Legends of the Dark Millennium: Sons of Corax by George Mann

Author:George Mann [Mann, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The Black Library
Published: 2015-09-25T11:04:26+00:00

Koryn

From orbit the planet appeared to be festooned with gaudy ribbons of orange and gold. They crisscrossed its pallid grey surface, flickering and rippling like shreds of tattered fabric in the wind.

The sight stirred ancient memories in Shadow Captain Koryn, recollections of a time before his indoctrination into the Raven Guard, of primitive rituals enacted in the wooded glades of Kiavahr. There, entwined around the branches, the ribbons had symbolised life and renewal, the blossoming of the forest. Here, in contrast, they meant only death. For these were not ribbons but funnels of flame, each a hundred miles long; splashes of searing plasma exploding from barrage shells; burning outposts and detonating warheads.

Such things as these now punctuated Koryn’s existence. He barely remembered that earlier life on his distant home world, although he clung to what memories of it he still retained. Kiavahr was the womb from whence he was born, and echoes of it still lived on in his unregimented thoughts.

The sons of Corax, however, had descended from the stars and granted him a new life. A life beyond the forest, its rituals and the daily toil for survival. They had instilled in him not only the physiological enhancements that had altered his body and sharpened his mind, but also a deep sense of purpose. Now, Koryn lived that life in devotion to the Emperor, smiting the Imperium’s enemies in His name.

A thousand battles had been fought and won in the intervening centuries. Consequently, Koryn’s time on Kiavahr seemed like an eternity ago. To a human, of course, it was. Not so to a Space Marine.

Koryn clutched a data-slate in his gauntleted fist, studying the planet’s ravaged surface as his drop-pod plummeted towards it, the thin shell trembling around him as it gathered speed and momentum. It was the planet, he knew, that was making him think of his old home.

He braced himself in his harness as the drop-pod struck the upper atmosphere and the howl of entry drowned out all other sound. The noise became a tortured, continuous scream, the whine of plasteel rending the air asunder. It was as if the planet was wailing in anger or pain, protesting as its boundaries were irrevocably breached.

Fortane’s World had already been breached, though, Koryn thought. This was a world consumed by death.

The Imperial forces here had dwindled in the face of overwhelming numbers and encroaching plague. Below, on the planet’s surface, the Brazen Minotaurs were locked in a deadly siege, a last ditch attempt to stem the spread of the Sickening. Koryn knew they were doomed to failure, just as they had been on Kasharat. Given time, he had no doubt their bull-headed tactics and sheer, brutal determination would prove successful; that no bastion wall, no matter how thick, could prevent Captain Daed and his brothers from attaining their goal. But time was a commodity they didn’t have, and the head-on tactics of the Brazen Minotaurs would soon come to nothing. All the enemy had to do was delay, and

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