Ahriman: Sorcerer Read Online Free PDF

turned his head, and saw the other craft in the hangar bay. Gunships, assault boats and shuttles of every mark he knew, and several that he did not, lay on the tarnished bronze deck. Groups of warriors hung close to each craft. Most were Space Marines, but each group was as different as the craft that had brought them. There was a warlord and his entourage, their armour glistening with an oily rainbow sheen, their helms curling with crowns of carved horn. There were others shrouded in grey, standing in a perfect circle, hands resting on the hilts of bared swords. There was a cohort in off-white battleplate, the eyepieces of each warrior weeping silver without ceasing. They all noticed him at last. Eyes turned slowly, a few weapons were touched. He watched questions and pride flicker in the auras of each.
    And well they might look, Ignis thought. They were the leaders, emissaries, and chosen of the warbands that Ahriman had drawn to him or inherited from Amon’s Brotherhood of Dust. Here they waited to see the sorcerer lord who led them all, but Ahriman had left them like dogs waiting outside a feasting hall. Slighted pride and petty superiority foamed close to the surface of the watching warriors. All of them wanted favour, or fortune, or secrets. Ignis could read the desire in them without having to sense it in their thoughts. Each of them wanted to rise higher in their own schemes, but all believed that only the Thousand Sons could ever hope for Ahriman’s true favour. They hated that, as much as they feared the sorcerers and their Rubricae warriors.
    And into this pattern of discord Ignis had walked; a lone figure, a newcomer to the sorcerer lord’s court. He could feel the aggression seeping into the air as his eyes skimmed the vast chamber. Even in his furnace-orange Terminator plate, he was a weakling in their eyes, another lost warrior drawn to the flame of power.
    A hulking warrior in pearl-white battleplate broke from a cluster of identically armoured figures. Ignis watched the warrior out of the corner of his eye. He sighed inwardly. It was always going to be like this, and it was only going to get worse. He had not wanted to come, he really had not.
    The white-armoured warrior was five strides away now. He had a hook-headed sword in his left hand. Symbols spidered the blade. Ignis wondered if the warrior really knew what they meant, or why they did precisely nothing.
    The warrior halted two and seven-eighteenths of its blade length from Ignis. A vein twitched in Ignis’s temple as he noted the imprecision of the distance. He really should not have come.
    ‘I am Augustonar, first blade of the hundred that serve Iconis of the Broken Gate.’
    Ignis let a breath out slowly, but did not look at Augustonar. The warrior tilted his helm, waiting.
    ‘My lord, whose word lives in eternity, wishes to know your name.’
    Ignis flicked his eyes upwards. He could feel familiar minds in the vast structure of the ship, but all of them were distant.
    My brothers, he thought. Then he frowned, sending the black electoos on his face into a dance of reforming patterns. Brothers – he had not used that word in a long time.
    Augustonar’s voice growled out again.
    ‘I am Aug–’
    ‘You are Augustonar, first blade of a mongrel set of traitors, culled from a Legion of credulous scum.’ He looked directly at Augustonar. The warrior’s aura was a red blur of rage. ‘I am sorry – do these facts offend?’
    Augustonar lunged forwards.
    Credence came out of the dark hold of the gunship behind Ignis with a thump of extending pistons. The automaton made the deck in a single stride, weapons arming as it straightened to its full height. The orange lacquer of its body plating gleamed in the stablights. Geometric patterns etched down to the black metal spiralled across its every inch in lines no thicker than a blade edge. It was an echo of the colour and marks on Ignis’s own Terminator armour; not identical, of course, never