![]() They wore the simple robes of pilgrims, the clothing common to the endless migrations of penitents that came to Orilan to visit the tombs of the Faded Lords but no pilgrims carried the combat webbing or weapons holsters that they wore underneath. Acrid chemical smoke pooled around their ankles as they ran, the rough winds across the landing fields catching the hems of their cloaks and flapping them back like sails. He stood first, his mouth moving even though his voice was lost to her. The concussion blew down the crowd like felling timbers, and for long moments her hearing was replaced by a low, hissing whistle. She grabbed her companion's cloak and pulled him into the lee of a blockhouse just seconds before the ship crashed. Something inside broke with a cough of grey vapour, and the craft dipped sharply toward the ground. She watched it struggling to gain height the cargo pods clustered beneath dangerously overloaded with refugees. ![]() Hot exhaust fumes threw a sudden curtain of spent-fuel stink over them as a transport thundered upward, the spitting engines vibrating and complaining. Dots ducked and wove in the air overhead - perhaps carrion birds, or maybe men and women like the ones she had killed to get the car, humans with newly sprouted wings still wet with amniotic fluid. Building that had stood proud and defiant in the most Imperial manners were now shambolic, tattered things, flayed of stone and bearing their iron ribs to the sky. In the distance she could see where some of the taller hive towers had collapsed, parts of their structure altering on the molecular level, steel skeletons running like melted butter as the changes touched them. He had never once looked back at the city they were leaving behind, not from the moment that they had embarked on their headlong flight. She threw a glance over her shoulder and her companion gave her a frown. They wanted so desperately to live, and yet she knew that to a man they would be dead or dying before sunset. ![]() These screaming, weeping, scrambling hordes were heavy with fear. With the right demonstration of force they could be cowed, but just as quickly they might turn murderous. It was not the first time she had been in the thick of a frightened mass, and she knew the capricious nature of a mob's animal mentality. The two of them ran, boots hammering across the road, shouldering their way through the swarming throng of terrified people. The machine grunted and sighed, the glass in the windows popping as it shifted and changed shape. THEY ABANDONED THE groundcar at the port gate when blood began to drool from the ventilator grilles. 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 arc the talcs of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. 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.īLOOD DEBT Authorʹs note: This story takes place several years before the events of Deus Encarmine and the Third Armageddon War. 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 Emperorʹs will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers arc the Adeptus Astartes. the Space Marines, biocnginecred super‐warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever‐vigilant Inquisition and the tech‐ priests of the Adcptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they arc barely enough to hold off the ever‐present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants ‐ and worse. 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 Impcrium for whom a thousand souls arc sacrificed every day. so that he may never truly die.
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