fight.’
‘What about our great conveyors? Or our kin?’
‘Take them with us,’ Barsabbas said. He did not relish their slaughter. But he needed their diversion, and twenty thousand warriors alone would not be enough, especially with plague slowly but steadily spreading through the camp. It would be a sacrifice, but a necessary one.
THERE HAD BEEN a time when the Cauldron Born had been many different ships. There had been a collision of abandoned ghost drifters that had welded the superstructure together by the grinding pressure of mega‐tonnes. Gradually, the hulk grew larger, gathering a gravitational pull by virtue of its fattening girth.
Drifting into the Eye of Terror – that legend‐haunted region of space – the space hulk began to take form. Daemons and malevolent spirits of the Eye found a home in its cavernous catacombs. There it drifted, a shapeless wreck forced into perpetual motion, gathering size like a ghosting ball of dust.
It was eight thousand years before Gammadin found and tamed this vessel, grafting his own flesh tissue into the drifter’s heart and binding it with Chaos witchcraft. From there, the ship grew organically, shaping itself to Gammadin’s will. Flesh cauliflowered over the skeletal metal and fused with the dormant engines. It became a living creature, long and lithe. Its daemon spirit made it receptive to the warp, a conduit of energy.
A sacred place to open the warp to the material plane.
96
IT WOULD TAKE many days for the temple to be prepared for summoning.
First, the temple would need to be swept and cleaned, the wards redrawn and rechecked. Teams of menial slaves climbed scaffolds, using their bare hands and feet to scale sixty metres on yielding wooden supports. The walls were scrubbed clean of psychic residue.
Working vigorously, the slaves did not look at Muhr as he entered the chamber. They did not even dare to acknowledge him. The witch ghosted up the dais’s steps and across its marble surface. Set in the centre was a bowl filled with mandrake roots in fresh blood, drowning like swollen dolls. When the warp rift was invoked, the offering would draw daemons like a droplet of blood drew sharks. Every daemon had their own preference.
Yetsugei would only answer to a summons of blood and mandrake. Even the slightest change in offerings could result in unwanted visitations.
Muhr cupped the bowl in his hands and began to chant. He was not meant to be here and he rushed the words, almost stumbling over the syllables in his haste.
The bowl contained three large mandrake roots, the roots resembling pudgy human limbs and torsos, sitting in a thin pool of blood from a suffering human. It was a very specific ingredient that could lure many minor warp denizens. This blood had belonged to a slave called Sufjan, or so he had been told. The slave had apparently died an insufferable sort of demise.
Muhr finished his chant and drew the crystal shard. The tiny figure inside, like a painted doll, did not stir. Muhr threw the gem into the bowl. It hit the surface with a guilty plop, before sinking to the bottom.
Hiding his intentions behind an air of solemnity, Muhr descended from the platform, nodding with satisfaction.
97
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SABTAH PICKED HIS way through the armoury, shifting apart a quagmire of discarded weaponry. Kicking aside a tower shield, Captain Hazareth stood in agitation, waiting for Sabtah to speak.
‘What do you mean, betrayal? Hazareth asked finally.
‘Muhr has too much at stake to be undone by this summoning. He will do something to prevent its execution. It’s only logical,’ Sabtah replied.
Sabtah watched Hazareth’s reaction carefully. The captain continued to make his way down the vault, pushing over another shelf of weapons as if to dispel some nervous energy.
A wave of short stabbing swords and daggers spilled onto the ground. Hazareth picked through the mess thoughtfully before giving Sabtah a solemn, appraising look.
‘What does he stand to gain?’
Sabtah knew the captain had a right to be curious. Feared and accursed, Hazareth was considered neutral. He supported neither Muhr, Sabtah nor the minor factions that struggled for power. Hazareth was the consummate warrior and he cared not for Chapter politics. But Sabtah trusted Hazareth. He knew that the captain valued martial capacity above all else, and Muhr’s betrayal would be a direct impediment to the combat abilities of the Chapter. This argument was the only way to get Hazareth on his side.
‘Muhr has always advocated a patron. First it was Abaddon, two centuries ago. Muhr had suggested to Gammadin that we pledge our allegiance