Lupercal's War (The Horus Heresy) Read online

  Further reading from The Horus Heresy

  Book 1 – HORUS RISING

  Dan Abnett

  Book 2 – FALSE GODS

  Graham McNeill

  Book 3 – GALAXY IN FLAMES

  Ben Counter

  Book 4 – THE FLIGHT OF THE EISENSTEIN

  James Swallow

  Book 1 – THE SOLAR WAR

  John French

  Book 2 - THE LOST AND THE DAMNED

  Guy Haley

  Book 3 - THE FIRST WALL

  Gav Thorpe

  Book 4 - SATURNINE

  Dan Abnett

  Book 5 - MORTIS

  John French

  Book 6 - WARHAWK

  Chris Wraight

  ANGRON: SLAVE OF NUCERIA

  Ian St. Martin

  KONRAD CURZE: THE NIGHT HAUNTER

  Guy Haley

  LION EL’JONSON: LORD OF THE FIRST

  David Guymer

  ALPHARIUS: HEAD OF THE HYDRA

  Mike Brooks

  The Horus Heresy Character Series

  VALDOR: BIRTH OF THE IMPERIUM

  Chris Wraight

  LUTHER: FIRST OF THE FALLEN

  Gav Thorpe

  SIGISMUND: THE ETERNAL CRUSADER

  John French

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  The Horus Heresy

  Lupercal’s War

  Introduction

  THE EMPEROR

  The Last Church

  DARK ANGELS

  Savage Weapons

  THE EMPEROR’S CHILDREN

  Imperfect

  IRON WARRIORS

  The Iron Within

  Black Oculus

  WHITE SCARS

  Brotherhood of the Moon

  SPACE WOLVES

  Bjorn: Lone Wolf

  Bloodhowl

  IMPERIAL FISTS

  Champion of Oaths

  NIGHT LORDS

  Child of Night

  BLOOD ANGELS

  Lost Sons

  IRON HANDS

  Immortal Duty

  WORLD EATERS

  After Desh’ea

  ULTRAMARINES

  The Laurel of Defiance

  DEATH GUARD

  Daemonology

  THOUSAND SONS

  Rebirth

  SONS OF HORUS

  Little Horus

  WORD BEARERS

  Child of Chaos

  SALAMANDERS

  Artefacts

  RAVEN GUARD

  The Grey Raven

  ALPHA LEGION

  Liar’s Due

  About the Authors

  A Black Library Publication

  THE HORUS HERESY

  It is a time of legend.

  Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy.

  The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

  The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons. Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.

  First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

  Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.

  Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.

  Horus is a star ascendant, but how much further can a star rise before it falls?

  INTRODUCTION

  Welcome to Lupercal’s War, a tome of fantastic Horus Heresy short stories, handpicked to take you through the epic 54-book series. Each Space Marine Legion is represented within the anthology, showcasing some of their major themes and battles, in tales penned by some of the most talented Black Library authors. In addition, after each Legion’s stories is a small section outlining their Journey through the Heresy. This quick and easy guide offers an alternative way to read through the Horus Heresy series. It is intended for those who wish to follow their favourite Legion’s narrative, from their most deceitful of betrayals to their most glorious of victories, rather than tackle the series as a whole. Though starting at book 1 remains an excellent way to experience the Heresy, for those wanting a different approach, simply follow the chronological reading order here and enjoy!

  THE EMPEROR

  THE LAST CHURCH

  Graham McNeill

  Midnight services had once been crowded at the Church of the Lightning Stone. Fear of the darkness had drawn people in search of sanctuary in a way the daylight could not. For as long as anyone could remember, the dark had been a time of blood, a time when raiders attacked, monstrous engines descended on wings of fire and the violence of the warlike thunder giants was fiercest.

  Uriah Olathaire remembered seeing an army of those giants as it marched to battle, when he had been little more than a child. Though seven decades had passed since then, Uriah could picture them as though it were yesterday: towering brutes who carried swords of caged lightning and were clad in plumed helmets and burnished plate the colour of a winter sunset.

  But most of all, he remembered the terrible magnificence of their awesome, unstoppable power.

  Nations and rulers had been swept away in the dreadful wars these giants made, entire armies drowned in blood as they clashed in battles the likes of which had not been seen since the earliest ages of the world.

  Now the fighting was over, the grand architect of this last world war emerging from the host of toppled despots, ethnarchs and tyrants to stand triumphant on a world made barren by conflict.

  An end to war should have been a wondrous thing, but the thought gave Uriah no comfort as he shuffled along the nave of his empty church. He carried a flickering taper, the small flame wavering in the cold wind sighing through the cracks in the stonework and the ancient timbers of the great doors to the narthex.

  Yes, the midnight service had once been popular, but few now dared come to his church, such was the ridicule and scorn heaped upon them. Changed days from the beginning of the war, when fearful people had sought comfort in his promises of a benign divinity watching over them.

  He held his gnarled claw of a hand around the fragile flame as he made his way towards the altar, fearful that this last illumination would be snuffed out if his concentration slipped even a little bit. Lightning flashed outside, imparting a momentary electric glow to the stained-glass windows of the churc
h. Uriah wondered if any of his last remaining parishioners would brave the storm to pray and sing with him.

  The cold slipped invisibly into his bones like an unwelcome guest and he felt something singular about this night, as though something of great import were happening, but he couldn’t grasp it. He shook off the sensation as he reached the altar and ascended the five steps.

  At the centre of the altar sat a broken timepiece of tarnished bronze with a cracked glass face, and a thick, leather-bound book surrounded by six unlit candles. Uriah carefully applied the taper to each candle, gradually bringing forth a welcome light to the church.

  Aside from the magnificence of the ceiling, the interior of his church was relatively plain and in no way exceptional: a long nave flanked by simple timber pews and which was crossed by a transept that led to a curtained-off chancel. Upper cloisters could be reached via stairs in the north and south transepts, and a wide narthex provided a gallery prior to a visitor entering the church itself.

  As the light grew, Uriah smiled with grim humour as the light shone upon the ebony face of the bronze timepiece. Though the glass face was cracked, the delicate hands were unscathed, fashioned from gold with inlaid mother-of-pearl. The clock’s internal mechanisms were visible through a glass window near its base, toothed cogs that never turned and copper pendulums that never swung.

  Uriah had travelled the globe extensively as a feckless youth, and had stolen the clock from an eccentric craftsman who lived in a silver palace in the mountains of Europa. The palace had been filled with thousands of bizarre timepieces, but it was gone now, destroyed in one of the many battles that swept across the continent as grand armies fought without care for the wondrous things lost in their violent spasms of war.

  Uriah suspected the clock was perhaps the last of its kind, much like his church.

  As he had fled the palace of time, the craftsman had cursed Uriah from a high window, screaming that the clock was counting down to doomsday and would chime when the last days of mankind’s existence were at hand. Uriah had laughed off the man’s ravings and presented the clock to his bemused father as a gift. But after the blood and fire of Gaduaré, Uriah had retrieved the clock from the ruins of his family home and brought it to the church.

  The clock had made no sound since that day, yet Uriah still dreaded hearing its chimes.

  He blew out the taper and placed it in a shallow bowl at the front of the altar and sighed, resting his hand on the soft leather of the book’s cover. As always, the presence of the book was a comfort, and Uriah wondered what was keeping the few faithful that remained in the town below from his doors this night. True, his church stood at the summit of a high, flat-topped mountain that was difficult to climb, but that never usually stopped his dwindling congregation from coming.

  In ages past, the mountain had been the tallest peak upon a storm-lashed island shrouded in mists and linked to the mainland by a sleek bridge of silver, but ancient, apocalyptic wars had boiled away many of the oceans, and the island was now simply a rocky promontory jutting from a land that was said to have once ruled the world.

  In truth, the church’s very isolation was likely all that had allowed it to weather the storm of so-called reason sweeping the globe at the behest of its new master.

  Uriah ran a hand over his hairless scalp, feeling the dry, mottled texture of his skin and the long scar that ran from behind his ear to the nape of his neck. He turned towards the doors of his church as he heard noises from outside: the tramp of feet and the sound of voices.

  ‘About time,’ he said, looking back at the clock and its immobile hands.

  It was two minutes to midnight.

  The grand doors of the narthex opened wide and a cold wind eagerly slipped inside, whipping over the neat rows of pews and disturbing the dusty silk and velvet banners that hung from the upper cloisters. The ever-present rain fell in soaking sheets beyond the doors and a crack of lightning blistered the night sky alongside a peal of thunder.

  Uriah squinted and pulled his silk chasuble around him to keep the cold from his arthritic bones. A hooded figure was silhouetted in the doorway to the narthex, tall and swathed in a long cloak of scarlet. Uriah could see the orange glow of burning brands carried by a host of shadowy figures who stood behind him in the rain. He squinted at these figures, but his aged eyes could make out no detail beyond firelight glittering on metal.

  Displaced mercenaries looking for plunder?

  Or something else entirely…

  The hooded figure stepped into the church and turned to shut the doors behind him. His movements were unhurried and respectful, the doors closed softly and with care.

  ‘Welcome to the Church of the Lightning Stone,’ said Uriah, as the stranger turned towards him. ‘I was about to begin the midnight service. Would you and your friends wish to join me?’

  ‘No,’ said the man, pulling back his hood to reveal a stern, but not unkind face – a remarkably unremarkable face that seemed at odds with his martial bearing. ‘They would not.’

  The man’s skin was leathery and tanned from a life spent outdoors, his hair dark and pulled back into a short scalp-lock.

  ‘That is a shame,’ said Uriah. ‘My midnight service is considered quite popular in these parts. Are you sure they won’t come in?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ repeated the man. ‘They are quite content without.’

  ‘Without what?’ quipped Uriah, and the man smiled.

  ‘It is rare to find a man like you with a sense of humour. I have found that most of your kind are dour and leaden-hearted men.’

  ‘My kind?’

  ‘Priests,’ said the man, almost spitting the word as though its very syllables were a poison to him.

  ‘Then I fear you have met only the wrong kind,’ said Uriah.

  ‘Is there a right kind?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Uriah. ‘Though given the times we live in, it would be hard for any servant of the divine to be of good cheer.’

  ‘Very true,’ said the man as he moved slowly down the aisle, running his hands over the timber of each pew as he passed. Uriah walked stiffly from the altar to approach the man, feeling his pulse quicken as he sensed a tangible threat lurking just beneath the newcomer’s placid exterior, like a rabid dog on a slowly fraying rope.

  This was a man of violence, and though Uriah felt no threat from him, he knew there was something dangerous about him. Uriah fixed a smile and extended his hand, saying, ‘I am Uriah Olathaire, last priest of the Church of the Lightning Stone. Might I have your name?’

  The man smiled and shook his hand. A moment of sublime recognition threatened to surface within Uriah’s mind, but it was gone before he could grasp it.

  ‘My name is not important,’ said the man. ‘But if you wish to call me something, you may call me Revelation.’

  ‘An unusual name for one who professes a dislike of priests.’

  ‘Perhaps, but one that suits my purposes for the time being.’

  ‘And what purpose might that be?’ asked Uriah.

  ‘I wish to talk to you,’ said Revelation. ‘I wish to learn what keeps you here when the world is abandoning beliefs in gods and divinity in the face of the advances of science and reason.’

  The man looked up, past the banners to the incredible ceiling of the church, and Uriah felt the unease that crawled over his flesh recede as the man’s features softened at the sight of the images painted there.

  ‘The great fresco of Isandula.’ said Uriah. ‘A divine work, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘It is quite magnificent,’ agreed the man, ‘but divine? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then you have not looked closely enough,’ answered Uriah, looking up and feeling his heartbeat quicken as it always did when he saw the wondrous fresco completed over a thousand years ago, by the legendary Isandula Verona. ‘Open your heart to its beauty and you wil
l feel the spirit of god move within you.’

  The ceiling was entirely covered in a series of wide panels, each one depicting a different scene: nude figures disporting in a magical garden; an explosion of stars; a battle between a golden knight and a silver dragon; and myriad other scenes of a similarly fantastical nature.

  Despite the passage of centuries and the fitful lighting, the vibrancy of hues, the fictive architecture, the muscular anatomy of the figures, the dynamic motion, the luminous colouration and the haunting expressions of the subjects were as awe-inspiring as they had been on the day Isandula had set down her brush and allowed herself to die.

  ‘And the whole world came running when the fresco was revealed,’ quoted Revelation, his gaze lingering on the panel depicting the knight and the dragon. ‘And the sight of it was enough to reduce all who saw it to stunned silence.’

  ‘You have read your Vastari,’ said Uriah.

  ‘I have,’ agreed Revelation, only reluctantly tearing his gaze from the ceiling. ‘His works are often given to hyperbole, but in this case he was, if anything, understating the impact.’

  ‘You are a student of art?’ asked Uriah.

  ‘I have studied a great many things in my life,’ said Revelation. ‘Art is but one of them.’

  Uriah pointed to the central image of the fresco, that of a wondrous being of light surrounded by a halo of golden machinery.

  ‘Then you cannot argue that this is not a work truly inspired by a higher power.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Revelation. ‘This is a sublime work whether any higher power exists or not. It does not prove the existence of anything. No gods ever created art.’

  ‘In an earlier age, some might have considered such a sentiment blasphemy.’

  ‘Blasphemy,’ said Revelation with a wry smile, ‘is a victimless crime.’

  Despite himself, Uriah laughed. ‘Touché, but surely only an artist moved by the divine could create such beauty?’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Revelation. ‘Tell me, Uriah, have you seen the great cliff sculptures of the Mariana Canyon?’