest their strength, and in the heart of the shieldwall when the tribe gathered for war.

  The Emerald Sword had not marched to war as one for many years. The tribe was now broken up and scattered all across the Canis Mountains. Many lived in isolated settlements that had more to do with the neighbouring tribes than with the rest of the Sword. The tribe’s accursed chieftan, Grik, ruled a whole city of the Sword, and took tribute from the rest.

  The elders claimed the tribe had existed for as long as the mountains and the seas, but if the Emerald Sword continued to hide in the mountains while Lady Charybdia ruled to the west, soon the tribe would stagnate and die. It would take someone with true strength to drag the Emerald Sword from the oblivion that threatened it. It would take someone like Golgoth.

  He glanced behind him. He had started out ten days ago with fifty men of the tribe, travelling on foot from his home settlement in the foothills to the east. Now thirty-five warriors remained to follow him up the mountain’s peak, lupine fur billowing around them, axes and swords slung under shields on their backs.

  Fifteen men dead. That was good going for this weather. The Emerald Sword bred them tough, thought Golgoth proudly. They could be so much more. They could be great again.

  Hath stumbled up the blade-like rock to Golgoth’s side. “Kirran’s snapped an ankle,” he said. “Do we leave him?” Hath was older than Golgoth, about as old as a warrior could expect to get at nearly forty winters—his face, picked out by the starlight, was lined and dark with age, his hair and beard sparse and grey. His voice was gravelly and he was short of breath.

  Golgoth looked out across the landscape of shattered rock, like knives stabbing at the sky. Hostile as it was, the way ahead that picked its way from peak to peak was the safest across the mountains and Golgoth’s men would have to make good time if they were to stay on the trail of their quarry. “We can camp in an hour,” he said, pointing to the shelter of an overhang some way down the opposite slope. “If he can’t walk that far, he doesn’t deserve to make it.”

  Hath nodded, and waved the rest of the Emerald Sword warriors forward. Lonn, the youngest, had to be helped up the steeper inclines. If the lad hadn’t been one
of the Touched, Golgoth wouldn’t have taken him, or would have outpaced him and left him for exposure to claim to show the rest of the men how he treated weakness. But Lonn’s opaque eyes, white with whorls of red like blood in milk, could pierce darkness and murk. He was too useful to leave behind.

  The boy was hauled up beside Golgoth, fully a head shorter than the warrior. Golgoth cuffed him round the head.

  “What do you see?” snarled Golgoth.

  Lonn kneeled on the cold stone, peering down at the broken rocks below. The light of the Slaughtersong was cold and sharp, picking out blade-like edges but leaving the cracks and ravines deep black. There was a thin, shrill whistling as the wind blew through the narrow fissures.

  Hath put his grizzled face close to Lonn’s ear. “If we’ve lost them, boy,” he growled, “we’ll be one short with full stomachs come the morning.”

  Lonn said nothing, scanning the hostile landscape. “They passed this way,” he said at length. “They’ve lost two more men.”

  “And the wagons?”

  “They’re still hauling all three. Grik’s sorcerers must be speaking with the rocks.”

  Golgoth was impressed, though he wouldn’t voice it. Grik was no kind of a leader for a tribe which lived on war, but he could be clever. A single caravan, guided by spells that melted a clear path through the rock, travelled once every third winter and brought all the gifts and tributes straight to the chieftain’s tent. In the times before Grik each tribe had sent their tributes separately and many were lost, often deliberately Now, Grik’s sorcerers could ensure that the tribute caravan made its long circuit of the tribe’s settlements in safety and bring back everything that was his due.

  It was all show. What good were spears of dragon’s bone or daemon-wrought skeletons of gold if they filled the coffers of a chieftain who was letting his tribe die?

  “Wait,” said Lonn. “There’s someone close by… A stranger…”

  “Where?” said Hath, crouching down low, trying to see through the darkness.

  Suddenly a tiny point of light flared below them on the far slope, and as Golgoth’s eyes focused he saw it was the light of a flame being applied to a campfire. The fire flickered at the feet of a hooded, robed man, hunched against the cold. Though he was barely visible and the warriors were in deep shadow, the man seemed to see them, stare for a moment, and wave in greeting.

  “Have you heard of a hermit walking these mountains?” Golgoth asked.

  “Here? No. Nothing survives without sorcery here, save us,” replied Hath.

  “Is he one of the men from the caravan?”

  “He looks old,” said Lonn, seeing details of the stranger’s face that no one else could pick out. “Would Grik send old men to guard his tribute?”

  “Unlikely,” said Golgoth, turning to the men gathered behind him. “Varkith, Tarn, with me. The rest of you, head for the overhang and make camp.”

  The Emerald Sword warriors picked their way towards the overhang, and Golgoth struck out for where the hermit was sitting and warming his hands, oblivious to the fact that a night on the Canis Mountains was one more way to die.

  Golgoth had killed old men before. Old women too, and children, and horses and warhounds and just about everything it might cross a man’s mind to kill. He had crept into Kordar’s war host when he was still too young to earn his first kill, and had fought alongside his older tribesmen as fiercely as any thrice-blooded warrior. Eight years later Golgoth had killed Kordar, a contest both men had seen coming ever since the day when the beardless boy had ignored the rules to take his first lives, and taken control of the Bladestone settlement.

  In the raids and skirmishes that followed, Golgoth lost count of how many he killed in dreary, petty bloodlettings. The days of Kordar were gone. Lady Charybdia had subdued everything west of the Canis Mountains. There was nothing left the tribes could fight against, and no leaders who would challenge one another. The times of battle were to become another legend, like the million other legends that hung in the air of Torvendis like the morning mist.

  When Grik was dead and Golgoth led the Emerald Sword, the times of battles would return.

  Yes, he had killed enough old men. He was fully prepared to kill one more.

  This particular old man didn’t look so old up close. His skin was lined but his eyes were bright, as if it was weather and not age that had preyed upon him. His hair was dark and his hands still strong. Golgoth could tell a warrior when he saw one—the hermit’s nose and cheekbone had been broken long ago, his knuckles were lumpen and scarred. He stayed sitting by his small fire as Golgoth approached.

  “Who are you, stranger?” barked Golgoth as he strode up to the hermit, Varkith and Tarn at his side.

  The hermit looked up, smiling faintly. “A traveller making his way across the Canis Mountains, much like yourselves.”

  “No one travels alone here, old man.”

  The hermit poked the fire at his feet, though it gave off little heat. “I am not alone. Torvendis is with me. I can read its ways so well it speaks to me like a friend.”

  Golgoth stepped closer. “Are you armed?”

  “What you see,” replied the hermit, spreading his arms, “is what you get.”

  The hermit did not waver, though Golgoth and his companions were an imposing trio of men. Varkith was nine heads tall, his fists as big as a normal man’s head. Tarn, on the other hand, had once worked for the chieftain Grik before being cast out and joining Golgoth—he had strangled Grik’s enemies in their beds and killed with no more thought than most men gave to drawing breath.

  “A caravan passed this way,” said Golgoth, still unsure what to make of the hermit. “Three wagons and twelve men, led by a sorcerer. What do you know of it?”

  “Eleven men,” replied the hermit. “And harpies.”

  Tarn glanced at Golgoth, and Golgoth knew they were both thinking the same thing. Harpies were feral, daemonic, bat-winged creatures that flocked to the bleakest peaks of the mountains; it took a powerful man indeed to tame them. And the most cunning harpies were only seen if they wanted to be, so even Lonn could miss them if he didn’t know what to look for. Had Grik fathomed that Golgoth would stalk the caravan and bring a true-sighted Touched with him?

  “You were close enough to see all this, and they let you live? I find that difficult to believe, old man.”

  The hermit stood up. He was taller than Golgoth had expected, as tall as he was. “Age has its benefits, stripling. I know things that your people thought were forgotten. Perhaps there is something you could learn before you kill yourself and your tribesmen taking on an enemy you can’t handle.”

  A barely perceptible gesture from Golgoth kept Varkith from tearing the hermit’s head from his shoulders. It was some time since anyone had spoken to Golgoth like that, and longer still since they had done so and remained unscathed. But Golgoth knew he could kill this man at any time, whether with his own hands or through the two warriors beside him. But anyone surviving to reach old age in the Canis Mountains was rare enough, and one who could spy on one of Grik’s tribute caravans with impunity was simply impossible.

  Golgoth was curious. So the old man lived, for the time being.

  The flicker of a flame caught Golgoth’s eye. Some distance away his warriors were making camp and setting a fire of their own—Golgoth would have to join them soon if he was to get any rest at all before dawn. It was another five days’ journey before they got to the Snake’s Throat, a deep pass that marked the only path around the daemon-infested lower foothills on the other side of the Canis Mountains. They needed to stay tight and focused—an old vagrant shouldn’t be allowed to take their minds off the mission.

  “This man,” the hermit was saying as he looked first at Tarn and then at Varkith, “is a killer and nothing more. And this one is an animal with a human face, which I see you have trained well. But you… you could learn.”

  The hermit held up a hand. There was light dancing around his fingertips, pal
e and blue-white. As Golgoth watched the fire flowed up and turned in on itself like a knot, forming a sigil like a snake tied into a figure of eight and swallowing its own tail. Golgoth watched, mesmerised, as the flame flaked away in tiny silver sparks, each one dancing in its own intricate pattern, leaving trails of light in the air that weaved into a glowing tapestry.

  “You have thirty-five men, Golgoth. Grik has half a tribe at his side, sorcerers and daemons. If you face him as you are, you will die. But there are things I could teach you, and if you learn, you might just survive.”

  The tapestry of light coalesced into an image—a barbarian with axe in hand, surely Golgoth, striding through the knee-deep remains of his enemies, beneath the cured skins of the chieftain’s tent. Then, suddenly, the image dissolved into the night, and left only the hermit’s face, suddenly serious.

  Not a hermit. A sorcerer? A Touched? Or something else?

  “My name is Kron,” said the old man. “When the dawn comes, we can begin.”

  It was a risk, Golgoth knew that. But then again, it had been a risk to sneak into battle when his beard had yet to grow, and to challenge Kordar—but he had blooded himself a hundred times over since then and still wore Kordar’s jawbone on his belt. There was something about Kron that Golgoth couldn’t shake out of his head—his every word was afire with conviction, and it seemed that Golgoth had waited a lifetime to meet someone who could speak to him without fear. In any case, he told himself, he needed someone who knew these mountains, and he had lost enough men so that he could make space around the fire for one more.

  Golgoth led Tarn, Varkith and the old man towards the warriors’ camp, imagining himself wading through the corpses of Grik’s lackeys, feeling a new determination to make the hermit’s illusion become real.

  It never occurred to him to ask how the old man had known his name.