Chapters (37)
- Cover
- Backlist
- The Horus Heresy: Siege of Terra
- Dramatis Personae
- PART ONE
- The Warp
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- PART TWO
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- The Warp
- PART THREE
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- The Warp
- Afterword
- Special Thanks
- About the Author
- An Extract from ‘The Buried Dagger’
- A Black Library Publication
The Siege of Terra is not just a battle that happens with guns and swords; it is a battle that resonates across dimensions. It’s not just a final battle between the Emperor’s loyal sons and those that turned against him. It’s the story of Chaos trying to swallow mankind. When Horus meets the Emperor blade to blade, it’s a battle that has a huge symbolic significance in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It matters not just because of who is involved, but because of what it means. And it means everything.
This sense of mythic weight was something I thought about a lot in the lead up to writing The Solar War, and was something that the Siege of Terra writers spent a long time talking about amongst ourselves. There were two battles going on in the Siege: the first is a battle in the warp, a battle of symbolism, and magic, and myth; and another battle going on just this side of the shadows, a battle of blood and steel. These two sides of the battle needed to be shown right from the beginning of the Siege, not only because it is the reason the whole thing was happening, but also because it makes clear what is at stake – not the Imperium, not the Emperor or Terra, but humanity, body and soul.
This cosmic conflict was something so important, that I decided to open The Solar War, and therefore the whole Siege of Terra series, with Horus and the Chaos gods confronting the Emperor in the warp.
“The darkness becomes a forest, dark trunks reaching to an untouchable sky, roots crawling out and down into the abyss beneath. The man on the chair is sitting on the snow-covered ground, a fire burning before Him. A shadow moves out of the dark between the trees. It is huge, sable-furred and silver-eyed. It drags its shadow with it as it comes forwards. It pauses on the edge of the light.”
In this scene, and the scenes in the warp that punctuate the book, both Horus and the Emperor are shifted into symbolic figures. The Emperor is deliberately shown as a normal man. He is not a figure in golden armour, but a human sat on a throne. He is every person at this moment, a fact that is underlined as we see flickers of other views of him.