The Eye of Ezekiel Read online

  Backlist

  More Warhammer 40,000 stories from Black Library

  The Beast Arises

  1: I AM SLAUGHTER

  2: PREDATOR, PREY

  3: THE EMPEROR EXPECTS

  4: THE LAST WALL

  5: THRONEWORLD

  6: ECHOES OF THE LONG WAR

  7: THE HUNT FOR VULKAN

  8: THE BEAST MUST DIE

  9: WATCHERS IN DEATH

  10: THE LAST SON OF DORN

  11: SHADOW OF ULLANOR

  12: THE BEHEADING

  Space Marine Battles

  WAR OF THE FANG

  A Space Marine Battles book, containing the novella The Hunt for Magnus and the novel Battle of the Fang

  THE WORLD ENGINE

  An Astral Knights novel

  DAMNOS

  An Ultramarines collection

  DAMOCLES

  Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Ultramarines novellas Blood Oath, Broken Sword, Black Leviathan and Hunter’s Snare

  OVERFIEND

  Contains the White Scars, Raven Guard and Salamanders novellas Stormseer, Shadow Captain and Forge Master

  ARMAGEDDON

  Contains the Black Templars novel Helsreach and novella Blood and Fire

  Legends of the Dark Millennium

  ASTRA MILITARUM

  An Astra Militarum collection

  ULTRAMARINES

  An Ultramarines collection

  FARSIGHT

  A Tau Empire novella

  SONS OF CORAX

  A Raven Guard collection

  SPACE WOLVES

  A Space Wolves collection

  Visit blacklibrary.com for the full range of novels, novellas, audio dramas and Quick Reads, along with many other exclusive products

  Contents

  Cover

  Backlist

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Illustrations

  Prelude

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Postlude

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Warhammer 40,000

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  Prelude

  10,000 YEARS AGO

  Gar was the first among them to spot the comet, its bright tail scarring the pre-dawn twilight, and it was he too who first discerned its true nature.

  The others in the hunting party were afraid at first, believing that part of the sun they worshipped had broken off and rained down upon them, a god’s fiery vengeance for transgressions unknown. Gar, as their leader, sought to reassure them, to remind them that this was not the first time objects had fallen from the heavens onto their world, and that such occurrences did not always signify malice. The instant the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon, he spoke to the dozen men and women of his tribe in a halting tongue, a vague approximation of the Gothic he had heard spoken by the last visitors to their ice-bound world.

  ‘We. Go.’

  The downed craft was easy to find, bleeding dark, oily smoke into the pale skies, but reaching it was no simple task. Their world, designated 27-21 by the explorator team that had ‘discovered’ it only a decade before, was at the nadir of its winter; this gave them only a few hours of daylight to reach the crash site and then seek shelter from nocturnal predators that had already thinned their numbers from the twenty who had set out on the hunt. The going was slow. Weeks of uninterrupted snowfall had covered the steppes, and where the snow had drifted it was deeper even than Gar was tall. Each of them was covered from head to foot in thick furs and animal hides, but even these could not keep out the bitter cold entirely, and they shivered constantly as they trudged through the untarnished sea of white.

  The dull sun was at its zenith when Gar’s mate, Rhea, turned to him, her belly swollen with child, her pleading eyes wet with wind-drawn tears. They had travelled far and fast given the conditions but they were still some way from their destination. To be caught in the open after dark was suicide, as was making camp in the middle of the steppes. Gar called the tribe to a halt and said to them one of the other words he had learned.

  ‘Shelter.’

  He had used the firebox every night since it had been given to him by the explorator, but it continued to fascinate Gar. The way the small metal wheel spun and generated a spark, the way the orange flame blossomed into existence; the way flipping down the cap extinguished the flame until the firebox was ready to be used again. Before the coming of the explorators, it might have taken Gar up to an hour to build and ignite a campfire, but now it took only minutes, the pile of wood blazing away at the mouth of the cave not only warming the hunters but serving as a deterrent to the carnivorous beasts that prowled the plains after sundown.

  The firebox was not the only gift the explorators had brought with them. They had given the scattered tribes of 27-21 the gift of language, meaning that communication was no longer characterised by violence and macho posturing. In times past, Gar and his followers would have slaughtered a rival tribe and taken
what they needed from their foe’s corpses, but now, thanks to language, they could talk to each other on a simple level, barter and trade. Conflict was still inevitable at times, but it had become a last resort rather than an opening gambit.

  Gar put his arms around Rhea – given to him by Kai’s people to secure an alliance – and pulled her close, adding his body heat to that of the fire. He put his hand over her stomach and felt movement within before looking into her eyes and exchanging a smile.

  ‘Child,’ said Rhea.

  ‘Child,’ Gar repeated.

  Day broke just as the fire was burning itself out, but the hazy morning light obscured rather than revealed. The smoke of the crash site burned white now, almost invisible against the colourless vista, and more than once the tribe lost their bearings in the whiteout. The snow had ceased falling overnight, allowing them to navigate by the position of the sun, but the landscape was no less monotonous. They had been struggling through the snow for several hours when Irl, the youngest of their number, called out.

  ‘Look. Birds?’ Uncertain that he had used the right word, he looked to Gar for affirmation.

  Gar looked to where the boy was pointing. Huge white-winged scavengers circled in the sky, a dozen or so kilometres from where they stood.

  ‘Birds,’ Gar confirmed, much to Irl’s delight.

  Certain of their direction, they picked up the pace now, at times almost running where the snow only came up to their fur-clad calves. Even Rhea, more than halfway through her pregnancy, kept up with them, though as the day wore on she fell further and further back from the tribe. From time to time Gar would halt and wait for her to catch up, checking that she was all right before rejoining the head of the pack.

  As they drew closer to the crash site, the landscape began to alter. Snow and ice yielded to mud and meltwater, thawed by the intense heat the craft had generated as it sped towards the ground and the fire that had ensued on impact. Huge gouges were ripped into the earth across several miles where the ship had skipped after its initial landing, pieces shearing away from its broken hull after every bounce before it finally came to rest. The tribe no longer needed the carrion birds to show them where the downed craft was; they simply had to follow the trail of debris.

  ‘Here,’ called Byr, the biggest among their number. He was in a deep crater and Gar had to slide down a sheer mud wall to reach him. He was standing over a metal object half submerged in muddy water. Gar had seen similar items before, strapped to the hips of the explorators, but this was far bigger than the ones they carried.

  ‘Gun,’ Gar said.

  Byr looked confused, not understanding the word, and knelt down to pick the thing up. Every sinew in his body strained, every muscle corded as he struggled to lift the heavy metal object from the puddle. It had barely cleared the waterline when the effort became too much for him and he dropped it back to the ground with a splash that soaked both him and Gar. Gar scowled, not only at Byr’s clumsiness but also at the implications of what they had found.

  When the explorators came, they had told the tribes of 27-21 that they were not alone, that others of their kind – ‘humans’ to give them their proper name – lived on other worlds. Some of these worlds were like 27-21, but most were different with huge settlements that housed many people or great facilities where the objects the explorators carried and the craft that flew them from world to world were manufactured. Some of these worlds had never experienced winter, their inhabitants never feeling the bite of cold or surviving through blizzards that lasted a week. Gar liked the sound of these worlds.

  But not all worlds were home to humans, and even those that were weren’t always friendly to them. The explorators had come from the Imperium, a vast collective that sought to unite all of mankind once more and rid the galaxy – for that is what they called the myriad worlds – of anyone and anything that stood against the betterment and expansion of humanity. The explorators had not stayed long, but they shared much with the people of 27-21 and had helped bring them together, if not united them entirely. As they boarded their ships to head back out into the stars in search of other lost human worlds and colonies, they promised that other representatives of the Imperium would visit them soon, bringing with them even greater gifts and knowledge and learning to help 27-21 come to ‘compliance’. Gar had not understood this word and the explorators could not – or would not – explain its meaning. Was this ship here to make good on the explorators’ promise? To help bring 27-21 to compliance? And if so, why did those hoping to help them achieve compliance need to carry guns so big?

  Another thought occurred to Gar. What if this craft was not of the Imperium? What if it was from an enemy of mankind, here to subjugate or even eliminate the population of 27-21?

  ‘Gar!’ Rhea called. ‘Come.’

  Gar scrambled up the muddy slope of the crater, Byr’s strong arms and shoulders providing the extra boost needed to clear the summit. Once out, he offered the big man his hand and Byr half climbed, half fell up the slick gradient, almost pulling his leader back in.

  ‘Gar!’ Rhea called again.

  Gar sprinted to where his mate and the rest of the tribe stood in a circle around a huge dark object at their feet. Seeing their headman approach, they parted to allow him a clear view of what had arrested their collective attention.

  Gar let out a gasp. Clad from head to foot in a black shell was the largest creature he had ever seen, bigger even than the dark-furred steppes predator from which Byr took his name. It was quite clearly dead – blood had leaked from cracks in its armoured hide and formed a vast frozen puddle around it – but it was no less intimidating robbed of life. Cautiously, Gar knelt down to examine the markings on its shell and was surprised to find that they formed a regular pattern, as if they had been painted on rather than occurring in nature. One of the enormous smooth pads that were analogous to the thing’s shoulders appeared to have a stylised picture of a bird upon it, but why?

  ‘Another. There,’ Irl said, pointing further down the muddy trench they found themselves in towards the main bulk of the craft. Another figure with a similar dark shell lay equally dead though there was something different about this one’s shape. Gar got up and shoved his way past the rest of the tribe, who were ambling towards it in a stupor that was part wonder, part fear.

  Gar gasped again. The variation in shape was around the head. The first body’s shell was intact above its shoulders but this one was bereft of protection, revealing what lay within. Features that resembled those of Gar, those of every member of the tribe, every inhabitant of 27-21.

  ‘Human,’ he said. A buzz of chatter passed around the hunting party, confusion and terror beginning to grip them. Gar could not take his eyes from the corpse at his feet, its pale skin, its dead dark eyes, its sheer size. Though the shell was the same colour and bore the same markings as the other dead creature, this one still had its weapon gripped in its hand – the mirror of the one Byr had found in the crater. It had a bunch of feathers attached to its waist, too. Gar was just about to snatch them from its belt when one of the tribe called out.

  ‘Another.’ This was echoed by half a dozen more voices as the hunting party fanned out, carefully picking their way through the debris zone. Gar went to each of them, confirming that the black-armoured giants were all dead. The further they spread out across the crash site, the more bodies they found. Gar stopped counting after thirty. He was about to order the tribe to give up, to begin searching for shelter for the night, when something caught his attention. Carefully picking his way through the shorn metal of the crashed ship, he made his way over to another of the corpses, half buried in mud.

  ‘What?’ Rhea called after him.

  Gar knelt down by the corpse, brushing away the mud from its face and shoulders. ‘Different…’ he replied. Instead of the pale, paper-like flesh of the other slain giants, this one’s flesh was the exact opposite, obsidian and thick
– and its armour was green, the same green as the plains of 27-21 once the winter retreated. Its markings were different too, the head of what looked to be a mythical dragon in place of the bird motif. But the biggest difference was that this giant was not dead.

  It opened its eyes, dark lids blinking rapidly as the burning red orbs beneath grew accustomed to the light. It thrust out a gauntleted hand and gripped Gar tightly around the throat. Rhea screamed.

  ‘Rhea. Go,’ he sputtered.

  ‘No. Fight,’ she said, pulling a bone blade from her furs.

  ‘No, Rhea,’ Gar said, his face turning purple through lack of oxygen. ‘Child.’

  Rhea halted in her tracks. Byr and Irl rushed to her side, each gripping an arm and pulling her away, the blade slipping from her grasp and disappearing into the mud underfoot.

  Gar put both hands around the gauntlet that was choking the life from him and tried to prise the fingers from his throat but to no avail. Just as he felt he was going to lose consciousness and, ultimately, his life, the giant relaxed its grip slightly and pulled Gar in close so that its lips were by his ear. Then, with its dying breath, it uttered three words.

  ‘Prepare for war.’

  And for the next ten thousand years, they did.

  Prologue

  VOSTROYA, 11 YEARS AGO

  Even through the rebreather, Ladbon could smell the chemdog, piss-sodden fur mingling with the chemical tang of Vostroya’s atmosphere. It hadn’t seen him yet, being too concerned with feasting on the rotting remains of what was likely one of its young. Through the acrid mist, Ladbon caught a glimpse of his brother moving into position, ready to take aim and exterminate the predator, but the beast sensed Zerek’s presence too, abandoning its meal and raising its snout to the occluded sky. Catching the older boy’s scent, the dog-like thing raised its hackles, making itself big for the forthcoming hunt. With a burst of speed it put its head down, charging to where Zerek was crouched lining up his shot.

  The sound of clawed feet scrabbling over the rocky wasteland gave way to the report of Zerek’s hunting rifle, but still the thing came at him, blood fountaining from where the round had struck it in the shoulder and failed to fell it.