Inferno volume 4, p.1
Inferno!, Volume 4, page 1
CRUSADE & OTHER STORIES
A Getting Started collection by various authors
• DARK IMPERIUM •
Guy Haley
Book one: DARK IMPERIUM
Book two: PLAGUE WAR
• THE HORUSIAN WARS •
John French
Book one: RESURRECTION
Book two: INCARNATION
• VAULTS OF TERRA: •
Chris Wraight
Book one: THE CARRION THRONE
Book two: THE HOLLOW MOUNTAIN
• BLACK LEGION •
Aaron Dembski-Bowden
Book one: THE TALON OF HORUS
Book two: BLACK LEGION
BLACKSTONE FORTRESS
Darius Hinks
BELISARIUS CAWL: THE GREAT WORK
Guy Haley
ISHA’S LAMENT
Thomas Parrott
LORDS OF THE STORM
Edoardo Albert
RITES OF PASSAGE
Mike Brooks
SACROSANCT & OTHER STORIES
A Getting Started collection by various authors
RULERS OF THE DEAD
Josh Reynolds & David Annandale
• HALLOWED KNIGHTS •
Josh Reynolds
Book one: PLAGUE GARDEN
Book two: BLACK PYRAMID
EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS
Josh Reynolds
OVERLORDS OF THE IRON DRAGON
C L Werner
SOUL WARS
Josh Reynolds
CALLIS & TOLL: THE SILVER SHARD
Nick Horth
THIEVES’ PARADISE
Nick Horth
GLOOMSPITE
Andy Clark
WARCRY
An anthology containing stories by various authors
MYTHS & REVENANTS
An anthology containing stories by various authors
GHOULSLAYER
Darius Hinks
BEASTGRAVE
C L Werner
NEFERATA: THE DOMINION OF BONES
David Annandale
UNDERHIVE
Various authors
An anthology featuring the novella Wanted: Dead by Mike Brooks
TERMINAL OVERKILL
Justin D Hill
LOW LIVES
Denny Flowers
KAL JERICO: THE OMNIBUS
Will McDermott and Gordon Rennie
Contains the novels Blood Royal, Cardinal Crimson
and Lasgun Wedding
Also available
INFERNO! VOLUME 1
INFERNO! VOLUME 2
INFERNO! VOLUME 3
by various authors
Contents
Cover
Backlist
Title Page
Introduction
THE KARSHARAT ABOMINATION
THE HAND OF HARROW
A FIRSTBORN EXILE
AT THE SIGN OF THE BRAZEN CLAW: PART 4
The Sorcerer’s Tale
JOURNEY OF THE MAGI
THE SERPENT’S BARGAIN
SALVAGE RITES
GREEN AND GREY
THE FOURFOLD WOUND
I
II
III
IV
WHERE DERE’S DA WARP DERE’S A WAY
THE MANSE OF MIRRORS
BLACKOUT
About the Authors
An Extract from ‘Rites of Passage’
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
INTRODUCTION
INCOMING TRANSMISSION
CLEARANCE LEVEL: VERMILION
AUTHORISED PERSONS ONLY
Greetings, faithful reader.
You have been entrusted with a document of the utmost importance, for the tome you hold in your hands is a repository of arcane knowledge, strange tales and deadly secrets. The dark truths held within this volume have broken many a fragile mind. It is paramount that you tread carefully if you are to retain your sanity…
The new incarnation of Inferno! has been here for over a year already, and has brought us dozens of original and thrilling stories from the worlds of Warhammer. Authors both familiar and new have expanded the archives of the Black Library, bringing us tales of heroism and villainy in the Mortal Realms, of suffering and triumph in the 41st millennium.
This is the biggest Inferno! yet, containing no less than twelve fantastic new stories. Long-time fans of Black Library will recognise veteran authors such as George Mann and Nick Horth, who add their distinctive voices to this anthology for the first time, as well as Guy Haley, who brings us the fourth instalment of his serialised story-within-a-story narrative, ‘At the Sign of the Brazen Claw’. We are also pleased to welcome back authors such as Mike Brooks, Thomas Parrott and Jamie Crisalli to the pages of Inferno! all having made their debuts in previous volumes. Speaking of debuts, Denny Flowers and Eric Gregory, both of whom came to Black Library via Open Submissions, are making their first forays into Inferno!, and we are thrilled to be showcasing their work, along with that of many other brilliant authors.
You may wish to dive straight in and explore these undiscovered worlds, but beware – danger lurks on every page. You will find tales of sorcery and heresy, of greed and pride, and many other sins besides. Stories of greenskin hordes, underhive ne’er-do-wells and those who worship strange and terrible gods will challenge your resolve and perhaps even test your faith.
If you feel you are ready, you may begin your investigation within these hallowed pages. But keep your wits about you, and remember that the information with which you have been entrusted should be guarded with the utmost secrecy.
Knowledge is power. Use it well. And trust no one.
Richard Garton
Submissions Editor, February 2019
END TRANSMISSION
THE KARSHARAT ABOMINATION
George Mann
In George Mann’s Inferno! debut we meet Inquisitor Sabbathiel and her retinue of agents, brought to life here in fiction for the first time as they transition from the glorious technicolour of the comic book page! In a dark and twisted tale, and one that exploits George’s penchant for telling gripping mystery stories, Sabbathiel leads her warband in the investigation of the abandoned Ecclesiarchy outpost on Karsharat and a strange Mechanicus cult.
The sky was bleeding.
The rent in the atmosphere was a thick, purple scar, an angry ribbon across the heavens, casting everything below in its vague, unreal light. Shadows danced in twisting interplay, describing shifting patterns of movement. Figures seemed to emerge threateningly from behind every broken lintel, every stub of tumbledown wall, before dissipating again within moments, nothing more than an unwelcome trick of the eye.
From the heart of the rent, fat droplets tumbled in a drizzly veil, pattering against Bledheim’s cloak, so that his hood and shoulders had become sodden, cumbersome. The red fluid streaked his upturned cheeks, oily and gritty against his skin. The air was filled with its rich, iron tang. It sloshed around his boots with every ponderous step.
Bledheim turned to regard the others, who were trudging along beside him in the slick loam. ‘Anyone would think we weren’t welcome here,’ he said, wiping more of the foul liquid from his mouth with the back of his hand.
Inquisitor Sabbathiel turned to meet his gaze, her features set in a grim smile. Despite the torrent, she looked resplendent in her white and red armour, although her hair, loose and tumbling across her gorget, was now streaked with the greasy fluid. It ran in rivulets down the front of her chestplate, pooling in the graven Inquisition symbol that adorned her lower torso, turning the ceramite pink. ‘Your insights never cease to astound me, Bledheim,’ she said. Next to Sabbathiel, the woman, Mercy, emitted a wet chuckle, regarding him with a half-cocked eyebrow. He’d never liked her, and the wicked smile on her lips did little to alter his opinion.
Bledheim sighed. While he understood the necessity of their visit to this Emperor-forsaken backwater, he longed for it to be over. He didn’t even know why Sabbathiel had brought him here, to Karsharat. Mercy and Brondel – well, they were muscle, pure and simple – but it wasn’t as if Bledheim could do much to help in a fight. He supposed she might be anticipating the need for interrogation – his own particular speciality – but that wasn’t what she’d said back on the ship. To all intents and purposes, it was a straightforward mission: storm the ruins, kill the heretics and put a stop to whatever abominable weapon they were devising in there. He’d heard the same story a dozen times before; more, maybe. This was what they did – what Sabbathiel did – and yet, somehow, this time it felt different.
He supposed he’d find out soon enough. He should have paid more attention during the briefing.
The ruins here had once been an Ecclesiarchy outpost but, from what he’d been able to ascertain, had been abandoned some time during the last century. He hadn’t managed to establish why, and he didn’t suppose it mattered all that much, except that the moon had been left unguarded, and now something else had moved in. A renegade Martian, was the working hypothesis, one that Metik – who, Bledheim noted, had somehow managed to remain behind on the ship – had been tracking for some time. A renegade with a particular interest in experimentation. A renegade that Sabbathiel had decided she wanted destroyed.
Still, that didn’t explain the constant shower of blood or the rent in the sky, which raised the dismaying prospect that there might be other forces at play here, too. Forces that Bledheim didn’t want to begin to consider.
And they still had to find a way into the ruins.
Bledheim peered into the hazy curtain of rain, cupping his hand around his eyes. Ahead of them, the remains of the citadel were a towering silhouette, jagged and half-collapsed. Why would anyone choose to come to this place? As a base of operations, it lacked subtlety – and a roof – but he supposed it might very well be the last place people would look for a wanted outcast. Unless those people were Metik and Sabbathiel, of course.
He saw a shape emerging from the rain, and slipped his other hand inside his cloak, his fingers curling around the grip of his pistol. Then he caught sight of the flickering blue light, drifting lazily over the figure’s head, and he relaxed, coming to a stop to await the arrival of the newcomer.
Moments later, a filthy, mud-encrusted squat emerged from the rainstorm, flanked by a servo-skull that seemed to be guiding his way with its winking diodes.
‘Frecking Krull, but it’s a beautiful day,’ said Brondel, his voice a low, throaty growl. He shook his head, shaking loose a cascade of blood from his matted beard.
‘Brondel,’ said Sabbathiel, her voice level. ‘You’ve found a way in?’
‘Aye,’ said Brondel. ‘There’s a door on the west side. It looks as if the structure there has been partially rebuilt, although you wouldn’t know it until you’re on top of it. Whatever’s holed up in there isn’t going to look kindly on visitors.’ He spat, and then ground the phlegm into the mud with the heel of his boot.
‘All the more reason to get on with it and crack some skulls,’ said Mercy. She, of all of them, looked truly menacing, her exposed face and arms spattered in blood, towering over the diminutive squat. The whirring instruments in her chest – an artificial set of heart and lungs, installed by Metik some years earlier after he found her wounded in the lower levels of a hive city – seemed to grind and sputter noisily in the damp. She was clutching a lasrifle in both hands, and the immense two-handed power sword that she usually wielded was slung in a harness across her back. Bledheim knew that, no matter what she said, she had deeper motives than simply cracking skulls – she’d never truly forgiven Metik for what he’d done to her, bringing her back from the brink of death by riddling her body with machine parts, and perhaps taking down a rogue Martian with a penchant for experimenting on people might go some way to at least temporarily quelling her need for vengeance.
Sabbathiel glanced up at the servo-skull. ‘Fitch?’
‘There are life signs within the structure, ma’am,’ said the servo-skull, its voice mimicking the speech patterns of its erstwhile owner, but laced with a sluggish, technological burr. Bledheim shuddered.
‘How many?’
The servo-skull hesitated, as if pondering the answer. ‘Difficult to ascertain. No fewer than five, no greater than twelve.’
‘That’s quite a range,’ said Bledheim.
‘The readings are in flux,’ said the servo-skull.
‘You can say that again,’ murmured Brondel.
Sabbathiel swung her force stave up and around, indicating the ruined citadel with its tip. ‘Fan out and approach the building slowly. We’ll converge again by the door. They might be watching us from the ruins, waiting for us to get close.’
Bledheim nodded, and then slipped away into the rain, edging ever on towards the melancholy ruins. At least, he decided, they might finally get out of the bloody rain.
The jagged remnants of a toppled stone balustrade served as a perfect vantage point from which Bledheim could safely observe the goings-on at the door. It was huge, an ornate archway that had once clearly served as an entrance to a courtyard but had now been barricaded by heavy plasteel panelling. Strange mechanical contrivances – segmented tubular structures – had been arranged around the frame, and they glistened in the red rain. For the life of him, Bledheim could not fathom their purpose.
The others were gathered before the opening, the servo-skull – he refused to call it ‘Fitch’, despite its apparent history – buzzing over Sabbathiel’s shoulder like some skittish familiar.
‘Stand aside,’ he heard Sabbathiel say, and watched as the others retreated a few steps to give her room. She stepped forwards, the servos in her massive armour grinding as she transferred her weight to her front foot. The armour had been modelled on the Terminator patterns of the Adeptus Astartes, constructed by artificers on the forge world of Pholon, designed to Sabbathiel’s precise size and specification. In truth, it seemed to Bledheim to utterly dwarf her, entombing her in its cavernous depths, but time and again it had saved her life – and his, if he was honest – and, wearing it, she became even more the fearsome figure she was without it.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Mercy. She’d already raised her lasrifle to her shoulder, sighting along its length in anticipation of what the door might open to reveal.
‘I’m going to knock,’ said Sabbathiel. She lurched forwards, curling her gauntleted hand into a fist as she extended her arm. She struck the door with a thunderous report, the plasteel flexing beneath the force of the blow, dislodging a shower of broken masonry from above. It had, however, refused to give.
Sabbathiel stepped back, regarding the pitted door before her. The sound of the blow was still ringing out into the ruins around them, the lament of a discordant bell.
Bledheim turned to see a crow, lifting away from its perch atop the broken wing of a monumental aquila that was half-buried in the mud close by. The bird circled overhead for a moment, ignoring the thrumming rain, before dipping low and disappearing into the depths of the ruins.
‘They know we’re here,’ said Bledheim, dropping down from his perch. ‘And before you say it,’ he added, turning to Mercy, ‘I don’t mean because we knocked. That crow – it was watching us.’
Brondel spat again, frowning in disgust.
‘We’re going to have to blo–’ Sabbathiel stopped suddenly, her sentence giving way to a grunt of surprise. Bledheim turned, pulling his laspistol from his robes, half expecting to see the door had opened and guards were spilling out. Instead, he was greeted with a view of seven snaking mechadendrites, which had erupted from the frame around the door, writhing and thrashing in Sabbathiel’s direction. Two of the appendages had already snared her right arm and leg and were dragging her closer – despite the bulk of her armour – while the others quested for her exposed head. At least, Bledheim supposed, he now understood what the mechanical structures around the door were for.
He raised his pistol and tried to draw a bead on one of the twisting appendages, but they were moving too quickly, and in the driving rain he risked hitting Sabbathiel in the process. Grunting in frustration, he lowered the weapon.
Nearby, Mercy had come to a similar conclusion. Discarding her lasrifle, she dragged the massive sword from its harness, swinging it up and over her shoulders, and ran headlong into the morass of tentacles, screaming like some maniacal primitive. Three swift chopping motions later, and Sabbathiel was free, sparks spitting in the rain as the remnants of the two appendages continued to writhe and fizz amongst the nest of their strange kin.
Brondel glanced over at Bledheim and shrugged.
‘Stand aside, Mercy,’ said Sabbathiel, her voice level. She righted herself, paced back from the door and raised her left arm, so that the nose of her wrist-mounted storm bolter was pointed in the direction of the morass of mechanical limbs.
Mercy, who was attempting to wrestle another mechadendrite into submission, gave a short, dutiful nod, and then released the appendage, stepping slowly away. From her sullen expression, Bledheim could see that she was more than a little disappointed.
There was a sudden eruption of noise and light, originating from Sabbathiel’s outstretched arm, and then the door was buckling inwards, as if folding around the detonating shells, trying to contain their destruction. The mass of tentacles exploded, filling the air with glittering shards that twinkled in the rain as they fell, thudding into the wet ground. A stray shard caught Mercy in the upper arm and she winced, but then, as casually as if plucking an errant hair, she spiked her sword in the ground, dug her fingers into the wound and pulled the bloody fragment free. She examined it for a moment, and then tossed it away, lost in the deluge.
