A WARHAMMER 40,000 OMNIBUS
EISENHORN
DAN ABNETT
A Black Library Publication
Xenos and Malleus copyright © 2001, Games Workshop Ltd.
Hereticus copyright © 2002, Games Workshop Ltd.
Missing in Action first published in Inferno! magazine,
copyright © 2001, Games Workshop Ltd. Backcloth for a Crown Additional
first published in Inferno! magazine, copyright ® 2002, Games Workshop Ltd.
This omnibus edition published in Great Britain in 2004 by
BL Publishing,
Games Workshop Ltd.,
Willow Road , Nottingham ,
NG7 2WS, UK .
10 98765432
Cover illustration by Clint Langley, based on original artwork by Adrian Smith.
Black Library, the Black Library logo, Black Flame, BL Publishing, Games Workshop, the
Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and
images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop
Ltd 2000-2004, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All
rights reserved.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN13: 978 1 84416 156 0 ISBN10: 1 84416 156 0
Distributed in the US by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas , New York , NY 10020 , US .
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque, Surrey , UK .
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
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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 Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. 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 Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered 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 Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.
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 are the tales of those times.
Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has
been forgotten, never to be re-learned. 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.
Contents
Introduction 8
Xenos 11
Missing in Action 249
Malleus 269
Backcloth for a Crown Additional 511
Hereticus 531
Introduction
Once, when asked where he got his ideas, David Mamet replied, 'I think of them'. In a similar vein, when asked where she got her energy from, my daughter Lily answered, 4Voolworths.' Ba-dum tish!
Rather less quick-witted than either of them, I regularly struggle when I get asked about ideas and their origins, and usually come up with some old cobblers about 'sometimes, if I'm on a train, things just occur to me…' or 'you never know when an idea's going to hit you…'
Because you don't. Owning, as I do, a mind as reliable and watertight as the average game of Ker-Plunk!, I have learned to become something of a note-taker. I jot stuff down, anything, everything, as it occurs to me – yes, on trains, or planes, or sofas, or seesaws, or the queue at Tesco – so I don't lose it. I use notebooks, old envelopes, Post-its, the backs of shopping lists, the foreheads of passing children, whatever's to hand. Then, when I actually need an idea, professionally speaking, I rifle through this scrap-head resource and eventually come up with something that makes me go 'Oh, yeah, that'd work.' Except, of course, for the occasions when I find something that makes me go, 'What is that? A "B"? What's that word? Did I write this?'
So I'm delighted to be able to say that in the case of Eisenhorn (which is the umbrella title we've given to the cycle of novels and linked short stories collected in this spiffy volume), I know exactly where the idea came from. Not me, that's where.
There is a rather gorgeous painting that many of you, I'm sure, will be familiar with. It's called Inquisitor Tannenberg, it's by John Blanche, and it has been reproduced in various places, including the Incjuis Extermi-natus. Know the one? Guy with a scalp full of cables, a black fur coat, a
double-headed eagle familiar on his shoulder, a gold-chased bolt pistol in his hand? Yes, it's is good, isn't it?
I'd been working for the Black Library for a few years, producing a variety of things, most notably the Gaunt's Ghosts novels. So the grim nightmare of the far future, where there is only war and the galaxy's alight and everyone's got a headache, was pretty much my thing. The editors kept me fed with all the latest fluff and hot new supplements, just to keep me in the loop. And one day, they sent me this pile of photocopies: sketches, paste-ups, notes. There was going to be, they told me, a new game called Inquisitor, and they were so jazzed by the concepts and ideas coming out of the game's development, they decided to send me all the stuff, hush-hush, in the hope that it might inspire me, Gaunt-wise.
As soon as I opened the package and started leafing through, I could see what they meant. This was a rich seam indeed, full of wonderful baroque material. Among the pages, along with a number of other very fine pictures, was a copy of John Blanche's painting. And that was it. I picked up the phone, called Black Library and said, 'Can I please write about this?' Even though, truth be told, at that stage I didn't know exactly what 'this' was.
They said yes (I think they sensed the enthusiasm in my voice). The idea was that if I could write the novel quickly enough, it could come out AT THE SAME TIME as the game launch, and everyone would look big and clever, like it had been planned that way all along.
I visited the Studio, and got great help and advice from the game developers, particularly Gav Thorpe. Then I got to work.
I think what inspired me about John's painting was the aristocratic clothing: the rich black velvet of the sleeves, the engraved gold of the elegant weapon. This wasn't about the battlefield, the front-line of mud and gas and behemoth engines. This was a glimpse behind the lines at the internal complexity of the Imperium. It offered a chance to explore what might be called the 'domestic' side of the Warhammer 40,000 universe: the daily, non-military, life – at work, at worship, at rest, at court, at slum-level. A chance to visit worlds that were not levelled by war, and see how the billions of Imperial citizens lived.
And also to find out what evils stalked them, even in the shadows of their own hive cities.
The novel turned into a trilogy that charts the career of a man. Other stories, two of which are collected here, lace into that trilogy and, for those who are interested, the exploits of several of these characters continue in the Ravenor novels that are my current concern.
John Blanche's images have always had such a profound influence on the growth of the Warhammer 40,000 universe's unique flavour, I'm proud to acknowledge that painting as the inspirational source of Eisen-horn. Everywhere you look, his spiky, gothic, ornate visions inform the game, and I'd like to think you can find a hint of them permeating this collection. So, individual dedications notwithstanding, this collected volume is respectfully dedicated to Mr John Blanche.
