The Hammer and the Eagle: Icons of Warhammer by Chris Wraight

Author:Chris Wraight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2019-12-06T17:08:48+00:00

FABIUS BILE: PRIMOGENITOR

Josh Reynolds

Exiled into the depths of the Eye of Terror for his dark deeds, former Emperor’s Children Apothecary Fabius is drawn back to the Imperium in search of a secret that could be the key to saving his misbegotten life…

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VEIL OF DARKNESS

Nick Kyme

Introducing

CATO SICARIUS

CAPTAIN, ULTRAMARINES

‘I am the Undying. I am doom incarnate…’

It towered over me, this monster of living metal. It wore a crown with a red gemstone, torcs banded its mechanised arms and an azure pectoral hung around its neck. These were royal trappings. Here I fought a king of the dead, a robotic anachronism of an old and conceited culture, full of darkest anima.

Necrons, they were called. Its regal status only spurred me on.

‘We are the slayers of kings!’ I declared, spitting the words in anger at the gilded monster before me.

We fought alone, the monster and I. None interfered. I had drawn only my sword. For my victory to have any meaning, this was how it had to be. Even terms, its crackling war-scythe matched against my venerable Tempest Blade. But in the end, it was not my sword that was found wanting…

After a savage duel, it cut me deeply. No foe had ever done that before. And with blood filling my mouth, I fell. I, Cato Sicarius, Master of the Watch, Knight Champion of Macragge, Grand Duke of Talassar and High Suzerain of Ultramar, fell.

And as the veil of darkness wrapped around me like a funerary shroud, I heard the monster’s words again…

‘I am doom.’

I came around coughing up amniotic fluid, spraying the inside of the revivification casket. I roared, thundering my fist against the glass, my muscles and nerves suddenly aflame.

‘Release me!’ I spat, half-choking.

Locking clamps around the casket disengaged, admitting me back to the world of the living. I arrived breathing hard, sitting in a half-capsule of briny, viscous liquid and murderously staring down my Apothecary.

‘Welcome back, brother-captain.’

Lathered in gelatinous filth, I scowled. ‘Venatio.’

My Apothecary had the good grace to nod.

He was wearing his full armour-plate, white to identify his vocation as a medic rather than the ubiquitous Ultramarine-blue of our Chapter, but he went without a helmet. An ageing veteran of my command squad, Venatio’s hair was fair, closely cropped, and he had dark green eyes that had seen too much of death.

It was dark in the apothecarion, shadows suggesting the shape of various machines and devices the Chapter medics employed in the service of preserving life. The air reeked of counterseptic and a fine mist clouded the floor. It was clean, cold; a desolate place. How many had come through these halls bloody and broken? How many had arrived and never left? Always too many.

I made to rise but Venatio lifted a gauntleted hand to stop me.

‘Don’t presume you can keep me from climbing out of this casket,’ I warned him.

The hand gesture became placatory. ‘Let me at least run a full bio-scan first.’

Venatio had the device in his other hand and was already conducting his test, so I endured the amniotic filth a little longer.

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