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Backlist

More tales of the Astra Militarum from Black Library

CADIA STANDS
Justin D Hill

CADIAN HONOUR
Justin D Hill

HONOURBOUND
Rachel Harrison

STEEL DAEMON
Ian St. Martin

SHADOWSWORD
Guy Haley

BANEBLADE
Guy Haley

YARRICK
An omnibus edition of the novels Imperial Creed, The Pyres of Armageddon, the novella Chains of Golgotha and several short stories by David Annandale

THE FOUNDING
An omnibus edition of the novels First and Only, Ghostmaker and Necropolis by Dan Abnett

More Warhammer 40,000 from Black Library

• DAWN OF FIRE •
Book 1: AVENGING SON
Guy Haley
Book 2: THE GATE OF BONES
Andy Clark

INDOMITUS
Gav Thorpe

• DARK IMPERIUM •
Guy Haley
Book 1: DARK IMPERIUM
Book 2: PLAGUE WAR
Book 3: GODBLIGHT

BELISARIUS CAWL: THE GREAT WORK
Guy Haley

• WATCHERS OF THE THRONE •
Chris Wraight
Book 1: THE EMPEROR’S LEGION
Book 2: THE REGENT’S SHADOW

Warhammer 40,000

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 might of His inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.

Yet, He is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so that His may continue to burn.

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. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.

This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion.

There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

Prologue

PROLOGUE

AFTERWARDS

I

Queues of warp-transports stretched out for hundreds of miles in the skies above Malouri, files of rusting steel freight ships chained nose to tail like the long mukaali caravans that trailed between underground hab-domes on desert worlds such as Goru-Prime.

Each shipmaster waited for their assigned turn to unload their cargo of war materiel, in fulfilment of hereditary treaties and planetary tithes. Failure could bring swift retribution upon their worlds. A purging crusade. A mob of frateris militia. A precision warhead taking out the upper mile of a hive, allowing a new, more compliant elite to be formed with Munitorum approval. But as the queues of warp-craft grew longer and the wait stretched out, the crews of each ship were faced with a terrible choice.

Some dumped their cargos and turned rogue, fleeing into the black rather than face justice at home. Some abandoned ship. The dutiful starved to death, their ghost-ships hanging in space until gravity slowly tugged them down into a fiery death.