Iron Warriors - The Omnibus by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill [McNeill, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Book 2

ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

THE MAN WAS too weak to scream as Obax Zakayo picked him up by the ankle and tossed him into the wide fanged jaws of the furnace. None of the other slaves looked up at this fresh atrocity. None dared to. The wrath of Obax Zakayo was a capricious thing; unpredictable and random and no-one in this sweltering hell could be counted safe from his spite.

The murderous giant took a lumbering step through the orange-lit nightmare of the forge temple, bellowed commands laced with grating static booming from the vox-amp built into his burnished iron shoulder guard. Yellow and black chevrons edged the plates of his power armour and hissing pipes wheezed from every joint, leaking stinking black fluids and venting puffs of steam with every step. He carried a screaming axe, its edge toothed and brutal, and a crackling energy whip writhed on the end of a mechanised claw attached to his back.

Billowing clouds of steam and exhaust gasses filled the forge, shot through with streaks of bright flames. Fat orange sparks flew from vast grinding machines and rivers of lava-hot metal streamed from colossal cauldrons - each larger than a titan's head - into grooved weapon moulds. Monstrous, debased creatures in vulcanised rubber masks with rounded glass eye sockets and ribbed piping running into tanks carried on their backs cracked barbed whips.

They lurched with a twisted, mutated gait and gurgled monotone commands to the hundreds of slaves that filled the screaming forge.

That such malnourished, wretched specimens of humanity could still live and work in such a terrible place was testament to the indomitable spirit that had sustained them in the time since their capture. None amongst them knew how long it had been since they had been dragged in chains from the proud defence of an Imperial citadel to this nightmare world. A world where a black sun beat down from a sky that burned a retina-searing white and from which smoky black threads poured into a cyclopean city of such insane proportions that men had been driven mad just by gazing upon its impossible geometries for too long.

Some three thousand men had been brought to this world, called Medrengard by its inhabitants, though less than a quarter of that number still lived. Whipped, beaten and fed barely enough to survive, their incarceration was little more than a slowly enacted death sentence. The grinning face at the end of the forge's nave roared and seethed, filling the air with a screeching howl of fury. Here, an incarcerated daemon's immaterial energies drove the ceaseless hammering of giant pistons while its anger heated the furnaces with the power of a star. Golden wards carved into the floor bound the daemon to its fate, and its red eyes blazed above the forge, driving men to madness and murder.

But such was a small price, and gladly paid by the masters of the forge. A hundred slaves or more died every day, but the Iron Warriors cared not.

Where a hundred died, a thousand more would be brought to work until death claimed them as well.

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