The latest Horus Heresy e-short, Rob Sanders’ The Ember Wolves continues the March of the Titans theme with a Titan versus Titans story told firmly from the traitors’ viewpoint. On the ‘shabby little hive world of Absalom’, forces loyal to Horus – including the Legio Audax, the Ember Wolves – take the fight to the loyalists, including forces of the newly-formed Adeptus Titanicus. Commanding a six-strong pack of Warhound Titans, princeps Balthus Voltemand is on the hunt for an engine-kill, and hungrily sets his sights on the towering Warmonger Titan Tantorus Magnificat.
It’s nice to see a story told fully from the perspective of those loyal to Horus, and see the different problems they face compared to the loyalists. We watch as Voltemand marshals his unruly pack against the monstrous Warmonger, in a clever setup which nicely highlights the way in which these smaller Titans can – at least in numbers – stand toe to toe with their bigger cousins. The big fight when it happens is suitably cinematic, owing a massive debt to an Aaron Dembski-Bowden idea…we’ve seen this before, but Sanders expands it enough beyond ‘that’ scene in Betrayer to mean that watching it play out again is suitably entertaining.
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