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  I looked back at Khorg. He was even more horrific now that he was dressed in bits of burnt cretin. He had his heavy stubber raised and I knew he could take on all of House Cawdor pretty much all by himself. I nodded for him to wait by the entrance to the waste pipe hatch and he grunted. I felt like we were starting to bond.

  Then I nodded to Rak. He headed off across the chamber, heading for the statue. He pulled his hood up and muttered nonsense as he went, blending in well with all the other halfwits.

  I headed in the opposite direction, heading towards the chapel’s entrance hall. I had a plan.

  I had borrowed a hooded robe from one of the corpses on the bridge, guessing he was warm enough, and I tried to walk in a religious kind of way, putting holy thoughts into my every step.

  On either side of the main doors there was a massive brazier, much bigger than all the others. Like the smaller ones, they were balanced on thin, crudely welded stands, about three metres tall.

  There were guards at the doors. A few with chainswords and a few with lasguns. All were hidden behind the same ragged, leather masks. Their eyes stared at me through the eyeholes. Even in the smoke they could see I was bigger than I should be. And dripping with corpse water.

  ‘Brother?’ asked one of them. He broke ranks and swaggered over towards me, trying to look impressive.

  I considered a few witty replies and settled on shooting him. The stubber knocked him off his feet and back into the others, scattering weapons and curses across the floor.

  They reached for their guns but I had already fired my next two shots. Both were aimed at the stands that held up the big braziers by the doors.

  I got my angles right. As the braziers fell, fireball crashed into fireball, creating a great wheel of flame and spilling hot fuel onto the panicking congregation below.

  The ungrateful scum started to scream. I had brought them fiery redemption but, as their robes lit up, they suddenly seemed less religious.

  Flames rolled across the dusty, debris-strewn floor, lighting up even more of the zealots.

  The gangers were shooting now, but it was comical. They were blinded by the smoke and mostly on fire.

  I ignored them and strolled casually back towards the ash pipe.

  A few of the gangers ran after me, complaining about something, but Khorg was waiting. He hefted the massive heavy stubber from his back and fired from the hip, spitting a furious barrage of explosive rounds into them. The muzzle flash lit up Khorg’s brutal face but his eyes stayed dead, refusing to catch the light.

  With the zealots all screaming and rushing towards the exit, it was impossible for any more gangers to get inside the chapel and Khorg was quickly mowing down any he could spot.

  Rak emerged from the smoke, still grinning. He had the replica sword gripped in his bony little spider fingers.

  Khorg was still painting the walls with his heavy stubber, so I took the sword from Rak and stashed it beneath my borrowed robes. I would get Khorg’s piece when I hooked up with Thornax and heard his plan for offloading the beast.

  ‘Go!’ I bawled, struggling to be heard over the din of Khorg’s shooting. Then I leapt back into the ash pipe and began wading back through the dead.

  As we headed back up through the badzones it felt like a victory lap. One last tour of the underhive before I shrugged it off forever. Even when I was a child I knew I was set for bigger things. I was not born to die down here. I looked back at Khorg and Rak, hurrying after me down a ventilation shaft, lit up by all the scavvie drumfires. The beast had no glimmer of intelligence in his eyes. The underhive was all he deserved. What could he offer beyond his freakish size? And Rak. His gangly frame was covered in lesions and tumours and most of his lank hair had fallen away, revealing the purple, scaly scalp beneath. He was part human, part vomit. Why should he expect more than this?

  I patted the piece of relic beneath my flak jacket and pictured my future. The Wings of Caliban would lift me out of here. I would buy a palace in the spire, with all the lords and ladies, and I would drink this whole sorry slagheap from my memory. I only had one doubt. I played the message through a bead in my rebreather hood, hearing Thornax’s eager words. I’m still alive. I still have it. Bring Khorg to Druna Gath. We’ll kill the beast. We’ll take his share.

  What if Thornax had died since sending the message? The time code was three days ago. And I had heard nothing since. I shook my head, determined to believe he would be there. This was it. My ticket out.

  Khorg grunted and I looked up to see that we had reached the end of the ventilation shaft. Sprawled beneath us was the infernal landscape of the Druna Gath Smelting Works. The whole complex looked like the inside of a furnace, slag and ash everywhere, heaped in great mountains of smouldering waste around the manufactories and refineries. A couple of corrugated chimneystacks pumped blistering heat fumes across the ash mounds, but most of the place was quiet. Very different from the last time I saw Thornax and we had to fight our way out after the deal turned sour.

  I looked back at the other two. Even Rak seemed to have lost his spark faced by this hellish vision. I waved them on and we tumbled down the smouldering slopes, kicking up clouds of ash as we tried to stay on our feet.

  It was easy enough to reach the furnace. The route was embedded in my mind and I raced on ahead of the others, breaking into an old, abandoned freight hall and stumbling on through the incredible heat.

  The bead in my ear crackled into life before I reached the next door. I halted.

  ‘You made it,’ said Thornax, sounding almost as excited as me. ‘Do you have both pieces?’

  It was so surreal hearing him again I almost laughed. This was not a recorded message. He was alive. I glanced back to check the others wouldn’t hear. ‘Yes,’ I whispered, ‘but what about Khorg?’

  ‘Khorg’s an idiot. There’s no problem with Khorg.’

  I nodded and laughed.

  ‘Come to Beta Twelve Furnace. I’m already there.’

  As I waited for the others to catch up, I studied the schematics of the place on my data-slate. Beta Twelve was minutes away. I was so close now I could hardly breathe.

  ‘No gangers?’ I asked as Khorg and Rak caught up with me.

  Khorg just shook his head, but Rak’s eyes lit up at the chance to bore me.

  ‘Druna Gath ran dry years ago. Itinerants keep a few of the smaller furnaces going, smelting whatever dregs they can find, but the place is pretty much abandoned. House Orlock moved out a long time ago.’

  I ignored him and looked at Khorg, feeling paranoid. ‘You still got it?’

  He patted his chest.

  I nodded and waved at the door leading out of the freight hall. ‘He’s waiting at the furnace where we last saw him.’

  Something flickered in Khorg’s eyes. I remembered that the last time we were here, Khorg got buried alive.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, wondering if even the beast could feel fear.

  He shook his head and barged past me, kicking down the door and striding down the passageway.

  Rak hesitated. ‘My cut?’ he asked, looking terrified. ‘Will I get it once the three pieces are back together?’

  I wondered whether to kill him then or wait. Wait, I decided. There was always a slim chance of trouble getting back and he might still be of use.

  I glared at him and then followed Khorg.

  My heart began to thud as we neared the furnace. I shoved past Khorg and saw its gaping, hellish maw. There were no skavvies around it, but it had clearly been recently stoked. The flames were howling and the passageway was thick with smoke.

  Then I saw him, looming from the shadows like the ghost he should have been, silhouetted by the fire.

  It was Thornax alright. There was no mistaking his hunched, brutal frame.

  ‘I’m still alive. I still have it. Bring Khorg to Druna Gath.�
�

  To my horror, I realised that the message was being relayed out loud. I must have triggered it somehow. The words echoed around the passageway. The part about killing Khorg would come next and I grabbed the data-slate, hammering at the controls, trying to silence it.

  ‘We’ll kill the beast.’

  As the words rang out, I realised they were not coming from the data-slate, but from behind me.

  I turned to see Khorg finish the message.

  ‘We’ll take his share,’ he said, with that same odd glint still in his eyes. The words were distorted by the augmetics on the left side of his face, but they were definitely coming from Khorg.

  ‘You can’t talk,’ I gasped, feeling all the strength go from my legs.

  He walked towards me with his heavy stubber raised.

  ‘I learned,’ he said, dragging the words from his ruined throat.

  ‘Wait!’ I cried. There was no way I could draw before he fired, so I held up my hands. ‘Thornax?’ I muttered, turning back towards the furnace.

  The figure had stepped from the shadows. He was all wrong. It was Thornax but not Thornax. His face was almost the same, but filled with subtle, weird differences. And he was young. Way younger than when I met him, over twenty years ago.

  ‘I’m his son,’ he said, delighting in my confusion.

  I never saw the stubber until he used it to ventilate my guts.

  I fell back, trying to catch my blood, trying to understand.

  Khorg reached down. I thought he was going to help me up, but he just ripped my jacket open and took my piece of the relic. Then he took both wings from under his jacket and clipped them to the sword.

  ‘You had both?’ I managed to say, as blood filled my mouth.

  Thornax’s son leant over me. ‘Khorg saw what you did. When the roof came down he was here, at the furnace. He saw you kick my father into that fire.’

  I saw my palace in the spire. I saw the lords and ladies. I saw them all washed away in the blood pumping from my belly. Then I shook my head furiously. None of this could be true. They were all morons. They could never trick me. They had to be lying.

  I looked up at Khorg. ‘But you had both wings. How did you have Thornax’s wing? How? It went into the fire when I killed him. I saw it.’

  Khorg spoke again. It still seemed incredible. Like watching a dog talk. ‘I was willing to burn,’ he said, nodding at the augmetic half of his body. ‘Then, when I knew it was safe, I sent you the message.’ He gestured at the youth. ‘The image was him. The voice was me.’

  The more I tried to force my blood back into my body, the faster it flowed out. I was drenched in the stuff. My head was growing lighter. Smoke pressed down, stinging my eyes, smothering my face like a shroud.

  ‘Why here?’ I said. ‘You had both wings. You could have killed me as soon as you had the sword.’

  Khorg said nothing but, finally, I understood him. His eyes were not the eyes of a moron. They were dead with rage, not stupidity.

  Thornax’s son hauled me to my feet and dragged me, slipping and sliding through my own blood.

  ‘He brought you here for me.’

  I shook my head, still confused.

  ‘I wanted you to know,’ he explained, hauling me towards the mouth of the furnace. ‘What my father felt.’

  I howled as he hurled me in. Rigid with horror. Sick with rage. Punching the flames as they took me down.

  About the Author

  Darius Hinks’s first novel, Warrior Priest, won the David Gemmell Morningstar award for best newcomer. Since then he has carved a bloody swathe through the Warhammer World in works such as Island of Blood, Sigvald, Razumov’s Tomb and the Orion trilogy. He has also ventured into the Warhammer 40,000 universe with the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus.

  In the underhives of Necromunda, many bounty hunters ply their trade – but none are as successful or infamous as Kal Jerico. This edition collects together three novels in one action-packed omnibus taking you into the darkest depths of the Underhive.

  A Black Library Publication

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

  Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

  Burned © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Burned, Necromunda, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.

  All Rights Reserved.

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78572-926-3

  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.

  See Black Library on the internet at

  blacklibrary.com

  Find out more about Games Workshop’s world of Warhammer and the Warhammer 40,000 universe at

  games-workshop.com

  Find out more about the underworld of Necromunda at

  necromunda.com

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