The Crimson King (The Horus Heresy Book 44) by Graham McNeill

Author:Graham McNeill [McNeill, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2017-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Osiris Panthea

A vast and terrible thing

Find him

The others hated the Black Ship, but the sepulchral compartments within the Osiris Panthea’s void-dark hull were a blessed relief to Hathor Maat. The layered walls of cold-forged iron and null-carbon dulled his connection to the Great Ocean, calming the sedition of his flesh.

Thus far, his Pavoni artes were keeping the mutiny in check, but when it became impossible to conceal… what then?

In response to such careless thoughts, his hands stirred with motion. He slammed them against an iron bulkhead hard enough to buckle the metal. He’d broken their bones and filled his gauntlets with blood a hundred times over. It didn’t make any difference; they always healed, treacherously remaking themselves with milky eyes, crooked teeth or suckered tongues.

For now they remained the hands of Hathor Maat, but who knew how long that would last? And how long did he have before their rebellion spread to the rest of his anatomy?

Not long, but maybe just long enough.

This deep in the Black Ship, the wards graven into its walls and deck were brutally direct. None so potent as to keep a sorcerer of the Thousand Sons from his powers, but enough to contain the vessel’s psychic misery.

This ventral transitway ran arrow-straight for a kilometre, its length partially lit with stuttering lumen strips. Warded cells were sealed with roller shutters on either side, bearing the ship’s living cargo of witches, mutants and warlocks. Tolbek wanted to vent them all into the void, but Ahriman believed a use might yet be found for them.

Of course, Ahriman’s star had fallen since the debacle on the prison orbital. Dozens of their cabal were dead and all they had to show for it was a remembrancer of only fractional power. The primarch’s scribe remained lost, and Ahriman had even managed to lose his former neophyte to the Wolves.

The Chief Librarian was seldom given to outbursts of fury, but he had raged for days following their silent escape aboard the Black Ship. He had been so utterly certain one of the shards they sought was within Kamiti Sona.

Sequestered with Aforgomon and the Book of Magnus these last four days, Ahriman sought to divine where they would sail next. And while the cabal waited, Hathor Maat’s flesh plotted against him.

He followed the transitway, marking the angular cyphers chalked on the cell shutters. Words held power, a fact well known to the Silent Sisterhood, hence the use of primitive pictographics to designate threat levels, psy-grades, current occupation levels and projected survival rates.

Halfway along its length, Hathor Maat came to a battered roller shutter upon which were sketched the precise combination of symbols he sought, an arrangement indicating this hold contained dangerous mutants. He rose to the fourth enumeration, spotting fresh-cut sigils at the bottom corner of the door, all but obscured by the lip of the shutter runners.

‘Thothmes,’ he said, intrigued.

He tested the chain mechanism, and wasn’t surprised when the shutter clattered upwards. A wave of psychic pain gusted out, and Hathor Maat recoiled at the fetor of human waste and lunacy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.