The Primarchs

ALPHARIUS: HEAD OF THE HYDRA

Mike Brooks

LION EL’JONSON: LORD OF THE FIRST

David Guymer

KONRAD CURZE: THE NIGHT HAUNTER

Guy Haley

ANGRON: SLAVE OF NUCERIA

Ian St. Martin

CORAX: LORD OF SHADOWS

Guy Haley

VULKAN: LORD OF DRAKES

David Annandale

JAGHATAI KHAN: WARHAWK OF CHOGORIS

Chris Wraight

FERRUS MANUS: GORGON OF MEDUSA

David Guymer

FULGRIM: THE PALATINE PHOENIX

Josh Reynolds

LORGAR: BEARER OF THE WORD

Gav Thorpe

PERTURABO: THE HAMMER OF OLYMPIA

Guy Haley

MAGNUS THE RED: MASTER OF PROSPERO

Graham McNeill

LEMAN RUSS: THE GREAT WOLF

Chris Wraight

ROBOUTE GUILLIMAN: LORD OF ULTRAMAR

David Annandale

Also available

KONRAD CURZE: A LESSON IN DARKNESS

Ian St. Martin (audio drama)

SONS OF THE EMPEROR

Various authors

SCIONS OF THE EMPEROR

Various authors

BLOOD OF THE EMPEROR

Various authors

Contents

Cover

Backlist

Title Page

The Horus Heresy

THE PASSING OF ANGELS

MERCY OF THE DRAGON

SHADOW OF THE PAST

A LESSON IN IRON

THE ATONEMENT OF FIRE

CANTICLE

FIRST LEGION

A GAME OF OPPOSITES

BETTER ANGELS

THE SINEW OF WAR

THE CHAMBER AT THE END OF MEMORY

THE WILL OF THE LEGION

SKJALDS

CHAMPION OF OATHS

About the Authors

An Extract from ‘The Solar War’

A Black Library Publication

The Horus Heresy

It is a time of legend.

Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Mankind conquer the stars in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races are to be smashed by his elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.

The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons. Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor, as system after system is brought back under his control. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful champions.

First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superhuman beings who have led the Space Marine Legions in campaign after campaign. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation, while the Space Marines themselves are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.

Many are the tales told of these legendary beings. From the halls of the Imperial Palace on Terra to the outermost reaches of Ultima Segmentum, their deeds are known to be shaping the very future of the galaxy. But can such souls remain free of doubt and corruption forever? Or will the temptation of greater power prove too much for even the most loyal sons of the Emperor?

The seeds of heresy have already been sown, and the start of the greatest war in the history of mankind is but a few years away...

THE PASSING OF ANGELS

John French

‘If gods did not exist mankind would conjure them into being.

If god did exist He would will monsters into life and cloak them in the light of heaven.’

– attributed to the Unspeakable King

I do not want to be here. I do not want this present, and I want the future that follows it less. Yet the future is inescapable.

My head is bowed, my eyes closed, and I listen as the present rushes past.

The tick-buzz of armour servos…

Breath vibrating inside the tarnished silver helms of the Host…

Wind gliding across the skin of the Storm Eagle as it drops from the dawn sky…

Fire feathering from the wings…

The wind running amongst the clouds…

And beyond that shell of air – silence…

Silence…

There, beyond the sky, is the only place where it is truly quiet. The song of the spheres is not a sound. It is that silence that sits between earth and moon, that marks the passing of comets, and sings the birth of stars. Heaven – from where the angels of an unenlightened past looked down on creation.

‘My lord.’ It is Alepheo. I hear the damage in his voice, the old wound to the throat, still healing. I hear the control, and the deference, and beyond that, pain. ‘We have reached the drop mark,’ he says.

I open my eyes, and the world crowds back in through them, bright and dark and consuming. I see the Host of destruction. I see the scars and burns on their crimson armour. I feel my senses rush to enfold every angle of form, every mutable scrap of colour, every stutter of movement. On and on, each nanosecond a tableau, and each shift of hand or eye causing the universe to shatter and remake itself in my sight.

There is so much in even the smallest moment of life, so much that humans cannot see. My senses pour down through layers of detail. There is tarnish on the tear drops that sit on the cheeks of Alepheo’s mask. There are five droplets. The second droplet is a micron out of alignment. The artisan who made it had been disturbed during the sculpting. The interruption had disrupted his equilibrium. It had taken a heartbeat for him to settle back to his task, but in that time the damage to his work had been done. I can see it in the error, and I can feel the flaw in my heart.

I catch myself, and pull my senses back to the level of the beings that stand at my side – my cruel and beautiful children. I read them and their hearts with a glance. So much is written in the way that Alepheo hangs his head, so much more in the way his hand rests on the holster of his pistol. I see the weight of his fears, even though these half-angels know no fear. You cannot cut the core of fear from a human, you can only make them deaf to the screams. And inside, these angels of death – made to bring enlightenment like falling lightning – all are screaming.

‘Doors opening.’ The pilot’s voice echoes in the compartment.

Red lights begin to pulse. Sirens blare. Doors along the flank of the craft slide open. Sound and air rush out into the brightening night. I can see the Storm Eagles, Lightning Crows and Thunderhawks following us down out of the dome of the sky, red streaks in deepening blue. Like drops of blood. Like tears.

I step to the edge of the open assault ramp. The air pulls at me. I look down. The summit of the mountain city rises from dawn-stained cloud. I turn my back, balancing on the edge. Sixty silver faces look at me from the compartment.

‘Leave none alive,’ I say, and I step back into the rushing air.

Shar-General Galen did not look up from the battle plans as the crowd of officers drained from the strategium. Bright sunlight poured through the dome above. She could feel the warmth on the back of her neck. She knew the plans by heart, but still she did not look up.

He was still there, on the other side of the planning table. He had not moved. She found it hard to look at him sometimes, even after a decade of war at his side. Part of her did not know what she would see.

‘Please, general, ask your question,’ the Angel said.

‘I am…’ She almost looked up at him, but caught herself and began to shuffle sheaves of field reports together. She shook her head, breathed out. ‘I am clear on all of the operational elements involved. There is nothing that needs to be clarified.’

‘But you have a question, Galen,’ he said. His voice was a melody, clear as the note of a struck bell. ‘Not all matters of war exist in bullets and orders. Ask what you wish.’

She stopped, her eyes on the parchment under her hands.

‘Why did you insist on this?’ she said at last, and finally looked at him.

Sanguinius, primarch of the IX Legion, Archangel of Baal, stood in the cold light of the strategium. An ivory white tunic and toga was wound and folded over muscle and smooth skin. Golden hair framed a face set in an expression that spoke of wisdom and understanding. It was a perfect face, a face that called to the ideals of humanity. She met his eyes. His furled wings shifted at his back, and she was suddenly struck by the fact that the feathers were not just white, but every hue of shadow. He was beautiful, more beautiful than life, and more terrifying than anything she had seen in half a century’s worth of warzones.

‘It must happen,’ he said, and she felt the terror and adoration fade from her. ‘You were at the assault on the H_____’s settlement. I was not there, and yet I saw it in your words, and in the words you choose not to say.’

Galen felt her eyes twitch as the memory returned…

When the H_____ had detonated the first mine, the gravity for five kilometres around the blast had broken. Even ten kilometres away she had felt herself lift from the ground. Vomit had risen to her tongue. Then she heard the cry of her adjutant, and looked up.

The detonation unfolded in silence, stacking up and up and up to the scuffed blue of the sky. It shimmered like water. She could see through it. Thousands of tiny flecks danced in the expanding column. She blinked. The skin of her face was prickling. Then she realised that the flecks were people: tens of thousands of troops that she had sent in to the settlement and the hundreds of thousands that lived there. Light bent and folded. Motes of darkness grew and burst like bubbles. And out the silence rolled, as though the sound was swallowed by the atrocity of what she was witnessing. Seconds touched eternity as the column of broken reality touched the dome of the heavens.

Then it collapsed.

Everything within ceased to be.

Air rushed in to the space left. The pressure wave ruptured Galen’s eardrums and scattered her command cadre out of their transports.

Where the mine had detonated there was nothing. Just a black wound that hung like mist above the ground, drinking light.

Galen blinked, and the memory vanished into Sanguinius’ gaze.

‘Even so, my lord, even though the H_____ are willing to use such devices…’

‘It is not just the inhumanity of what they have done. Resistance to the truth is a tragedy, but the weapons we choose to fight with speak to eternity. The Emperor has decreed that such weapons will not be tolerated to exist, and their use will earn His wrath.’

‘I have said I understand what must be done, my lord, but…’

He bowed his head. She felt her breath stop in her lungs. There was something in the gesture, something so simple, so human. When he looked up, the pain on his face almost made her cry out.

‘I understand too, general.’ He reached out and took her hand in both of his. His gaze was still steady on hers, but it seemed to her that shadow had drained into the recesses of his face. ‘The question you want to know the answer to is not why I insisted on this, but how I can do such a thing.’

‘The weapons we choose to fight with speak to eternity,’ she said to him.

He nodded at hearing his own words, but she could see only a hardening in his eyes.

‘And I am the creation of the Emperor, Galen. Though I am His son, I was engineered, not born. I am as He made me. I was made to perform a function for mankind.’

‘But by doing this, how can we claim to be better than the people we wish to drag into the light?’

‘We cannot make that claim.’ He half-turned away then. His pupils vanished as his eyes caught the light streaming from the crystal dome above. ‘You and humanity can claim the light that is left after our passing, but I can claim only that I know my nature.’ He looked back at her then, his eyes clear. ‘And even in the myths of the past, angels were not created for kindness.’

I am falling through the light of a new-born day alone. Behind me the Host of destruction falls with me. Clouds whip past. The mountain city grows beneath us, fog peeling back from its flanks. I can see tiers of buildings set behind curtain walls. I can see roads, and people moving in the last shadows of night. The lights of domed force-fields glitter as the fog passes through them. The guns on the high towers do not turn to greet us. We are too few and too small for their machine systems to notice. Those that set them to watch the skies have made the mistake that ancient kings made before their realms burned for pride – they forget the oldest lessons.

The first gunship comes into view high above us. The tower guns see it. Barrels sweep up. Energy flushes into charge chambers. Calculations race through silica.

We fall on, and the city rises.

The guns fire. Columns of blinding light rise into the sky, burning cloud banks away. The air shrieks. The gunship corkscrews through the burning energy.

I can see the force-field beneath us, a glittering skin. There are figures on the roads and ramparts looking up, and one of them raises a hand and points. I spread my wings, the dew-heavy air catching in the feathers. Above me, my sons trigger their jump packs. Fire cuts their fall just as we touch the force-field dome and pass through.

Above us the air is burning; beneath us the waking city sees us. My wings are spread, and my spear is raised in my hand. I can see the condemned. I can see their faces. I can see the terror in the face of a soldier as he steps into the light beside his squad. I can see his eyes. I can see that he was not a soldier until the coming of war. I can see that he has killed. I can see his fear of death and his cruelty in the tremble of his rising gun. I can see his love of life in the eye behind the gun. I can see all humanity in that look. The tip of my spear strikes him in the middle of the forehead.

The first blood of this reaping sprays up to fleck the beat of my wings as I land.

Alepheo, commander of the Second Seraphic Host of the IX Legion, held his breath and counted. As he felt the time seep into his muscles, he lifted the brush. Its tip was black, heavy with soot ink. He had ground the pigment himself using charcoal that he had made from a single tree he had felled in the forest of Macragge during his time amongst the XIII. The handle of the brush was bone, in this case human. Hollow-cored, it was light and perfectly balanced when the bristles were loaded with the correct amount of ink. The bone had been his birth brother’s, given to him after the last of his kin fell in the trials to become one of the Angels.

He smiled as the sorrow of that memory touched his thoughts. He let it settle, feeling it combine with the subject he had chosen. A paper scroll hung in front of him as white as fresh snow, seeming to glow in the dusk light entering his chamber from the high windows. The ruined fortress they had taken for their base in the compliance of the H_____ was filled with shadows and marked with the scars of forgotten wars, but here in the high central tower there was light.

The tip of the brush touched the paper. Alepheo paused a second and then his thoughts unfolded through his nerves and muscles. The brush slid over the surface of the paper, leaving a black trail. Now it was in motion, it did not stop. The flow of strokes followed a rhythm set by the beating of his hearts and the song of his thoughts. The dipping of the brush, the flick and flow of ink, the smell of it as it dried, all were the rhythm of creation.

When he was done, he stepped back and looked at what his soul had brought into being.

‘“And by my being is desolation wrought,”’ said a voice from behind him. ‘“And by the shadow of my sword does dew fall and the sun rise” – the Harabic scholars of the past would wonder at such an evocation of their tongue and art.’ Alepheo turned and knelt in a single movement. His black robes rustling, the brush still in his hand.

‘My lord,’ he said.

‘Rise,’ said Sanguinius. ‘You must clean that brush before the ink clots the bristles.’

Alepheo obeyed, moving the brush between seven stone bowls of water and drying it with the cloths he had folded and set beside them. Sanguinius took a single step forwards, eyes fixed on the calligraphic poem spiralling across the paper screen.

‘Dead languages speak more clearly than the voices of the living, don’t you think?’

‘Are they dead if some still speak them?’ asked Alepheo, dabbing the brush head on the soft black fabric of the second cloth. ‘A song sung is still a song even if it has not sounded for millennia.’

‘Quite so, my son,’ said Sanguinius, and lapsed into silence as Alepheo returned the clean brush to its stand.

‘How may I serve, lord?’ said Alepheo, turning back to his primarch.

‘I have given the order – the H_____ are to be decimated. The population once compliant will be scattered across the Imperium. Others will come and make new cities under this sun. But they and all they have made here will cease to be. Their name will be obliterated, their cities levelled.’

Alepheo was still for a second and then nodded once.

‘It was written as soon as they used such weapons.’

Sanguinius’ eyes moved over the black words painted onto the paper screen.

‘The judgement decreed requires more,’ he said.

Alepheo was very still, and then turned to the bowls of water used to clean his brush. He began to pour them into a rough clay jug. Black ink swirled in the splash.

‘We must all bear the burden of our nature,’ said Alepheo, without looking up as he poured ink and water from the sixth bowl.

‘We must. It is a terrible thing to be the bearer of the wrath of an enlightened age.’

Alepheo looked around as he heard a soft clink of something metal being set down on the stone floor.

A helmet lay at Sanguinius’ feet. A serene face moulded in tarnished silver looked up at Alepheo with empty eyes. Tear drops marked its cheeks and a rayed halo ran across its crown. It was a death mask, made by a dying brother of the Legion in the last hours of his life and then cast in silver. They were worn only by those called to put aside their names and serve amongst the Legion’s Destroyers. To hide one’s face behind such a mask was to take on the burden of atrocity, a necessary evil in an age both of enlightenment and war. It was a burden shared by all the Legion, to be taken up and then put aside when all was done.

‘I would call you to be the Dominion of the Destroyer Host,’ said Sanguinius.

Alepheo looked at the helm but did not pick it up. The seventh bowl of water was still in his hands. The surface of the liquid within was mirror smooth.

‘Of course, my lord,’ he said, aware of the control in his voice.

‘You will not be yourself in this, my son. You will be your function. Alepheo dies for the time when your hands do this deed.’

‘But you are always yourself, my lord. If I must be a part of this why am I granted the absolution of anonymity when you are not?’

Pain ghosted across the Angel’s face as he smiled, the expression equal parts affection and sorrow.

‘You were all made from humanity, my son. I am not. The darkness that we must bring is not something I can put aside. It is me. In the shadow of my wings life withers and blood salts the ground.’

Alepheo bowed his head, and knelt to pick up the silver helm. Then he stood, the bowl of black-stained water still held in his other hand.

‘I will become death,’ he said, and poured the seventh bowl onto the stone floor.

My sons descend around me. Grenades scatter from them like seeds. Phosphex ignites, burning white as it flares and eats the stones of buildings. Radiation grenades land, and rest silent amongst the spreading flames. They will not kill now. They will linger here, the shadow of our passing.

Troops pour from towers. Light shatters from the angles of their black glass armour. One of my sons lands on a tower top. The launcher slung under his arms roars, the radiation missile bursting amongst a dense cluster of soldiers. I can taste the uranium and barium as it salts the air.

A buzzing clank echoes up the streets. I turn, knowing what I will see. The H_____ have kept many wonders from the ages before Old Night, but have also preserved many of its horrors. The things that stalk over the stone and steel road are black mirror-skinned, beetle-carapaced, and skitter on seven legs. Eyes held in crystal capsules stud their abdomens. Human eyes, lidless, blood-shot and rolling. These creations were punishment for the crimes of dissent or treachery against the monarchs of the H_____. Each one is a family stripped of flesh and remade. Brothers, mothers, sisters and fathers – their nerves, mutilated brains and sense organs spliced into a single cyborg frame. At their core is blind rage and confusion, and lethal purpose.

I look into the eye clusters of the nearest one as it races up the road. A blur of needle-fine rounds sprays from its weapon pod. My wings raise me into the air. It looks up at me, guns and blood-shot eyes tracking as I rise. I throw my spear. It strikes the first abomination and lightning rips through it. Shards of black glass armour, chrome and flesh scatter out. For a second the reek of static blots out the smell of the burning city. I land on top of the dead thing as it collapses, pull the spear free and am striking the second and the third cyborgs without pause, spinning and bounding through the air.

Above me, I see the shield pylons topple from the summit of the mountain city. The skin of its energy shields blinks out of being in a boom of dry thunder. The gunships and fighter bombers come out of the cloud layer an instant later. They loose their payloads. Inferno bombs, phosphex cylinders and radiation missiles burst amongst the tiers of already burning buildings. The heat lights the edge of my wings. Through and above it, my sons, my destroying angels move, silver-faced, armour darkening with soot, firing at anything that moves.

A human is in front of me, gun rising, and then ceases to be as I strike, and I am not stopping. I am amongst the throng that pours into the streets, picking men up and casting them down to burn, splitting armour, turning, piercing, slicing. And I do not hesitate. I do not pause in thought or consideration. The condemned run from me, burning, blind as their eyes boil. I release them from life as I pass. I do not even feel the spear strikes. Gunfire rips from buildings to tatter my wings. Blood marks my passing, scattering from the slaughter. I am not alive. I am not a creature that lives. I am just judgement. I am death. And for now I feel no sorrow.

Horus Lupercal, primarch of the XVI Legion, smiled as his brother stepped through the door. He was unarmoured, his grey-white battleplate shed, hanging from a rack at the chamber’s edge. In place of armour, he wore a tunic of plain black. The room was small and bare, and the light of the single glow globe did not reach into its corners. The audience and command chambers of the Vengeful Spirit could have swallowed it many times over, but it was here, in a space that a mortal human could cross in ten strides that the two brothers had chosen to meet.

‘You are late,’ said Horus, without rising.

‘I am,’ said Sanguinius, glancing over the chamber’s sparse furnishing: a low table set with a game board and two metal stools. ‘But I did not want to deprive you of the opportunity to point it out.’ He looked at his brother, his face emotionless. ‘So, I did not hurry.’

Horus laughed. Sanguinius smiled and sat. He wore a black and red robe, tied at his waist by a golden cord. His wings were tucked tight against his back, and he had cropped his golden hair close so that he seemed the image of ancient heroes given life. He picked up the clay cup from beside the board and took a mouthful. Horus watched his brother as Sanguinius nodded slowly, looking down into the dark liquid in the cup.

‘If I did not know better, I would suspect that you went to considerable trouble to find something that tastes this bad.’

Horus took a swig from his own cup, paused, and frowned.

‘You are wrong…’ He took another swig. ‘I did not go to much trouble.’ He winced and then began to laugh again. ‘But it does taste truly terrible.’ He gestured at the board set out between them. Tall pieces carved from blood ivory and ebony sat on hexagons of mother-of-pearl and jet. ‘Something new that might entertain, it is–’

‘A variant of Ullatur played by the scholar caste of the Noon-reach cluster, in form similar to its Terran forebears but with the addition of two pieces – the Messenger, and the Fiend.’ Sanguinius picked up one of the blood ivory pieces and turned it in his fingers, letting light play over the three fanged heads sprouting from its top. ‘These were made by the blind master Heydosia after she lost her sight.’ He put the piece down on a different space to the one he had picked it up from. ‘Your move.’

Horus raised an eyebrow.

Sanguinius blinked slowly. ‘It is all right, brother. In this variant, going first is considered a disadvantage.’ He took a swig from his cup.

‘I know,’ said Horus, and moved a black raven to take a red crone. He placed the piece next to his cup. ‘It’s just good that you think you can give me an advantage and win.’

‘Oh, I know I can win, brother – I just like watching you think you can win too.’

Horus did not reply, and the sound in the chamber faded to the distant rumble of the Vengeful Spirit’s engines pushing it through the void. The walls vibrated, the note just enough to send ripples across the surface of the two cups of wine.

‘You are troubled,’ said Horus at last. Sanguinius’ eyes flicked up from the board. A frown creased the perfection of his face.

‘As are you,’ said the Angel, taking two pieces one after another, the base of his messenger tapping the board as it jumped from kill to kill.

‘True,’ said Horus, switching the positions of his light bearers and knights. ‘But I asked first.’ Sanguinius sat back. His wings twitched. ‘The old question?’ said Horus.

Sanguinius nodded.

‘The paradox of our existence,’ said Horus, looking back to the board. ‘It is not a paradox, though – it is simply a fact. We exist to destroy and by doing so we create.’

‘And what of that we must destroy?’ asked Sanguinius.

‘Tragedies, necessities, sacrifices – everything that shall come shall be greater than anything that is lost.’

Silence slid back into the space as pieces clicked across the polished wood and seashell.

‘And you, my brother?’ said Sanguinius. ‘Your star shines brighter and brighter. Your sons honour you by rising to be exemplars to all. Our father calls you to his side in war and council more than any other…’ Horus’ gaze was fixed on the board. He reached out and placed a finger on a black prince. ‘And yet you are troubled.’ Horus looked up, his gaze dark and hard for an instant, and then he shook his head.

‘I am not troubled. Questions are part of understanding, part of wisdom.’

‘And if they go unanswered?’ said Sanguinius. ‘I can see it, Horus. I can feel it. You are letting something small feed on the silence inside you.’

Horus moved the prince, but kept his finger on its carved head.

‘We are creating a future. We are making it with blood and ideas and symbols and words. The blood is ours and we are the symbols. But the ideas? Has our father ever spoken of the future to you?’

‘Many times, and many more times to you.’

‘He has spoken of ideas of both unity and humanity in grand terms, but has he ever said what will happen between the bloody present and that golden time?’

Sanguinius’ frown sent shadows across his face.

‘To think of such things does nothing good, brother.’

Horus smiled.

‘Surgeon, heal thyself.’

Sanguinius’ expression did not change.

‘The present is far from complete, Horus, and the future will hold many sorrows and many honours. The stars remain wild and unconquered.’

Horus held his brother’s gaze for a second, and then shrugged.

‘What happens after that? What happens to angels after a new heaven is made?’

Horus gripped the black prince and moved it. The angel looked at the play, and toppled his red king onto its side.

‘Shall we play again?’ asked Horus.

Sanguinius smiled, his frown clearing like clouds from the face of the sun.

‘By all means – I think you might even be getting better.’

I stand on the topmost tower of the mountain city. The heat of the flames is crawling into the bare flesh of my face. Soot marks my features. My hair has burned to my scalp, and the gold of my armour is black with the touch of fire and blood. My cheeks are blistered by radiation and charred by the fire I have passed through. It will heal in the time it takes me to return to my ship in orbit, but for now I do not look like an angel of light and beauty – I am the angel of ruin, whose passing makes the sleeping wake in terror.

Alepheo drops into the ruins beneath me. His red armour is scarred and flame darkened. He looks up at me with a dead silver face that is shedding eternal tears.

‘It is done,’ he says. I can hear the weight in the words. He will bear the scar of this in his dreams, and it will creep into the poems he paints in the languages of the dead. He will understand then that we are angels. Beauty does not belong to us; it is what we must burn to be what we are.

Beneath us in the city, the stones of the buildings have begun to melt in the sea of fire.

I look up. Beyond the pall of smoke, the clouds are clearing to greet the dawn. The sun touches my eyes.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It is done.’

And then I stretch my wings and take to the air, rising from flames and atrocity towards the light of the future.

MERCY OF THE DRAGON

Nick Kyme

The final wall had fallen, and with it Venikov. The city had been called ‘the Bloody Bastion’ by the Ranknar Blood-Guard. It was impregnable, they had said. Now Venikov burned, its precincts as hollow as the confidence that had once proclaimed it unbreakable.

And as it fell, and burned, the Imperial war machine ground on.

Sarda watched the city fall through his omniscope, glad for the kilometres between him and the armour-clad star warriors who had laid siege to his world. The hills where he had led those fleeing the destruction of Venikov would do little to stop the oppressors, however.

‘How many?’ asked Veddus. Sarda thought the goreov priest sounded weary, not just with the fatigue of the war but a spiritual malaise that came with the almost certain knowledge that your culture and everything you knew would soon be extinguished and replaced by another.

But then Sarda had always thought too much. He had been thinking ever since the so-called Emperor had made his proclamation. The Emperor had spoken of unity and compliance, but to Sarda this had sounded like conquest and annihilation. He adjusted the strap on his leather hauberk, suddenly uncomfortable.

‘Blood-Marshal Enoch has forged a last redoubt. At the old keep in southern Venikov.’

‘How many, captain?’ repeated Veddus, the sound of a cloak rasping as he swept closer.

Sarda tweaked the brass omniscope, adjusting the dials to focus in on the warriors and refugees fleeing Venikov. They were heading south, to the hills, to the next city on Erod. The last city. He adjusted his armour again. The studs were digging in through his padded jerkin. A rime of salt crusted his forehead where his leather helm met skin and made him sweat.

‘A few thousand.’

‘Is that all?’ uttered Veddus, pausing at the thought.

Sarda heard the priest’s breath reverberate against the brass mask. ‘Over a hundred thousand men entered that city.’

‘Blood-Marshal Enoch has another thousand trying to hold them off.’

‘Teeth of Ranknar…’ hissed Veddus.

Sarda doubted their patron god was listening. There was only one god that really mattered now, and he was on the other side. The Dragon.

‘We’ll need to fall back to Romistad. The Red Citadel is formidable,’ said Sarda.

Veddus nodded, starting to grow in confidence again. ‘Yes. Out here in the hills we are vulnerable. The Red Citadel can withstand a siege. Let’s see if these curs have the stomach for it. I’ll see the Dragon slain on our walls. Bled dry! I swear it by Ranknar!’

A great explosion lit the horizon to the north. Tremors were felt as far as the hills. They ripped Venikov and the old keep apart.

Sarda lowered the omniscope, and let out a long shuddering breath. He faced Veddus. The blank visage of the mask was reflected in the priest’s eyes. The mask’s stylised representation of a gaunt human face, edged instead of curved, could not hide his fear.

‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What happened?’

‘Blood-Marshal Enoch is dead, goreov.’

Veddus swallowed audibly. ‘Are you certain?’

Sarda pointed a crimson glove in the direction of the city.

Except there was no city. Venikov was gone.

Only fire remained, a conflagration so large and ferocious it engulfed the sky like slow spreading ink and turned it red. And at the heart of the blaze, killing with fang and claw, a giant in emerald scale.

A myth brought terrifyingly to life.

Veddus scarcely had voice enough to name it out loud, ‘The Dragon…’

‘I am a son of a blacksmith,’ said Vulkan, gazing across the desert, ‘and you…’

‘What?’ asked the Outlander. ‘What am I?’

Vulkan turned to regard the warrior next to him.

‘You are no mere outlander.’

The heat of the day was fading on Nocturne and the tribesmen out on the ash plains were bringing in their herds as the two great beings stood on a high dune looking out at a world of fire.

The warrior bowed His head, acknowledging the truth. He then raised a gauntleted hand to the sun and watched the light reflect off the metal. He had shed a lie, this warrior, one meant to put the Nocturneans and their chieftain at ease.

‘Am I not a man, Vulkan?’ He asked, the rays catching not only His gauntlet but the rest of His armour-clad body, so that He shone with a radiant golden light.

‘You look like a king,’ Vulkan replied, and for the first time felt uncomfortable in the rough apparel of a blacksmith.

‘I am no king, but is a king not also a man?’

‘Not to the vassals of his kingdom.’

The warrior smiled, a mentor pleased with his student, and turned to face Vulkan. His hair caught on the hot wind, trailing like black smoke. His short red cloak fluttered, a statesman about to address his people.

‘I am the Emperor.’

‘Ah,’ said Vulkan, his turn to smile now, ‘greater than a king. And your empire is the stars?’

The Emperor followed Vulkan’s gaze to the red-stained heavens and grew sombre.

‘Not yet. There is darkness out in the void.’ He looked back at Vulkan, His eyes cold with sorrow. ‘That is why I need you.’ This mood lasted only a moment before the warmth returned. ‘A blacksmith’s son. To help me bring the light.’

‘Of creation?’

‘Yes. And to be one of my generals.’

Vulkan scowled, suddenly ill at ease.

‘I am no warlord.’

‘And yet war has come to the galaxy. It must, Vulkan, and you shall be one of those who leads it. Mankind must emerge from Old Night and embrace the Truth.’

‘Your truth?’ The words had the bite of accusation that Vulkan did not try to soften.

‘The Imperial Truth. That there are no gods and mankind’s fate is what he or she makes it.’

‘I know only the truth of metal and how it bends to fire,’ Vulkan looked down at his hands as if imagining the fuller gripped against his leathern skin, ‘the truth of what I can see, and the earth beneath my feet.’

‘And that is why I need you.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘You will.’

‘And what if I do not wish to leave? General, warlord, call it what you will, but I have never imagined a sword in my hand or an army at my command.’

‘You lead your people.’

‘That is different. I protect Nocturne from those who would see it harmed, or enslaved. You are talking about conquest. I am a maker, not a destroyer.’

‘You would prefer a hammer to a sword, and an anvil against which to strike it.’

Vulkan nodded.

The Emperor stepped out of the light and His lustre appeared to fade. He seemed smaller, more ordinary. His face looked weathered, as if He had spent some time out in the wild places of His world. It was the face of a farmer or a hunter.

‘I want you to join me willingly, Vulkan. Will you allow me to convince you? I am confident you will see the necessity of your presence and see my cause as just.’

The wind rose across the desert, bringing with it the scent of ash. A mountain peak erupted, releasing a tongue of flame that tasted the heavens. From deep beneath the earth a sympathetic roar answered.

‘The Time of Trial comes again soon,’ said Vulkan.

‘It does,’ said the Emperor, ‘and it touches more than just this world. This is a trial for all of mankind.’

Vulkan’s gaze lingered on the mountain – its name was Deathfire – before returning again to the Emperor.

‘I agree to your proposal. If you can convince me, I will leave Nocturne and go with you. But I have questions.’

‘Then ask, Vulkan, and I promise you I shall only answer with the truth.’

They had promised the truth, but had come cloaked in lies.

Sarda remembered these words from the Great Goreov, the Incarnadine himself. They were to be the priest’s last – the violent kiss of heat as the temple dais turned into a storm of fire, and blood drowned out what followed.

The priests were all dead bar one, their faith slain along with them.

‘We will still have vengeance,’ said Veddus, leaning in to Sarda’s ear. He could smell the alcohol on the goreov’s breath. It had the tang of warm iron to it.

They had sealed the gates to the Red Citadel. Cannons girded its high, rust-red walls. Men thronged its battlements dressed in full martial panoply: Blood-Guard in crimson leather and Red Knights in ceramic war-garb that reflected their namesake. It was a long, deep wall the garrison held, one that stretched for almost a kilometre to both the east and the west. At the heart of the city, imposing and formidable, was Ranknar’s oldest keep. It had never been taken. Ever. The Incarnadine who held it held Ranknar.

Yet as Venikov faded to a dirty orange glow on the horizon, those behind the walls cowered. They feared the fire. They feared the Dragon.

‘We should not have refused them,’ said Sarda, and felt himself yanked hard by his gorget to face Veddus.

‘Renounce our faith!’ the priest spat drunkenly, and drew a few eyes in their direction. ‘You are a holy warrior of Ranknar…’ He trailed off. The title had less and less meaning with every passing hour.

‘And where is Ranknar now?’ asked Sarda.

Veddus released him. ‘He would not abandon us,’ he rasped, and looked to the courtyard below. ‘We must make a sacrifice…’

Sarda seized the priest’s wrist as he made to draw his bloodletter. The knife’s dark edge caught the fading light and flashed in Veddus’ eyes, making him squint.

‘It does not matter any more. What good would it do?’ said Sarda.

Veddus made a half-hearted struggle. Those who caught his hungry gaze recoiled.

‘We can still make an offering. And we have weapons. More than one. They have served Erod for centuries. The blessed of Ranknar. He would not–’ The words caught in his throat as he joined the hundreds of others in the Red Citadel staring at the horizon.

A black, irregular line stood out amongst the smoke and the fading glow of fire. It was a slow moving tide, a wave of elongated cannon barrels, tank tracks and riveted armour, and it was about to wash Romistad and the Red Citadel away.

‘Raise shields!’ a watchman cried.

‘Ranknar preserve us…’ whispered Veddus, as the heavens shook with manufactured thunder and the Imperial bombardment began.

And as the first enemy shells began to fall, and the cannons on the Red Citadel’s walls answered, a dark mood came over Veddus.

‘Gather them, Sarda.’ The bloodletter kissed the warrior’s neck and drew a bead of fluid shaped like a red ruby. ‘As many as you can.’ He looked to the Imperial line and the star-warriors advancing heedlessly into the Ranknar cannonade. ‘I will anoint the bogatyrs, and then unleash them.’

‘And if they fail?’ asked Sarda.

‘With faith, they shall not,’ said the priest, bile colouring his voice. ‘But if they do, then we both know we have one last gambit to play.’

‘Was it a trick?’ asked Vulkan, looking to the sky and half expecting the promised ship to appear, belching fire through a swathe of sulphuric cloud.

‘A trick?’ asked the Emperor.

‘The way you shed your disguise. You didn’t merely cast off a cloak or lower a mask, you changed… everything. Is this,’ he gestured to the Emperor in His gilded glory, ‘your true self?’

‘Isn’t identity a matter of perception? You see… what, a gold-clad ruler? A king, you said. Others might see something different. A man. A father.’

‘But was it a trick?’ Vulkan pressed.

‘What does it matter? Please,’ said the Emperor holding up a hand to show His sincerity, ‘I am not trying to avoid the question, but I am interested in your rationale for asking it.’

‘I would know the manner and design of the man who bids me leave my home and people. I am a simple man, but do not think of me as credulous.’

‘You are neither, Vulkan,’ the Emperor replied, but did not elaborate, ‘and, yes, I suppose it was a trick of sorts. A means of determining the truth.’

‘Then are you a sorcerer?’ Vulkan asked. ‘Was it magic?’

The Emperor’s mood darkened, but fractionally, so that only someone who was particularly astute would notice. Vulkan slightly raised his eyebrow.

‘Not a sorcerer,’ said the Emperor. ‘Magic… is not real, it is merely science yet to be understood. Show a primitive culture fire for the first time and they call it magic. Bring a starship to a backwards world yet to invent the combustion engine and it is hailed as witchcraft. Superstition, the darkness of old ways and the atrocities committed in their name, that is what I wish to bring an end to.’

‘So, you are a scientist?’

‘A reductive term,’ the Emperor answered, thoughtful, ‘but as fitting as any. I have a laboratory and have accomplished much to reach this point, through experimentation and endeavour.’

‘And war,’ said Vulkan. ‘You are a warrior too.’

‘Yes, and war. I won’t lie, there has been blood spilled on this journey and there will be more. I never imagined the enlightenment of mankind would be an easy task, nor one accomplished without violence. However regrettable.’ The Emperor’s eyes seem to cloud for a moment then, lost in abstract thought. ‘I have had failures. Some of which I shall never speak of.’

‘My brothers?’

The Emperor did not answer, and that was answer enough.

‘Will you not tell me of them?’ asked Vulkan. ‘Are they like me?’

‘Utterly unlike you,’ said the Emperor, brightening, ‘and that is your single greatest trait. My proudest achievement.’

‘Will I meet them if I agree to follow you into the stars?’

‘Yes, you will, though I have yet to find them all. You will learn much from them, and they from you.’

Vulkan glanced down at the sand accumulating around his boots. The desert was shifting again. Soon it would swallow this ridge and another would emerge elsewhere.

‘Are they from worlds like Nocturne?’

‘As harsh and beautiful, you mean?’ asked the Emperor. ‘Some are. Some are kings, others are scholars, chieftains, slaves…’ his eyes fell upon Vulkan, ‘even blacksmiths.’

‘What would they think of me? Could I really feel a bond of fraternity with them? And they with me?’

The Emperor smiled. ‘Let me tell you of Ferrus.’

The Gorgon grinned, an altogether ugly expression on such a grizzled face.

‘He is ferocious,’ he said, his voice as gritty and harsh as his appearance. His black armour was shorn to the bare ceramite in places, though the scorch marks caused by fire barely showed. ‘The way you described him, I thought…’

‘You did not expect a warrior,’ said the Emperor, His gilded panoply gleaming. He stood upon a blasted hillock, not that He needed the vantage to look imposing. His stature and power spoke for themselves. Despite the battles, He remained pristine. As radiant and terrifying as a nuclear sunrise.

‘I expected a blacksmith, but he is a destroyer.’

Much of the outer lands beyond the major cities of Ranknar had been reduced to ash. A bombardment lasting several days had softened up the native defences, but had seen the same forces dug in instead of broken as the Emperor had hoped. The Imperial assault, when it came, swept across all six continents as relentless as a hurricane. Still, the Ranknar had endured, buoyed by their perverse faith, the reason for the Imperium’s proclamation of extinction.

And so the Emperor had unleashed His Dragon, and the lands had burned. Only then, slowly swallowed by fire, had the Ranknar showed any signs of defeat.

‘I thought the Wolf King had fury,’ said Ferrus, admiring the choleric spirit of his newfound brother, ‘but this… Where did you find him?’

‘A death world,’ said the Emperor, His piercing gaze seeing more and ranging farther than any other on both the battlefield and second battle line where He stood with His son, Ferrus Manus. ‘One consumed by fire.’

Ferrus gave a snort of laughter.

They watched from the blasted hillock, the troops and armoured divisions arrayed before them and ready for the Gorgon’s command. His warriors, his Iron Hands. The Dragon led a company of them, and several cohorts of army auxilia. The scent of engines and hot metal from the idling artillery and heavy battle tanks wafted over the mustering, but petered out and was swallowed up by the stink of sweat and death by the time it reached the battle less than a hundred metres away.

Ferrus folded his silver arms, restive. They shimmered with an uncanny lustre, the metal of their forging as miraculous as it was mysterious. A massive warhammer lay against one armoured shoulder, a gift from Fulgrim and one he desired to bloody again. For now, he would do as his father ordered. He would watch, and let the Dragon wreak havoc. Ferrus suspected it was not only his newfound brother who was being tested this day.

‘Draconic in both aspect and temperament,’ he said, alluding to the savage scalloped war-plate worn by the Dragon.

‘You taught him much of your craft, Ferrus?’ asked the Emperor.

‘None, in truth. He needed no help in that regard. When I reached the forge, he was gone and the armour with him.’

The Emperor smiled, as if pleased with His works.

‘Your assessment?’

‘Overly flamboyant, but it appears to serve well.’

‘Him, not his armour, Ferrus.’

A raised eyebrow and a grunt of acknowledgement preceded the Gorgon’s reply.

‘He fights like a Medusan ur-wyrm. Are they all like that where he came from?’

‘No, he is unique. As are you.’

His silver fingers clenched and unclenched without Ferrus realising. He nodded.

‘He is impressive,’ he admitted, then turned disdainful, ‘but Russ and Horus, even Fulgrim, they match his prowess. I see nothing special about him.’

‘You will.’ The Emperor paused abruptly, and the Gorgon felt his hackles rise. ‘They are opening the gates.’

Ferrus hid his unease at his father’s use of prescience, remaining bullish. ‘Then they are as foolish as they are blind. A sortie is insane. They don’t know when they are beaten.’

‘Does any beast, when cornered?’

‘They risk annihilation,’ said Ferrus, as the gigantic city gates did indeed open.

‘Desperate men perform desperate acts. I feel fear in them. A fearful enemy attacks without restraint. This will be costly for us.’

A rust-red mist gathered around the opening, obscuring whatever was coming through.

‘They are all soldiers, and know the risk.’

‘Be wary of profligacy, my son. Life is not so cheap as you might think.’

The ruddy fog parted and what stood before the gate stopped the Gorgon’s reply dead. His eyes widened.

The ground shook, felt as far away as the second battle line.

Ferrus swung his warhammer into both hands.

‘Now can we intervene?’

The Emperor had already drawn a glittering, golden sword. Its edge burst into flames.

‘Yes, now we can.’

The bogatyrs did not walk alone, and where they walked the ground trembled.

Sarda watched them stride from the gate in the languid manner that creatures of such immense stature have, three golem-engines, their phage-swords bleeding red aether and their ocular weapon mounts cycling to lethality. He stood almost eye-to-eye with the bogatyrs despite the fact he was nearly twenty metres up on the city’s foremost battlements. His awe at the sight of the Red Citadel’s guardians hid a secret disgust for the method by which they had been roused for war.

An army came with them. Six phalanxes of Red Knights of the Orders Sangrov and Incarnadov rode at the flanks while twelve platoons of Blood-Guard brought up the rear, gun-chariots in tow.

Thunder cracked overhead as artillery on both sides exchanged fire across a kilometres-long battlefront. The tanks of the Imperium sat on the ridge beyond the city, dug in behind makeshift palisades. They faced the cannons jutting from the Red Citadel’s walls. Smoke and fire laced the air with every fresh volley. The bogatyrs strode through it, dauntless.

Plumes of earth and fire reached up into the sky with every explosive impact, taking the broken bodies of men with them. The bogatyrs remained inviolate, emerging through overlapping clouds of smoke, their energy shields crackling with particulate.

Sarda watched an ivory giant cut an Imperial tank in two. The vehicle’s bifurcated sides fell open, exposing a ruined anatomy within. Nothing lived; the red aether from the phage-swords saw to that. The bogatyrs had the appearance of marble statues, like knights of antiquity, but were nothing of the sort. Fashioned by the goreov priests, they were war engines, part machine, part biological.

They reaped death through the Imperial ranks.

Scores of men fell burning to the radiation beams of a bogatyr’s ocular array; another reduced a transport vehicle to molten slag. Small victories, but they gave the Red Knights and the Blood-Guard heart.

Clinging to the battlement’s edge, almost wishing he could be part of the melee, Sarda dared to believe…

‘We can defeat them,’ whispered Veddus. The skin of his hands and forearms was flecked with dark spots. His manner verged on manic, but Sarda agreed. ‘Ranknar has not abandoned us. He is with us.’

And Veddus turned as he heard others on the battlements echo his words. He repeated them. Louder.

‘He is with us!’

The defenders roared back.

‘Ranknar!’

‘Wait…’ Sarda bellowed over the cries of affirmation. He gestured to the battlefield and all eyes went to where a lone figure held his ground, standing in defiance of the bogatyrs.

Sarda held his breath. Before the ivory knights was a dragon.

‘I believe you,’ said Vulkan, staring into the desert reaches, trying to commit to memory this desolation that he called home.

‘In the Imperial Truth?’

‘I believe you want to save mankind. I believe you have a vision and mean to see it done whatever the cost.’

‘I have and I will,’ the Emperor replied. ‘It sounds bloody. It will be. Conquest always is, but there is darkness in the galaxy, Vulkan, the remnants left behind after Old Night. Horrors you can scarcely imagine. Superstition and fear, a race enslaved by its own isolation. There is but one path for mankind that does not end in extinction. The path I offer. I desire mankind’s pre-eminence. Its evolution. I raised armies and unified a world to try to accomplish it.’

‘And created sons, primarchs.’

‘Yes,’ said the Emperor, His voice serious but not unkind. ‘I made you. And your brothers.’

Vulkan frowned. ‘Why? You already said we are your generals, your legacy, but why create us so differently and cast us far from your sight?’

The Emperor pursed His lips, and Vulkan suspected there were some truths He would not reveal.

‘I am a singular being, Vulkan. I am a man, and also more than man. I sometimes think of myself as a creator, much as you think of yourself. A maker. At other times, a father. Yet, I find I am… removed. My concerns are of a lofty nature.’

‘You cannot relate to them,’ said Vulkan, understanding. ‘To mankind, even though you claim to be one of them. You made sons so that you would not be alone, so that you could share company with like minds, if not equal minds.’

The Emperor smiled. ‘You are partly right. I have a better fate for mankind. I would see them elevated, long lasting, perpetual.’

‘And what of the fates of your sons, sent across the void to worlds of fire and ice? Was that too a part of your design?’

‘I see much, but not all,’ was all the Emperor would say, and again Vulkan sensed there was more.

Above, the throaty roar of engines shook the sky. A ship appeared, obscured by cloud, a distant but growing silhouette in the heavens.

‘A vessel comes,’ said the Emperor. ‘It is bound for Terra and will arrive soon.’ He turned to Vulkan. ‘Have I convinced you?’

Vulkan watched the ship, imagining his destiny closing around him, the wide aperture of possibility narrowing to a single vanishing point.

‘Vulkan…’ said the Emperor, when no answer came, ‘are you decided?’

Vulkan met his father’s gaze, a father that up until a few hours ago he did not know he had. N’bel was his father, a blacksmith, a good man, a just man. Could this Emperor claim to be so too?

‘To leave Nocturne and my people unprotected, it is no easy thing you ask. You want to bring light into darkness, and you will wage war to achieve it. You need warlords. A sword to kill or conquer, not a hammer to build with.’

‘I need you, Vulkan. That is why I am here. It is the sole reason I have crossed the sea of stars to reach you. A sword to conquer, a hammer to build. One need not render the other obsolete.’

Vulkan thought on that. He looked back to the desert again, hoping some truth that had so far eluded him would be revealed in the whirling eddies playing across the sand.

‘I am torn. I have never considered myself a warrior or a general. I only want peace. You have told me much of my brothers, of Ferrus, of Fulgrim, Leman and Horus. They are generals, bellicose and proud. They are artisans and leaders of men, the conquerors for your age of Imperium. I am a blacksmith, a maker. I understand what I might learn from them, and they from each other. But what could I possibly teach them, father? Answer this and then I will decide.’

The bogatyr burned, broken apart, its ankles shorn to stumps. It wallowed on the battlefield, a sea beast deserted by the tide and left to die.

The Dragon stood upon its corpse, the exultant victor. As he raised his blades to the missile-choked sky, a cheer went up from the warriors he led. This sentiment was reversed in the groan of despair vented by the Ranknar army.

Sarda looked on in disbelief as the other two golem-engines shared the fate of the first. They had dispersed across the battlefield, majestic and titanic generals leading the army on. One fell to a determined fusillade of turret fire from three Imperial tank squadrons. It shook as its energy shield imploded and then a deep crack split its breastplate, presaging critical damage. It took one more faltering step, a dead thing unable to comprehend it was no longer alive, before lurching forwards and crashing to the ground. Men from both sides died beneath it, flattened like paper effigies. Several of the tanks that landed the killing blow were crushed. Explosions rippled the bogatyr’s flaming carcass like nerve tremors.

Then it was still.

The last died more swiftly, almost too fast to perceive. A firestorm took it, or a man all clad in gold. Sarda saw both, and yet neither, glimpses of something that defied reasonable explanation, before the bogatyr capitulated utterly. It simply peeled apart as if whatever stitched its being together had unspooled. Limbs, torso and head all separated. Unable to mount a defence or appreciate its demise, it simply discombobulated. The east and west flanks collapsed after these defeats, the army’s will like the sand in a broken hourglass, without a powerful general to contain and steer it. Those who remained retreated to the gate for salvation.

The army withdrew, the dying Order Sangrov buying what meagre time they could for Ranknar. The last of the sand, slowly tipping out.

‘We have… we have no other choice.’ Veddus’ fear spread with viral efficiency as he watched the rout, but it was threaded with madness, like blood laced through spit. A feral desire to inflict pain on the aggressors outside Romistad’s walls had taken over the priest.

‘We can end this,’ said Sarda.

Veddus snorted his derision. ‘It ends with death. Ours and theirs. We have the ultimate weapons to punish them. The last gambit.’

‘It’s not a gambit if we are all dead, priest. We can end this,’ Sarda repeated. ‘We can offer to surrender.’

The hint of something murderous flashed in Veddus’ eyes. ‘There will be none. Or do you defy me?’ The knife shimmered red in the light.

Sarda glanced down to the courtyard. Letting out a ragged breath, he gave the order to bar the gates as the last dregs of the army came through it, and to fight to the death.

A rearguard of knights had been left behind to slow the Imperial army down. They wore close-fitting, ceramic armour. It was sleek, durable, and the colour of flayed muscle. The helms had a sophisticated targeting array. Each knight carried a propelling lance with a concomitant energy core and self-loading shot pistols mounted on their wrists. They rode grav-sleds, heavily armoured to the front and tapering to a manoeuvring fin at the back.

But they were still men, and men could not stand against primarchs.

Ferrus destroyed every knight that dared to cross swords with him, his hammer a deadly metronome in his silver hands. He silently applauded their bravery, but swatted them aside like wasps. An irritant but nothing more.

His true quarry ranged ahead, possessed by an even greater fury and about to charge the gates of the city on his own. When Ferrus came upon the first of the felled statue-engines and saw what its shattered chest cavity harboured, he realised why.

‘Blood of Asirnoth…’

He felt the same pure rage well up inside him that had overtaken the Dragon.

A child lay dying in the carcass of the statue-engine, a withered and wretched thing, half drained of blood. It was abominable science, a machine fuelled by the blood of the living, a parasitical engine fed children to give it animus.

Appalled, Ferrus almost missed the vox-crackle in his warhelm. It was the Dragon.

‘Bring down the gates,’ he said, drunk on wrath, his voice a predatory snarl. ‘Now, father!’

Ferrus found the Emperor on the battlefield, only a short distance away. The Imperial army had closed ranks as the enemy fell back, consolidating to a position of strength, their Emperor inspiring the utmost discipline. If the self-proclaimed Master of Mankind felt anything at the Dragon’s words there was no sign. He merely raised his flaming sword. Moments later, a concentrated barrage struck the main gates of the city, a blow so unerring that Ferrus wondered if the Emperor had applied some of his strange craft to make it so.

The gate split apart, the wall that held it rupturing and collapsing at the same time. Dust and smoke billowed outwards, clouding an outpouring of burned and shattered rock. It was a small breach, a crack in an otherwise sprawling face of rock, but it was all Vulkan needed.

The Dragon ran for the gap in the wall, easily outpacing the few warriors still with him, and killed everything in his path.

Ferrus looked down sadly on the dying child and gave it mercy. Then he went after his brother.

‘To the Dragon!’ he roared to the warriors in his command, vox-boosting his voice so that the very air trembled.

His brother had disappeared into the smoke-choked darkness just in front of the wall.

‘He cannot fight an entire army, even a defeated one, and win,’ he said.

The Emperor did not answer, and Ferrus had no time to look and see if he had heard him.

And then he saw the weapon, wheeled into position on a great iron carriage. It had the look of a spire, tall and ugly. Barbs ran down a dark metal shaft that terminated in a narrow spike like an arrowhead. It protruded menacingly from behind the city’s broken battlements, more dominant than any of its towers and bleeding red miasma.

Ferrus knew its ilk if not this specific design.

Virus weapon.

It was pointing straight up. The natives intended to saturate the atmosphere with a contagion, something wrought by their rancid blood-science.

‘Father…’

Now the Emperor spoke.

‘I have seen it, my son.’

‘There is no time to withdraw. That missile…’

‘I will do what I can to stop it.’

Reacting to the obvious threat, the Imperial artillery chain redoubled its efforts and unleashed repeated missile salvoes against the city.

Detonations marched the walls, blasting revetments, tearing the garrison apart, reaching towards the shattered gatehouse.

Ferrus did not slow. He would get to his brother; he would stop the virus missile from ever launching or they would die together. He had about made peace with his potential death when the Dragon’s voice came over the vox again.

‘Hold your fire! Hold, hold, all weapons!’

His impassioned command reverberated, reaching enemies and allies alike. He stood before the breach, barely a metre away, though the soot and displaced earth made it impossible to see what had made him stop.

It took a few seconds, but the steady barrage began to slow.

Ferrus kept running, possessed of an urgency that felt strange and unsettling, concern for a brother he had never met. Grey cloud briefly obscured his vision, before it passed and he saw him again, his mysterious brother charging the breach.

The last missile fell, already on its deadly path and too late to be recalled or brought down. It struck the gatehouse. It struck the breach.

‘Father!’ Ferrus cried out, surprised at his sudden dismay.

His legionaries turned aghast to where fire and destruction had shattered the gatehouse. Men in the Imperial army ranks slumped, stunned. No one had seen a primarch fall before. Most believed they were immortal.

‘Nothing could survive…’ whispered Ferrus, trying to disbelieve the evidence of his own senses. ‘Father, is he…?’ he asked, louder.

The Emperor said nothing, as an anxious silence stole over the battlefield. The fighting had stopped.

‘Wait…’ a weary voice came across the vox, and through the parting smoke, across embers of burning wood and stone still flickering at his leaden feet, emerged the Dragon. He had lost his warhelm and one shoulder guard hung by a ragged thread. There was blood. His own. A crack split his breastplate. He held his left arm close to his body.

Ferrus stopped a metre away.

‘You live, though I cannot fathom how,’ he said, and eyed the onyx-skinned giant with wary respect.

‘I must be tougher than I look.’

Ferrus gave a short, mirthless laugh.

‘You look tough, brother.’ His eyes narrowed, heightened senses still alert to any sudden threat. ‘You bled for them. Why?’

The onyx giant smiled and he moved his arm away to reveal a child lying in his grasp, little more than a babe, terrified but breathing. His red eyes flared like hot coals, diabolic yet warm. It was the first of many contradictions that Ferrus would come to learn about his brother.

‘She lives too,’ he said. ‘And I bled for life, for innocence. She is not alone. There are others. This war is over.’

As they saw the Dragon cradling the child, the warriors of the city lost their taste for blood and laid down their weapons. Then, with the smoke yet to dissipate and the fires of battle still burning, the Emperor came forth and gave his edicts. He promised clemency for the natives and the rule of the Imperium. He promised truth, and shared of his dream for mankind’s pre-eminence amongst the stars.

Sarda had listened dumbly to the words of the golden lord and recalled them dimly as he tramped aboard the transport. He was bound for a ship that would take him and his kind to other worlds, to other colonies. He did not spare a glance for the corpse hanging from the battlements. Veddus could rot for all it mattered now. He had seen the Dragon’s selfless act, witnessing a sacrifice that gave the word fresh meaning in his eyes. Mercy. They had all seen it. He chose to remember it.

And he had heard his name, spoken amongst the Imperials. Not a dragon, not a beast, but a legend all the same.

They had called him Vulkan.

‘What is your answer?’ asked Vulkan.

‘It is simple,’ said the Emperor, and his expression betrayed no emotion beyond the desire to speak the truth. ‘Your brothers will be great and powerful. They are beyond mankind in so many ways, as are you. They will learn to be warriors quickly, the ways of conquest and liberation. Leading armies, inspiring the lesser men around them to greatness will be second nature to them, as it will to you. But your lesson, Vulkan, it is the most crucial and you are uniquely disposed to teach it.’ The Emperor put a fatherly hand on Vulkan’s shoulder. ‘Humanity.’

They did not speak again until the ship came, but when it did Vulkan bid farewell to Nocturne and followed his father into the sea of stars.

SHADOW OF THE PAST

Gav Thorpe

Kalta-Ar despised the tapping of hammer on chisel and chisel on stone almost as much as he detested the sunless sky that seemed to leech out his soul with its emptiness. The ever-present dusk-like glow sapped his reserves of will as much as the desert heat of his home world had once sapped the energy.

‘Is there no way to quieten that infernal tapping?’ he snapped at Arkula, his second-in-command.

‘I don’t think so, brother-cha… Apostle.’ Arkula handled the new title with all the ease of a fresh initiate with a primed grenade. ‘They have to break the stone somehow.’

Both the Dark Apostle and his coryphaus were clad in ruddy battleplate, all emblems and designs of their former loyalties obscured by the red, the symbols of their renewed allegiance to the true gods painted upon the armour. Together they continued along the top of a half-built wall, surveying the vast construction site around them. The central cloisters had been raised, and the garrison chambers, while a tent city for the slaves spread across the long, shallow hillside. Four small chapels and the central nave of what would be the main shrine of the Beneficta Diabola had their foundations laid. Rickety scaffolding clad the white stone of the outer walls, as well as the two high towers that flanked the nave. Slaves crawled, climbed and laboured everywhere, several thousand of them.

The tips of the two pinnacles crackled with energy, drawing in the power of the aether that surrounded the near-deserted moon. Companion rune-stone monoliths on the perimeter gleamed with the dispersed mystical power, keeping at bay the empyrean mass and the predatory denizens that lurked within.

Kalta-Ar looked up again out of habit, thinking to see a glimpse of a distant star. Just the same ruddy formlessness that had swathed everything since their arrival, slowly stirred by strange currents but otherwise featureless.

Thirty armoured figures were stationed at strategic points around the construction, their bolters and heavier weapons held casually, though the Word Bearers legionaries moved with the same alertness as though in a field of battle.

‘It is fascinating, that normal humans are so easily cowed,’ observed the Dark Apostle. ‘Not a whip or rod in sight, and yet they break their backs for us. Simple threat is enough to bind them to our slightest will.’

‘And no chains are needed, nor fence, Apostle,’ said Arkula. His gaze moved outside the encompassing walls to a spread of desolation as featureless as the sky, except for the deep furrows of the quarries. Lines of rune-etched barrier stones flanked the causeway between the delving and the Beneficta Diabola, protecting a steady progression of naked figures dragging blocks of stones, or pulling empty sleds back to the quarry. Another ten-strong squad of Kalta-Ar’s legionaries patrolled the crude road.

‘Give them a little food and water and they are happy to endure the worst debasements of body and pride,’ said Kalta-Ar. ‘They are bred for subservience. As it was ordered by the gods on Colchis, so again will it be on Sicarus by the will of Lorgar Aurelian.’

Mention of the primarch’s new capital world drew the eye of both warriors to the artificial mound beyond the far side of the growing temple-settlement. North, Kalta-Ar had dubbed it, for lack of any other means of navigating. The constructed hill was surrounded by its own perimeter of ward-runes, separated by less than a kilometre of open ground naked to the empyrean. At the summit, almost as high as the peaks of the cathedral-town’s ward-needles, loomed a great archway of black and gold.

‘When will the Urizen come?’ asked Arkula. ‘Apostle,’ he added quickly.

‘When the work is complete.’

A giant armoured in dark red hurried towards them up a nearby stone stair, his bolter in one hand. The pair awaited him at the top of the steps, where he halted, banging fist against his chest in salute.

‘Dark Apostle, Brother Rigana is missing,’ reported Isaikash.

Kalta-Ar’s attention snapped to the half-built dormitories in the north-east quadrant where the named warrior was meant to be stationed.

‘Missing?’ said Arkula. ‘Be more specific, brother-sergeant.’

‘I cannot, brother-coryphaus,’ said the legionary. ‘He did not answer the hourly roll call and I investigated. He is not at his post, and I can find no sign of him. He is not answering any comms.’

‘And there is still no sign of what happened to Hesta-Pek, Gesuat and Takla-Gad?’ demanded Kalta-Ar. ‘That is a total of four legionaries lost in the last twelve hours. This is unacceptable!’

‘What can we do, brother-Apostle?’ said Isaikash.

Kalta-Ar pulled out the wickedly serrated sacrificial dagger from his belt, its cruel blade shimmering without starlight or sun to reflect. He started down the steps and pointed the dagger towards the centre of the complex, at the original rites chamber where mouldering bones were heaped in pits to either side. A dance of wyrdflame lit the edges of the mystic circles within the open chamber.

‘This is daemonsign. The wards must be faltering. Bring me another fifty slaves.’

Letting the corpse fall, its arterial spray spattering the ritual circle in which he stood, Kalta-Ar studied the witch-fire atop the ward pinnacles. He could see no difference to the wan green flames and the shifting aura that connected across the site. A quick survey of the blood-channels etched into the floor of the broad chamber found no blockages – glistening red meta-geometry surrounded him. He even inspected the runes carved into the blade itself, but there was not a mark upon the bloodied knife. The runes shimmered with warp power, coils of tenebrous energy floating from the razor edge.

He gestured for Arkula to bring the next sacrifice. The Word Bearer hauled one of the slaves to its feet by the wrist, almost pulling the limb from its joint. Only a murmur of pain came in response. Kalta-Ar took the wretch’s chin between finger and thumb, turning the face one way and the other, looking for some sign of vitality. There was fear, but not much. The slave looked dead already for all the vigour it displayed.

‘Perhaps we have made them too docile,’ he remarked, slashing open the slave’s throat. Blood fountained across his armour as he tossed the rag doll of a carcass away. ‘The gods thrive on pain and fear, ambition and despair.’

‘They exist without hope, Apostle,’ said Isaikash. ‘With nothing to live for, perhaps their souls are too weak to please the gods.’

Kalta-Ar considered this as he beckoned for another.

‘Did not the great Urizen and Kor Phaeron overturn the altars of the Covenant to punish their laggardly rituals?’ said Arkula.

A scream cut across the vox, silencing any reply.

A scream, drawn out, agonised, no sound Kalta-Ar had ever expected to hear from a legionary. It lasted fully five seconds before abruptly ending.

The signal-ident of the transmission came from Brother Kai-Alak.

‘Aakas, Hora, Apall-Af,’ the Dark Apostle reeled off the names of the closest legionaries. ‘Investigate! All brothers, stand at your guard, and watch the slaves.’

It took half a minute for the three legionaries to close in on Kai-Alak’s last position. Kalta-Ar paced for the full thirty seconds, agitated.

‘Kai-Alak is dead,’ Hora told them over the vox.

‘Dead, not missing?’ Arkula demanded.

‘Definitely dead,’ said Aakas. ‘You’d better see for yourself, Apostle.’

The first element of the scene that drew Kalta-Ar was not the blood and body parts, or the broken pieces of armour scattered across the bare stone floor. It was the slaves. Seven of them, standing compliantly to one side, heads bowed but with their eyes fixed on the remains. Two questions immediately surfaced through the tumult of the Dark Apostle’s thoughts.

‘Why are they still alive, and why aren’t they terrified?’ he asked nobody in particular. Arkula attempted to answer but Kalta-Ar stopped him with a raised hand. ‘I am not interested in your theories, coryphaus. Not yet. Let us observe a little more before we draw conclusions.’

The markings on the broken pieces of armour confirmed that the wearer had been Brother Kai-Alak. He had not only been dismembered and decapitated, but the rest of the remains had been utterly shredded.

‘Gods…’ muttered Isaikash.

‘What have you found?’ said Kalta-Ar.

‘I was just thinking that we heard him screaming,’ explained the legionary. ‘He was alive for a while, feeling everything as this was done to him.’

‘I think it cut off his arms and legs and then went to work on the rest of him,’ added Arkula, with more relish than was entirely appropriate. He picked up half a helm, cloven neatly in twain. Brain matter and blood spilled onto the floor. ‘It saved his head for last.’

‘They must have seen what happened.’ Hora pointed at the slaves, hammers and lever bars still in their hands. ‘They were here when we arrived.’

Kalta-Ar approached the closest and looked down at its grimy face. He activated the external vocaliser of his war-plate, the volume dialled down for personal address.

‘Did you see what did this?’

The slave nodded dumbly.

‘Tell me what you saw.’

‘A shadow, lord of lords,’ said the slave. It moved a wisp of greying hair out of its face and gazed up into the Dark Apostle’s helm lenses. ‘A shadow picked him up and cut him to pieces.’

‘It has to be a daemon,’ said Apall-Af, his bolter pointing to the doorway and then the unglazed windows as if expecting attack. ‘Something that came through the wards.’

‘The wards are sound,’ said Kalta-Ar.

‘Perhaps somewhere on the peri–’

‘The wards are sound!’ Kalta-Ar calmed himself and regarded the slave, thoughts turning slowly into conclusions.

‘What if it was a power that has already been summoned?’ he considered aloud. ‘Something being sustained and hidden within the wards already.’

‘Sustained by whom?’ asked Isaikash. ‘The slaves?’

‘Some kind of pact, perhaps. Maybe they think it will save them. Why else would the daemon not attack them? Why take on an armoured legionary rather than these helpless thralls?’

‘What have you done?’ demanded Arkula, looming over the slaves. They moved away from him a little, but showed as little emotion as normal. ‘What have you unleashed, you gods-damned cretins?’

They stared with vacuous gazes, either not comprehending his meaning, or unable to articulate their response.

‘I want a full search of the entire complex.’ Arkula thrust a finger towards the door. ‘Every room, every hall, every cellar and vault. If they are hiding something, we will find it.’

‘Wait,’ ordered Kalta-Ar when the others started to move. ‘There is another way.’

He held up the ritual blade and looked down at the slave he had spoken to.

‘You are going to confess your wrongs, or you will know pain greater than anything you have lived through thus far.’

There was a spark of a reaction, a moment of fear.

‘I know nothing, lord of lords,’ said the slave. It backed away a step, holding up a hand. ‘I tell you what I saw. The shadow, it tore apart your warrior. It threw him up and took him to pieces. I saw nothing else.’

The others started to chorus their affirmatives of this position.

‘Enough of your lies, scum,’ said Arkula. He slapped a hand back across the face of the nearest slave, slamming it into the rough wall. The skull cracked hard, leaving blood on the pale plaster.

Kalta-Ar had expected an outburst – cries of anger, of pain. Not one of the slaves even moved towards their injured companion. He saw that their attention was fixed not on the wounded slave, nor Arkula, nor the Dark Apostle. They looked at something behind and above him with a mixture of growing horror and disturbing smiles.

He turned quickly, pulling free his crozius. The other legionaries responded with him, bolters raised.

A thing like a shadow waited on top of the wall. It was impossible to make out its actual shape, though there seemed something vaguely humanoid about it. Before any command could leave the Dark Apostle’s lips, it sprang upwards. Silhouetted against the ruddy sky, the shadow fragmented with an ear-splitting screech. Dozens of winged shapes fell upon the Word Bearers, beaks like plasteel blades slashing at their armour. Hora went down under the first flurry, losing an arm as he toppled, his war-plate scattering like pieces of torn paper.

‘Fall back,’ barked Arkula, his commander’s instincts taking over in the face of the unnatural apparition. His tone brooked no argument and even Kalta-Ar found himself responding, retreating swiftly through the door.

Bolters roaring, the Word Bearers closed together and followed.

‘Stop wasting your ammunition!’ snapped Arkula. ‘We have little enough as it is. Do you think bolt-rounds will stop this creature?’

The Word Bearers ceased firing. They darted looks towards Kalta-Ar as they closed around their Dark Apostle, seeking insight from their spiritual leader. He held up the sacrificial blade like a shield, smoke-like wisps of power curling across his gauntlet.

‘It’s in the eastern repository!’ The shout over the vox came from Hasda on the other side of the settlement. A crackle of another transmission cut short, the only sound a strangled gurgle.

Bolter fire echoed from behind the Dark Apostle’s group and they turned, weapons ready.

‘Who is firing?’ demanded Arkula. ‘Reports, for all that is holy. Remember you are legionaries.’

‘There’s something moving through the first vaults.’ Ghoa-Lok spoke hastily, his words coming fast in a flow of combat stimulants rather than panic. ‘I think it’s beneath–’

‘A black pool just swallowed Ghoa-Lok, coryphaus. We are falling back along the southern transitorum.’ Sergeant Dario continued tersely between short gasps. ‘There’s something ahead of us. It’s seeping through the walls of the southern annex. Like oil. We are turning north again, via the presidia.’

‘The slaves are att–’ a desperate shout from Alekas alerted them to a fresh danger. Bolter fire rang out again and hoarse shouts replied.

‘I think this daemon is not so powerful as it pretends,’ said Arkula. ‘Why does it try to attack us one at a time? Nothing conjured by these wretches could really be a threat to your power, Apostle.’

‘You have a plan, coryphaus?’

‘Do not fight with bolts and blades what we can overcome with faith,’ said the second-in-command. ‘It is a daemon, my brother. Banish it, or – better yet – bind it to your will. Turn it back upon the miserable curs that thought to trouble us with the detritus of their worthless prayers.’

‘Apostle, the cathedral is not safe for us,’ said Isaikash. He broke from the circle and headed towards the corridor on the other side of the chamber. ‘If the daemon does not come for us, the slaves will.’

‘You suggest that we run from unarmed scum?’ Arkula snarled. ‘We are not abandoning the Beneficta Diabola.’

‘The grandest tower can be swallowed by enough grains of sand,’ said Kalta-Ar.

Though the idea of using one of the many binding rituals appealed, it took time for such ceremonies. He was not so dismissive of the daemon’s power as Arkula either, knowing that all manner of powerful entities were jealous of the construction being raised in honour of the gods’ most favoured son. A rival prince would need only the smallest opportunity to strike a blow in this fashion – a creature perhaps beyond his knowledge to control.

The Apostle drew his plasma pistol, though more from habit than any confidence it would be of use against the spectre that hunted them. ‘A wise head rules the heart and knows when to concede to greater minds. We do not have the numbers to quell a slave revolt, nor the expertise to defeat this daemon-predator. We will withdraw to the portal bridge and seek the aid of the Urizen.’

The order was transmitted across the vox, though how many of Kalta-Ar’s command remained he did not know. Scattered contact reports claimed the apparition was roaming the south-eastern chambers and passageways, which suited the Dark Apostle. His route lay north, though the speed with which the daemon had earlier relocated its manifestation forestalled any hope that they would progress entirely unmolested. The continuing, sporadic weapons-fire from across the half-built settlement also warned of the spreading slave rebellion.

Led by the Dark Apostle, they ran, heading directly for the north gate. They passed through halls lined with partially sculpted statues, the slaves that had laboured at the figures nowhere to be seen. A threatening silence punctuated by the thud of their boots, distant shouts, the retort of bolters and the hiss of dead vox-links replaced the tick-tap-tick-tap that had irritated Kalta-Ar.

Heading into an antechamber, the knot of Word Bearers came upon a surge of slaves spilling into the opposite doorway. Where before they had been dull-eyed mannequins, now their features were twisted with desperate anger. Frustration boiled into rage, Kalta-Ar’s finger tightened on the trigger of his plasma pistol before he gave thought to the consequences. The ball of energy slammed into the closest slave, incinerating it from groin to throat, the burning remains hurled into its companions.

‘Fists and blades!’ roared Arkula, sprinting into the suddenly howling mob. The warrior crashed into the slaves, trampling the first under armoured boots, lifting a second by the throat to dash its head against the wall.

The others followed swiftly on the commander’s heels, armoured fingers breaking bone and pulverising flesh. Kalta-Ar slashed and stabbed with the sacrificial knife, panting with each blow. The ritual blade burned with inner light as the lifeforce of its victims seeped into the etched metal, the escaping soulstuff enriching the Dark Apostle with growing vigour. He grinned as he cut his way through the press, emerging from the back of the mob into an empty corridor. Around his brothers, bodies were piled against the walls, distended and distorted by inhuman blows.

Elation lasted only a moment. A tenebrous mass billowed through the antechamber, twitching the limbs and dead eyes of the slaves with its passage. Mouths with dozens of lightning-fangs opened in the cloud as it fell upon Apall-Af. It seemed as though an invisible blade punctured the Word Bearer’s gut and lifted him, erupting through his backpack in a shower of ceramite splinters, shattered bone and blood spray. Armour plates fractured as maws sank their insubstantial teeth into the legionary, snapping limbs and rending bloody welts into the flesh within.

His agonised bellows blanketed the vox for a second until Karla-Ar cut the link. Arkula threw himself at the daemon, chainsword snarling. A bladed limb snared out, taking off his head with an almost contemptuous swipe.

‘With me!’ cried Kalta-Ar. The Dark Apostle turned and ran again, barrelling along the narrow passageways that led along the northern wall. He heard the thunder of his subordinates’ footsteps just behind, the wheeze of powered armour pushed to its limits. He reasoned that if the daemon had been summoned within the boundary of the rune-shield, perhaps it might not be able to pass without.

Of course, that left them prey to the other warp denizens that haunted the locale, but the Dark Apostle was willing to risk an unknown threat to escape a very definite one.

He reached a circular window, its chiselled frame ready to accept metalwork in the form of the Eightfold Star of the gods. A guttural, wet noise from Aakas’ vox betrayed his loss to the pursuing daemon just metres behind. The Dark Apostle changed direction, bounding up to the sill of the window. He did not look back as he plunged out into the ruddy gloom. A frisson of static washed through him, a sign that he had passed through the boundary wards.

Sparing not a glance behind, eyes fixed on the arch-tipped promontory ahead, Kalta-Ar pounded across the open ground. Every step was accompanied by the expectation of a semi-substantial claw sliding into his back, or the tell-tale flutter in his thoughts that warned of a daemonic gaze falling upon him.

He heard the exhalations of a rebreather and finally spared a look back.

Isaikash was just a few paces behind. Beyond him a scattering of other red-armoured figures emerged from doors and windows, sprinting across the featureless expanse. Of the apparition, there was no sign.

Kalta-Ar did not slow until he came to the angular wardstones that circumscribed the summit of the hill. Within the ring, more Word Bearers oversaw the continuing labours of other slaves piling stones upon each other to raise a temple about the portal gate.

One wore an ornate suit of Terminator armour, its massive armour plates marked with the symbols of a first acolyte. The sigils were known to Kalta-Ar.

‘Marduk!’ he called out, scattering slaves from his path. ‘Where is the Urizen?’

‘Calm yourself, brother,’ said Marduk, approaching the Dark Apostle with hand raised to halt him.

‘You forget your rank, first acolyte,’ growled Kalta-Ar, coming to a stop a few metres from Marduk. His brothers pounded into the arch-temple and turned, weapons trained back towards the Beneficta Diabola.

‘I am here by the command of Masters Jarulek and Erebus, and I speak with their authority, Kalta-Ar.’ Marduk’s own guard gathered about him as he continued. ‘What is the meaning of this intrusion?’

‘Something powerful, summoned by the slaves, I think. A daemon of considerable wrath. It has already slain half of my company.’

An angry growl issued from the first acolyte as he raised a long-bladed chainsword. ‘And you led it here, to our Lord’s abode?’

While Marduk snapped commands to his warriors, Kalta-Ar found Isaikash among his brethren.

‘How many are left?’ he asked his fellow Word Bearer.

‘Seventeen have made it to the mound, Apostle. I see no others on the plain.’

Kalta-Ar looked out across the expanse between the hill and the Beneficta Diabola. Here and there an armoured body sprawled on the ruddy ground. Dark mists formed close to the corpses, daemonstuff drawn by the escaping souls. Soon other things would come to feed.

‘There, Apostle!’ The shout came from the right, where Ukna-Tav pointed to the north-western corner of the site. A Word Bearer vaulted a low wall, a stream of naked humans flowing after. The legionary turned and fired his bolter, scything down the first handful of slaves to venture after him.

As he turned to continue for the mound, the ground beneath the Word Bearer darkened. Like tar bubbling from a pit, seeping blackness flowed up his legs, swiftly engulfing him to the waist. The legionary fired down into the morass but his bolts simply disappeared without exploding. The thick blackness continued upwards, rivulets of shadow that snaked along his arms and around his throat.

Growing, the umbra lifted the legionary from the ground, snapping an arm at the elbow, the bolter within his grip falling from the fingers. Kalta-Ar could not suppress an empathic wince as a leg contorted acutely, assuming an unnatural angle. The legionary’s vox was clearly not functioning, and he was thankful they were spared more inhuman noises of painful death. Limb-snapping contortions wracked the armoured figure, almost tying the warrior into a knot, ceramite broken, bones shattered.

The daemon-shade dropped the remains to the floor and heaved itself together into the approximation of a human form, though twice as tall as the legionary it had just slain. Tenebrous wings flowed from its back as it advanced, arms ending in spear-like talons.

‘What have you brought upon us?’ Marduk’s voice at his shoulder made Kalta-Ar turn, hearts racing. He dared only a glance at the first acolyte before returning his gaze to the spectre advancing with slow, grim purpose across the level plain.

‘I had no choice,’ said the Dark Apostle. ‘It would have slain us all and come for you without warning.’

‘Ah, so it was for our wellbeing, was it?’

‘Look at it, brother! This is beyond us. We need the Urizen to face such a creature. You must call him.’

‘Must?’

‘This is not the time for your vanity, Marduk,’ snapped Kalta-Ar. The threat of being ripped to pieces by an unstoppable daemon outweighed any trepidation at offending one of the First Chaplain’s favoured servants. He pointed to the dormant portal arch. ‘Can you reach Lorgar?’

‘The primarch has… higher concerns than your survival, Kalta-Ar.’

The bark of bolters drew their attention back to the ring of wardstones, where Kalta-Ar’s warriors met the incoming apparition with a hail of fire. Bolt-rounds detonated across its form, but the fire of their fury disappeared into its darkness.

As it neared, the daemon fluctuated, its smoky exterior becoming like a blizzard, a creature of whiteness with two ebon-black eyes. Forks of black lightning leapt from an outstretched hand, rippling through the body of a Word Bearer. Greasy smoke issuing from rents in his war-plate, the legionary collapsed.

‘We have to fall back across the portal bridge,’ said Kalta-Ar. ‘We must fetch Lorgar.’

‘Fetch, Kalta-Ar?’

The voice came from behind them, as pure as molten gold in the Dark Apostle’s soul. Its tones lifted his spirit in an instant, filling him with warmth.

He turned, as did the others around him. The archway glowed with power, showing a vista of a gigantic citadel-cathedral through the haze within its black frame. In front stood a gigantic figure, thrice the height of the legionaries, a golden-skinned entity wrapped in cloak and robe of flaming rune-shapes that swirled from its body. In one hand it held a wickedly spiked mace that throbbed with black power. The other bore a rod of intricately wound metal, tipped with a three-eyed skull layered with golden sigils that constantly weaved about each other. Eyes of uniform azure burrowed into Kalta-Ar.

‘I heard your woe, my son.’

The voice washed through the Dark Apostle like a soothing balm, stilling his agitation, strengthening his resolve. Still, the presence of his primarch was near overwhelming and he fell to his knees, head bowed.

‘My Lord Aurelian, forgive my weaknesses. A creature of daemonic spite has disrupted the great works here.’

‘I see no daemon.’

Kalta-Ar glanced back towards his brothers. The entity that had pursued them had reached the top of the hill amid a storm of bolter fire. It cast aside legionaries with sweeps of glittering claws, leaving tattered remains draped across the stonework of the outer shrine.

‘This is no daemon.’ Lorgar raised his rod, beckoning to the blood-stained whirlwind tearing through the last of the Dark Apostle’s warriors. ‘Come to me. Brother.’

With a last flurry of activity that turned another legionary to shards of ceramite and ribbons of flesh, the apparition coalesced into a recognisable figure. It was of equal height to the daemon primarch, clad in black battleplate with long-taloned gauntlets. A pair of wings stretched from its ornate backpack, fashioned as intricate metallic raven feathers. The face was as pale as snow, gaunt, with eyes as dark as coal, framed by shoulder-length black hair.

Kalta-Ar felt his breath dying in his lungs as he looked up at the unmistakeable features of Corvus Corax, the primarch of the Raven Guard. A flurry of questions flooded his thoughts but all remained unanswered as Corax spoke.

‘What has happened to you, brother?’

‘I have ascended,’ said Lorgar. He indicated Corax with a twitch of his rod. ‘I might ask the same of you.’

The Ravenlord strode forwards, intent on Lorgar Aurelian. Kalta-Ar and his warriors scattered before him, grateful to be free of his wrath. Marduk and his coterie closed about their primarch but a look sent them away.

‘I am what I always have been,’ said Corax. ‘I am vengeance incarnate. I am justice delivered. This place, beyond the veil, has revealed what we all are. Underneath the veneer of humanity our father crafted for us, we are of the warp.’

‘Have you come to make oath to the powers that are your true creator?’

‘No. I swore to destroy all Chaos taint from the galaxy. You will be the first fallen brother to die beneath my blades.’

‘I am not the creature you fought at Isstvan,’ said Lorgar, raising his mace.

‘Nor am I!’

Kalta-Ar barely followed the lunge of Corax, so swift it was. A black wind threw him aside as dark fire crackled from the rod of Lorgar. With a thunderous shockwave that hurled the Word Bearers to the ground, the two demigods clashed.

After a long life of bloodshed and devotion to the True Gods there was little that awed Kalta-Ar. The sight of the two primarchs battling within the empyrean sphere left him shocked and breathless.

Infused with the raw primordial force, the combatants were ablaze with power. Corax seemed a towering storm wreathed in white lightning, the cloud formed of multitudinous ravens. Their cawing was deafening, the flash of their talons and beaks the spark of the tempest.

Into the shadow Lorgar rose like a fireball, alight with a tornado of burning rune shapes. Meteoric sigils rained down on the raven tempest, cleaving ember-edged furrows through the dense mass. They slammed into the buildings around the bridge-arch, shattering masonry, incinerating the corpses of Corax’s victims.

The Ravenlord struck back, hails of flaring claws ripping the air itself, leaving rents through the rune-robe of the Urizen. Each stroke left a shriek in its aftermath that shredded the nerves as much as the talons shredded Lorgar’s immaterial form.

Kalta-Ar flinched when the sweeping head of the Word Bearer’s mace slammed into the chest of his storm-wreathed foe. The impact was greater than any thunderclap, levelling the walls around them.

Rolling to his back, shattered stone pouring from his armour, the Dark Apostle watched the titanic combatants soar past, Corax with a quartet of gleaming spear-talons driven through Lorgar’s throat. The Urizen tried to lash out with his mace but was held close by the Ravenlord’s inhuman grip.

Together they crashed to the ground, their impact flattening again the few Word Bearers that had regained their feet.

‘The portal-bridge!’

Marduk’s shout drew Kalta-Ar’s attention to the wavering energy field within the archway. Dark sparks rippled across its fluctuating surface. It was visibly weakening.

‘We cannot be trapped here,’ declared the Dark Apostle, stepping towards the waning portal.

‘It is sustained by the Urizen’s will,’ declared Marduk, intercepting him. ‘It means our master is losing his power!’

The two primarchs had assumed fully humanoid form again in the heart of the crater their fall had made. Lorgar’s left shoulder sagged, his rod swaying low in his grasp. Rune-shapes crawled across his form, no longer a robe of office but forming armoured plates etched with warp-symbols.

Corax flexed claws like sword blades, his expression pitiless as he took a step towards Lorgar.

Marduk opened fire.

The flare of his combi-bolter hit the Ravenlord in the chest and face, a welter of detonations that rocked his stride. Kalta-Ar fired his plasma pistol on instinct, the blast hitting Corax in the midriff, splashing cerulean energy across his ornate black war-plate.

Other fire joined it, missiles and more bolts from Marduk’s guard.

Lorgar summoned a nimbus of power and threw out a shield of force that lifted Corax from his feet, buckling his wings in the unearthly hurricane. The Ravenlord became a flock once more of fire-eyed black birds, but the swell of Lorgar’s will continued to hurl the other primarch’s incarnations upwards, scattering them to the sky.

‘Quickly, our lord,’ shouted Marduk.

Lorgar lumbered towards them, his wounds streaming tiny crimson runes like blood.

Kalta-Ar looked up. The Ravenlord gathered again into a single mass, a dark comet headed directly for them.

The Urizen was first through the portal, his massive frame leaving a shadow of his passing as the other Word Bearers dashed through after. Kalta-Ar lunged the last few strides, throwing himself headlong into the miasma under the arch as chill shade swallowed him.

He found himself in a large chamber, colourful mosaic underfoot, the walls covered with fresh murals, white vaulted ceiling and domes far above. Part of the Templum Inficio. He had no time for his surroundings, eyes drawn back to the gate.

Shrieking, the raven flock scratched and pecked, but they could not pass the warp barrier.

Lorgar glared at the apparition on the far side, chest heaving as though out of breath, his head crowned with a halo of black warp fronds.

Corax assumed his mortal shape again, one cheek bloodied and bruised, his eye almost closed. There was much damage to his armour, but he leaned close to the portal, eyes boring through the divide.

‘I have your scent now, Lorgar,’ growled the Ravenlord. His face contorted with monstrous rage. ‘I will find you, Lorgar! I will destroy you and every vessel you have filled with your taint!’

Lorgar staggered away and the portal arch fell dull, leaving only bare stone within its pillars.

‘We can assemble a force and return, our lord,’ said Marduk, hurrying after the primarch.

‘All is not lost,’ promised Kalta-Ar, not wishing to seem any less dedicated. ‘I will rebuild the Beneficta Diabola.’

Their entreaties continued as they followed Lorgar through the corridors and halls, heading towards the centre of the grand construction spreading across their new capital on Sicarus. Stairs took them high, to the tower at the heart of everything. Black doors opened at Lorgar’s approach and he strode within, no word uttered, no backward glance.

With a noise that echoed in Kalta-Ar’s soul as much as his ears, the doors slammed shut, leaving him and Marduk on the threshold. There was no handle, no keyhole, nothing by which they might open the edifice.

A white Colchisian rune burned into life upon the door, and another.

‘Deny fate,’ read Kalta-Ar. He turned to the first acolyte. ‘What does that mean?’

Marduk took several steps back and looked towards the pinnacle of the otherworldly tower. Golden fire burned from the summit.

Others were hurrying from the surrounding cloisters, demanding to know what had happened. Kalta-Ar recognised Kor Phaeron amongst them and suppressed a groan.

‘What does this herald?’ asked one of the approaching Word Bearers.

‘We wait for his return,’ replied Marduk. ‘Until then, the great work must continue.’

A LESSON IN IRON

David Guymer

The ork kill-kroozer shook hard, shuddering off vast quantities of its ramshackle superstructure as it boosted for the malformed abscess of an event horizon.

The anomalous region was a smear of abused reality a million kilometres across, compressed by hideous internal forces to a fraction of that in height and a depth that auspex read, impossibly, as zero. Sensor readings terminated there. The universe ceased to exist at that point. There were half a dozen known warp rifts in the growing Imperium. In a region of space containing ten billion stars, that made them about a million times less abundant than black holes. The standing edict of the Navis Nobilite and the Naval academies of Terra was to give them a wide berth and, a handful of apocryphal tales from rogue traders aside, no one had ever dared venture this close.

The Venom-class destroyer Strontium Wave broke off pursuit almost immediately as ether distortions began to smoke her void shields.

The kill-kroozer plunged on, heedless, chasing after the two equally massive junk ships that were already dissolving into the bent reality at the eye of the anomaly, its drive stacks sun-hot, its crude shields spasming under the unnatural onslaught.

It was not the Strontium Wave they fled.

Darkening the void to their stern came the Fist of Iron. A Gloriana-class battleship. The most advanced ship of the line to be launched from the yards of Luna since the death of Old Night. Flagship of the Gorgon.

For her to be committed with only a single escort was not uncommon, for Ferrus Manus understood war and its instruments in a way that the wolves of Russ and Horus never would. The Fist of Iron, unique amongst the warships of the recently warranted 52nd Expedition Fleet and the newfound primarch’s command, had the firepower to win this alone.

It was an efficient use of his resources.

The primarch sat upon a throne of black iron and Karaashi basalt, following the flicker-flash of the bridge’s main oculus as metal debris from the kill-kroozer burned up on the navigational shields or before the fury of the point-defence guns. He was a rugged, brutal giant, carved in stone, slabbed in plates of blackened ceramite and hung with heavy mail. His eyes glittered like empty silver vessels as they beheld the pyrotechnics.

‘That’s more than far enough,’ said Harik Morn, veteran sergeant of the Avernii Clan’s First Order, eyeing the stained oculus view as though it left a sour taste in his mouth.

‘The orks seem to think it can be done,’ said Santar, grinning across at the tanned old Terran from the left hand of Ferrus’ throne. Ferrus’ gene-seed imparted little beauty, and joviality still less, and none in the Legion typified the absence of those traits like Sergeant Gabriel Santar. His grin was like a tectonic fracture.

With the first captain that Ferrus had inherited from Amadeus DuCaine and the era of the Storm Walkers falling in battle to the alien gorge, it would be one of Morn or Santar who bore the mantle next. Both of them knew it, but Ferrus was in no hurry to make that decision.

He wanted to see them prove their worth, knowing there was another ready to claim the honour should they fail.

‘Well-known thinkers, orks,’ said Morn, dryly, arms folded over the elaborate design of his antique breastplate. ‘Never an edge they wouldn’t leap off. You want to follow them in…?’ He inclined his head towards the oculus.

There was a devil in them, Ferrus’ children: they were independent, prone to rash action, ruled by emotion and pride. It was Medusans like Santar in whom the flaw was most pronounced, but they strove to control that fire with the same objectivity and logic that Ferrus had learned on the same harsh parent world.

A parallel spectrum of colours bled through the oculus as the lead ork cruiser vanished into the rift. The mortal crew groaned in dismay and averted their faces from the vivisected rainbow that radiated off the event horizon. Even Santar stuck out his lower lip.

The display glinted off Ferrus’ eyes, impermeable as mirrors.

‘Warning,’ Xanthus chittered. The Mechanicum representative to the 52nd was a bent figure in a frayed scarlet cloak, standing with the aid of a copper-inlaid metal staff in a specifically modified operations pulpit. One metal-scaled hand was clamped to a hub augur display. A febrile mass of manipulator arms whipped from slits in his robes to attack a myriad of haptic controls even as he turned towards Ferrus and his legionaries. ‘I have no data with which to predict conditions within a warp anomaly.’

‘Then we will be the first,’ said Ferrus.

‘Lords!’

The battleship’s mortal commander, Laeric, was a thickset man, already balding in his thirties. The sweat on his scalp was stained purple and green by the distortions in the oculus, as if by oil, his hands gripping the safety rail that surrounded the five unequal figures on the bridge’s command platform, eyes filled with terror.

But Ferrus did not know terror. He feared neither death nor failure.

Only being outshone.

‘Dismantling the Rust empire was our responsibility. Even if the Seraphina Offensive was waged before my leadership I will not have my Legion’s most famous victory tarnished by the existence of survivors. After them, shipmaster. Ahead full.’

Liquescent tendrils of energy burned across the Fist of Iron’s bows, an aurora of pinks and blues that ignited her navigational shields as though she plunged headlong into the atmosphere of an as-yet unrealised world. Eerie harmonics looped through the internal comms grids, mangled, distorted sounds that emerged from the ship’s augmitters as pleas for mercy, cries of anguish, the begging whispers of familiar voices. A resonant effect from the voids. An onslaught of some kind. But Ferrus was accustomed to terrain that could kill, an instinctual understanding that he had poured into the design of his flagship.

He considered informing Laeric and his crew of the sound’s origin, but decided against it.

On Medusa, he had battled the giant elementals that dwelled within its mountains, conversed with ancient spirits that spoke in magmic eructation and the shaking of the earth, aided an Iron Father in the exorcism of an enraged machine, and he knew the Emperor’s ‘Truth’ for a useful lie.

Let the mortals be afraid.

Let them face their nightmares, endure and emerge the stronger, or else fail and strengthen the collective by their expulsion, for Ferrus’ Legion had no place for the frail of spirit.

‘Augur sweeps of the interior,’ said Ferrus. ‘I want them now.’

‘Aye, sir,’ said Laeric, holding tight to the rattling handrail and shouting the instruction down to his junior officers.

‘There is a tremendous degree of signal distortion,’ said Xanthus calmly, a moment later, plugged directly into the battleship’s abrasive spirit. ‘False reads. Sensor echoes. The effect worsens progressively with distance from the Fist of Iron, but not to any mathematical corollary. Interesting.’

Still gripping the handrail in both hands, Laeric took his juniors’ reports and relayed them to the primarch. ‘We’ve a reliable augur radius of a few hundred metres at best.’

‘They are in here somewhere,’ scowled Santar.

‘Maybe we can look through a window?’ suggested Morn.

‘Maybe you should.’

‘I am programming the augurs to scan for particle traces from the orks’…’ The Mechanicum adept hesitated for a moment, his thought processes marked by a clockwork tick as he struggled for an acceptable terminology. ‘…engines. Our entry vectors were identical. Their drive emissions should be traceable.’

‘And?’ said Ferrus.

‘Plotting.’

Ferrus grunted. ‘Weapons are functioning, at least?’

‘Lances at full charge, lord.’ Laeric read from a fitfully glowing screen. ‘Macro-batteries loaded and locked. Targeting matrices… Well, they’re online, lord. We’ll see how well they function when the time comes.’

The curl of a smile threatened Ferrus’ lips. If there was one thing he admired, it was candour.

‘At least we know the shields are working,’ added Morn, frowning as another squeal of feedback harrowed through the bridge’s comms.

‘Contacts!’

The female voice yelled up from the sensorium pits – no formality of chain of command here and Ferrus expected none. He nodded an acknowledgement, ignoring the hammer-thump of his hearts, the urge to beat his fist on his armrest that Horus or Russ would undoubtedly have indulged had they been in his place, and presented his bridge with iron.

‘Real-views on the source. Now.’

‘Aye, lord. Working.’

‘Mass signatures,’ the woman continued, speaking over the other officers, a screed of consciousness direct from the augur reports as they spilled onto her screens. ‘Two thousand kilometres off the port bow. I think. Distance is… elastic. Mass equivalent to four capital-sized xenos vessels.’

‘Four?’ Ferrus frowned down at her. ‘We pursued only three.’ The woman paled under his direct regard. ‘A fourth vessel already within the anomaly perhaps?’

‘They were not fleeing us,’ said Morn. His gaze dragged from Ferrus to Santar, lingering a pointed moment, then on to encompass Laeric and his mortal crew. ‘They were luring us into a trap.’

‘The Fist of Iron can still best four ork cruisers,’ said Santar.

Laeric nodded, but kept his obvious doubts for himself.

‘And if there are more beyond our detection range? We are barely a dozen light years from the old Krooked Klaw Empire. If their remnants have begun to rebuild here–’

‘Improbable.’ Xanthus interjected.

‘If they have begun to rebuild inside this anomaly,’ Morn repeated, more forcibly, ‘if they have adapted their systems to its effects.’

Ferrus forestalled the Terran’s counsel with one raised cold metal finger. He welcomed it, but his decision, once made, was absolute. ‘It is equally likely that the mass readings are “elastic” as well.’

Santar grunted agreement.

‘Real-view established,’ announced Xanthus, cutting further argument short as all eyes turned to the oculus.

The large oval screen was plagued by static, untranslatable energetic features assuming physical shapes as one viewed them, like images in a cloud. If any man could be so degenerate as to see naught but contorted faces and grasping hands in a cloud. Xanthus’ beetling industry and the efforts of the crew succeeded in smoothing out the bulk of the audio, leaving only sporadic bursts of static as the real-view centred on the mass of four capital-sized vessels, becalmed on a storm of elemental colour…

…their wreckage strewn over several thousand kilometres of tormented space.

‘What did I say?’ muttered Morn. ‘Edge. Leap.’

‘What happened?’ Ferrus asked of the bridge at large.

‘Analysing,’ said Xanthus.

Laeric leaned over the handrail, the curved bar rattling up against his gut with the shearing forces currently flexing and bowing the ship’s hull, as a gaggle of decorated under-officers whispered urgently up at him from the main deck. Ferrus could not make out what they were saying, but he heard Laeric dismiss them angrily, going so far as to raise a hand to strike a young lieutenant who did not withdraw speedily enough to his station.

‘A problem, shipmaster?’ Ferrus asked.

‘Nothing, lord. Another sensor ghost.’

‘I will be the judge of that.’

Laeric cleared his throat nervously, evidently wishing he had not dismissed his juniors so hastily. ‘My crew are certain that these are indeed the ships we pursued into the anomaly, but thermal decay and material analysis would appear to suggest they were destroyed years ago. Decades.’

‘Impossible,’ said Xanthus.

‘Lord.’ Santar pointed to a shard of darkness within the oculus’ clearing view-frame.

A ship.

Its ram-like stem bowed under the caress of evanescent flames, its dorsal spine shorn messily in half. Its hull armour was monstrously thick, but pitted as the surface of an asteroid. A few shavings of black paint remained in harder-to-attack spots – between armour plates, beneath the cupolae of macro-batteries. The weathered shadow of an aquila was just visible on the slab keel of its fortress bow.

A Legiones Astartes strike cruiser.

‘It is one of mine,’ Ferrus breathed.

‘Impossible,’ Xanthus said again.

‘Most definitely impossible, lord,’ said Laeric, even more rattled, if anything, by the presence of the Imperial derelict than he had been by the penetration of the rift itself. ‘I know every ship in the Fifty-Second Expedition.’

‘I have other children. Those still fighting under the Emperor in the First Expedition Fleet. Those in the Eighteenth, or the Thirty-Third?’

‘No, lord!’ Laeric bit back something he would have later regretted. He rubbed the back of his head. ‘I’m not even confident I recognise the class.’

Ferrus returned his silvered gaze to the oculus, the derelict growing incidentally more massive as the Fist of Iron moved relative to it. Close enough to see chunks of orkish debris bounce soundlessly from its broken shell, coils of unnatural flame, self-igniting somehow despite the empty vacuum of the anomaly, gyrating down its length.

‘Prepare boarding parties and ready my gunship. Santar, Morn, Xanthus, you will accompany me.’

It was a mystery. A challenge.

And Ferrus never could dismiss a challenge.

Arkal Metrician tapped the side of his helmet, the square section of welded plasteel and micro-rivets that contained his armour’s vox-antennae. Pathetic. The warzones he had fought over. Afrik. Ionus. Rust. All without the benefit of Mk II. How quickly one came to depend on it.

Pathetic.

‘Still no contact with Sergeant Boros?’

Ruugal’s lean face was white in the beam from Metrician’s lamp, dark eyes narrowing to pins, a plastek breath mask strapped over his nose and mouth. His helmet was open, a glossy piece of black carapace, but fitted with tracking systems and short-range vox capability that those legionaries who had battled on through the intermittent communication blackouts of Mk I power armour would have envied.

‘Don’t worry yet, boy. During the Ooranian uprising, my squad and I went three entire days without vox contact.’

Ruugal frowned, in no way enlivened by yet another anecdote from the Unification Wars of Greater Sol, and turned to pad up the unlit corridor from the blown access hatch.

The stressed metal creaked: with the Scouts’ tread; with the impacts of what was left of the ork ships; even with the barely perceptible gravitic shifts as the Fist of Iron fought to hold at anchor in the storm. It groaned.

It struck Metrician as odd, now he thought about it, that this lifeless wreck did not have to fight as hard as the primarch’s flagship to remain still.

The light beams of the other Scouts, spearing from lumens clipped to the stocks of shotcannons and autoguns, painted the bulkheads. Bare metal glittered like silver in the after dark, and Metrician suppressed a shiver.

Exposed to the void, but sheltered from the worst effects of the rift by a labyrinth of internal corridors and doorways, everything was exactly as it must have been when the ship had been lost. There were exterior maintenance tools in hatches. Danger notices inscribed in Imperial Gothic. Atmosphere suits sized for mortal wear hung in glass-fronted lockers. One was open. The black fabric erupted with returned light as Metrician’s helmet beam panned across.

Everything was familiar and yet… different.

The sound of something metallic clattering on a deckplate echoed up from the distant halls of the listing ship, and six lumen beams converged on the far end of the corridor. They wavered. The sounds of breathing laboured through the squad link.

Deeply pathetic.

‘It’ll be Lagethar,’ he grunted. ‘Two decks down.’

The Scouts relaxed, a loose clatter as grips un-tensed and gunstocks dropped to sit tight against chest-plates, light beams scattering as if for cover.

The rawest and the eldest: that was who the primarch always threw in first. Prove the former. Purge the latter. Metrician couldn’t complain. He would probably do the same.

‘Could there be orks still alive over here?’ whispered Ruugal.

‘Not a chance,’ he said, before adding, in the hermetic privacy of his Mk II powered helm. ‘Answer me, Boros. In the Emperor’s name, answer me.’

Sharik Borrgan was driving into the pumping chamber the second that Hemtaal had the door forced. The shorn-off muzzle of his combat shotgun led, lumen beam scoring glancing hits off steel jackets and vent covers. Everything was greased and shiny, as though it had been tended that very day. That very hour. The huge pistons bracketed to the walls were for cycling air through the deck, but they were still now, quiet. The great bellows lay empty.

‘Sergeant?’ he called out as he pushed deeper into the cave of inert iron.

The gunfire he had heard had definitely come from this chamber, but it was empty. No sign of the Scout Sergeant. No sign of orks. Sharik’s query echoed out through the gaps in the metal as he manually dialled the frequencies of his helmet vox-attachment. Nothing there but faint giggles of static.

He waved for the rest of the squad to spread out.

‘Sergeant Boros?’

A sudden creak and pop of metal spun him around, shotgun thrust out at neck height, as a crippling wave of distortion ran through the port bulkhead. Hemtaal shouted something in warning. Steel buckled and split, and Sharik cried out, squeezing himself into the scant cover of a piston jacket as bolts shot out from the crumpled section. One thudded head first into his rerebrace, leaving a meaty bruise over the bicep. Another drove point-first into his unarmoured throat.

He gargled, blood spewing between his fingers as he groped for it, the idea careening through his skull of yanking it out. He found it, couldn’t get purchase, fingers slipping in blood from metal to flesh and over again. He was still breathing though. Still breathing. And he was a Space Marine of the Iron Tenth: he would come back from worse.

Swallowing on pain, he staggered from cover, pointed his shotgun at the bulkhead and tried to concentrate.

There was something there. Difficult to define. A corposant in the metal.

The wound in his neck bubbled as he tried to make words. ‘What. In Old Night?’

A cry from the chamber’s entrance called on his attention. Hemtaal. There was a gunshot, the hard thud-thud-thud of auto-fire, the whoosh of Zaegerr’s flamer.

Sharik stumbled around a half-circle to see something rip Jerek in two from left shoulder to right hip. His body emptied, enhanced transhuman viscera slapping the deckplates as though someone had upended a slop bucket, and then, for no reason at all, catching fire. The eviscerated Scout burned pink and hot, throwing off an oily smoke that left Sharik gagging despite his breath mask, pain stabbing him through his throat.

Zaegerr let rip with his flamer again, howling as he sprayed burning promethium across the chamber and set walls and piston jackets alight.

It distressed the creature – the thing – but little more. Its suprasonic shriek was raw fury, punishing the bulkheads with wave after wave of manifest violence, tearing the delicate system of bellows to shreds. Enough of an opening, however, for Sergeant Salem Hektur to drag Zaegerr back into the corridor and thrust his bolt pistol into the entity’s ‘mouth’.

The Terran veteran was immense in his power armour and battle honours, an awe-inspiring presence.

His bolter’s report was deafening.

The beast was an uncertain blur of nightmarish configurations, as though it were spinning through an infinite bestiary of surreal and impossible forms, uncertain which to adopt, but Sharik thought he glimpsed something in the heart of it. It was emotion rather than form, and yet the impression it evoked in him was of long limbs, sweeping horns, heavy claws – although none in any ratio that would correspond to a naturally proportioned creature, nor anything that corresponded even to itself from moment to moment.

The volley of shells passed through it without contacting anything with a mass before detonating in the burning wall behind it.

And yet it could touch. It could lift a Space Marine and it could kill.

What breed of xenos strain was this?

A chainsword revved to full speed with a terrific shriek as Sergeant Hektur set such questions firmly to one side.

The whirring adamantium teeth of the veteran’s blade battered the surrounding metal as he hacked through the chimeric apparition. It retaliated in kind, as if feeding off the Iron Hand’s own passions, claws solidifying from thin air to rake the sergeant’s armour, drawing particular relish from shredding the victory laurels and oaths papers affixed to his plate. Air whistled from broken seals. Liquid sealant gurgled up from the wounded ceramite.

With a snarl, Sharik turned his shotgun towards the fight. It was slippery with blood, his forearms slick with it. He managed a roar, trusting that Hektur’s power armour could shrug off his grapeshot for they had practised such melee tactics many times, and fired.

The shot whizzed through the ethereal beast, tearing through it like a hand waving through thick mist. He pumped the action, shells spitting from the breech, raised the gun and fired again. The thing gave a shriek that was felt in the heart and in the gut, rather than heard through the ears and processed by the brain. Sharik worked his pump action a second time, but the alien was already beginning to dissipate, leaving a lingering trace of anger and the murder-shriek of Hektur’s chainsword.

This was no ork.

How did all the weapons and physical enhancements available to the Legiones Astartes avail them against an alien that could not be touched?

‘Behind you.’

The sound of Sergeant Boros’ voice pulled him short.

He turned around, and immediately gasped as he felt something strike through his chest carapace, through his chest, carving his primary and secondary hearts, and erupt from his back plate. He looked down, growing dizzy, to see himself impaled by a bone-spear of sputtering energy. He felt cold, as though opened to the void.

He could still hear the roar of Hektur’s chainsword, but it was dimming, changing, becoming the roar of something else altogether.

In the narrow antechamber adjoining the main bridge they found the first evidence of a crew.

The servitor was enshrined within a hub nexus of carbonised steel beneath a wire halo, most of which fed into the huge set of doors that blocked access to the bridge proper. Ferrus was familiar with the control setup, but had never seen it assembled with such exaggerated occultism, not even in the cabalistic tech-shrines that persisted still in some of Medusa’s most isolated and challenged regions. Harik Morn tilted the lobotomised unit’s head back. It was vacuum-desiccated, eyes staring at the ceiling more blankly even than usual through a rimy cataract of void frost. The Terran checked it over for signs of life – or causes of death – while Santar and the rest of the veteran squad moved ahead to manhandle the doors.

Ferrus watched them, the heavy doors thunking as the power-assisted strength of seven legionaries tested the locks, listening to the sporadic reports of combat that trickled from his helmet vox. He had seen nothing, but an ill-feeling followed him regardless. As if he had been led here. Toyed with.

Metal hands heated the haft of Forgebreaker, the great warhammer of his brother’s making, until it glowed red, spitting like a melta-torch in his grip.

‘I had assumed the vessel abandoned, the crew taken or killed,’ he said. ‘Everyone has heard the stories of ghost ships adrift in the warp.’

‘We’ve seen no real crew member yet,’ said Morn.

‘And yet this is here.’ Ferrus indicated the dead servitor.

Morn shrugged. ‘You can’t run a ship with just a servitor. Or servitors.’

‘If you have concluded your… analysis, Sergeant Morn.’ Adept Xanthus appeared much the same as he had aboard the Fist of Iron, but for a flex-plastek tube that emerged from the dark of his hood, looped over his shoulder and disappeared again under the folds of his robes. ‘If this is indeed a Tenth Legion vessel then I should be able to overrule the servitor’s codewalls and open the bridge doors.’

‘Then do it,’ said Ferrus.

A clutch of mechadendrites emerged through the tattered layers of robe covering the magos’ chest, suckering onto interface ports across the servitor’s mortal husk with an audible slurp of suction. The servitor gave an involuntary twitch. Morn swore and struggled to bring his bolter up.

‘An autonomic reaction,’ said Xanthus. ‘A response to code inputs. Do not be alarmed.’

‘You could have said that before you started,’ muttered Morn.

Bolter up, the Terran moved to join Santar and his Avernii Clan brothers at the doors, crouching into fire positions or readying grips on power weapons.

Ferrus forced his grip to relax, his hands to cool to a simmer.

‘What is taking so long?’

‘Either the codes are subtly dissimilar from the standard protocols or the servitor’s command algorithms have suffered degradation over time. It may take– correction: inputs accepted. Doors opening.’ There was an ascending sequence of clunks as the locks disengaged and the goliath doors ground apart.

Spot lamps mounted on helmets, pauldrons and the barrels of boltguns stabbed into the gloom of the bridge. Metal plates and a mess of ceiling ductwork glinted back, the massive outline of an Icon Mechanicus. For a second even Ferrus held his breath, but there was nothing, just the faintest scent, like anodised steel, that carried despite his armour’s hermetic seals and the utter absence of an atmosphere.

Santar and Morn were first in, youngest and eldest, each taking two warriors with them and leading them left and right respectively onto the gangwalks that circled the primary command platform. Ferrus followed in with the last two Avernii Clan veterans in tow and Xanthus scuttling to keep pace, driving straight towards the command hub.

‘More servitors,’ came Santar’s vox-growl. ‘You were right, lord. No sign of crew. Or anything else.’

‘Same.’ Morn. ‘But these rune inscriptions on the bulkheads – they’re not Gothic, nor any form of Medusan I’ve seen.’

‘Lingua Technis,’ said Xanthus quietly.

‘This is no Mechanicum warship,’ said Ferrus.

‘It is not.’

Enthroned upon the command platform they found an answer, and several more questions.

It was clearly a legionary of the Iron Hands, the Clan Raukaan and Legion markings on his armour confirmed it – but he had been butchered, pulled apart and put back together in the crudest way imaginable, the base mechanics of what made a legionary maintained at the expense of the perfection that the Emperor had crafted into His children’s flesh. It reminded Ferrus of greenskin work: powerful, functional, ugly. The runaway reconstructive surgery had left little of the wearer’s original armour intact, but what remained was unusually baroque in design, engraved with unfamiliar symbols and of a pattern that did not conform to any iteration of Legiones Astartes armour.

‘If I might tender an extrapolation,’ Xanthus muttered. ‘The warp is known to render space and even time mutable. Is it possible, under such a conjecture, that a Tenth Legion vessel could have become snared in this warp anomaly at some indeterminate point in the future, only to emerge – for want of a more appropriate immetereological nomenclature – now?’

Ferrus looked down at the bionically abused corpse.

An ugly future.

‘Not while I live.’

A cry split through the vox-unit, and Ferrus turned to see an immense xenos creature manifesting over Gabriel Santar. The legionary’s left arm was already gone, the evidence of a bite mark left in the bubbling ceramite of the screaming warrior’s shoulder. The creature roared and the whole ship seemed to vibrate to it, as though it served as nothing more than the vox-piece for something even larger, even deeper in the warp.

The burnt electrical stench was powerful enough to taste.

Answering cries retook the Legion vox-bands, the sudden eruption of bolter-fire lighting the abandoned bridge in flashes.

In bursts of muzzle flare, Ferrus saw more of the xenoforms come. They crawled out of the bulkheads, running together, burning with pinkish flame, as if they had been drawn in from the outer hull and given gibbering, capering independence.

Morn shredded one with bolter fire. It wobbled and cackled. Like shooting into a fire. Ferrus took two giant strides off the central dais and obliterated it with a single thunderclap-blow from Forgebreaker that simultaneously demolished a square metre of deck. It did not laugh at that. ‘Absurd life forms,’ he heard Xanthus mutter, as the two veterans assigned to their protection took defensive postures and began methodically carving the bridge into halves with bolter fire.

On the other side of the platform, to Ferrus’ left, Santar was being dragged to his feet, the second legionary blazing into the inconstant behemoth that had taken his sergeant’s arm. Shrugging off the helping hands, Santar deactivated his gladius’ mag-sheath and hurled himself at the beast with a roar.

The creature recoiled from the blade, suffering under its edge even as the concomitant bursts of bolter fire passed straight through it.

But Ferrus had the prickling feeling that it was not the blade doing the damage. It was the man. Perhaps it was the unnatural conditions inside the rift, but even from afar Ferrus could feel Santar’s pummelling fury. It was like Medusan galefrost, and the relentless battering chill of it was slowly tearing the abomination apart.

Morn, however, was being swamped. The Terran was positively incandescent, and it drew the creatures to him like a targeting hex.

Ferrus bludgeoned another streaming entity midair. It blasted apart, soupy spatters of corrosive matter glowing as they rained over him, hissing as they ignited on his armour. Gripping the weapon tightly in both fists, he gave a clangourous cry. He was a god of war, born to fight, bred to win, and every superhuman sinew in him strained to do so now. But to what end? Santar had delivered a potent lesson in iron.

Passion was a weapon borne by all who took the Gorgon’s blood, but it was logic and reason that could make it a tool.

‘Ferrus Manus,’ he said, activating the Legion frequency that would be heard by every legionary aboard the cursed derelict, and on the Fist of Iron too. ‘Fighting withdrawal. Back to the gunships.’

‘No!’ Morn panted, laying into the maelstrom of hungering xenos with bolter and power axe. ‘This… is a Legion… vessel. I will not… leave it… in the hands of these… things.’

‘This vessel is a wreck,’ Ferrus replied, remaining on the wider frequency so that all could hear. ‘Honour be damned.’

Xanthus looked up, barely two-thirds of Ferrus’ stupendous height. The backwards tilt caused the adept’s hood to slip, exposing for a moment the metal plates and writhing inner workings concealed within. ‘Disregard honour, lord primarch. Be logical. Think of the technological advances that a vessel from two, three, four thousand years into sidereal future could confer. Think of the disasters that foreknowledge may avert.’

The two veterans shepherded the adept and the primarch back towards the blast doors, constricting the kill-zone of relative safety between them. Santar had cut his way through to Morn, practically dragging him off while their brothers continued firing. If Ferrus had one lesson for his children it would be that there was no such thing as defeat, provided there were lessons to be learned.

If nothing else, he had found his new first captain today.

He afforded the wretched refuse of an Iron Hands legionary on the command platform one final look.

‘Whatever this future has to offer, magos, I will have no part of it.’

THE ATONEMENT OF FIRE

David Annandale

Imprimis: the compliance of Diavanos was entirely peaceful. It was, and is, a reminder that our Crusade is first and foremost not about conquest, but about bringing illumination to the galaxy. The people of Diavanos greeted the promulgation of the Imperial Truth with rejoicing. (Addendum: The enthusiasm did, in some quarters, approach religious fervour, up to and including claims of fulfilled prophecy. Noting and countering this tendency immediately proved effective, and it is to be regretted that early detection was not possible on Khur.)

Secundo: despite their long isolation during the Age of Strife, the people of Diavanos managed to maintain a rich culture. Impressions formed by walking the streets of the capital, Ecstasia, are dominated by the pronounced elegance of the stained-glass towers, whose survival to the present day is remarkable.

Tertio: Diavanos’ contributions to the Crusade post-compliance have been substantial. Over and above its considerable mining industries, it has provided a disproportionately high number of remembrancers.

Conclusion: Diavanos presents a number of characteristics, apparent during its initial compliance and since, that make it a model of the Imperium’s achievement.

– Guilliman, Notes on Diavanos:
Compliance and Aftermath, clvi

I

The Matter of Sin

The Lord of Ultramar paced the circumference of the Reclusiam on the battleship Ultimus Mundi. Lumen globes in sconces kept the chamber in a perpetual deep twilight, conducive to meditation. Fluted columns rose every thirty-six degrees around the wide circle of the space. The designs of their crowns varied very slightly from one to the next, inviting the eye and concentrating the mind. In the centre of the Reclusiam, Chaplain Volusius remained perfectly still. When he spoke, his voice was low, the murmur of a deep river, prompting Guilliman’s flow of reflection.

‘Is the sin beyond forgiveness?’ Volusius asked.

‘The Imperium Secundus was usurpation,’ said Guilliman. ‘Intentions do not matter when the crime is this great. We do not forgive treachery.’

‘This was not treachery. Treachery implies intent.’

‘That hardly lessens the gravity of usurpation.’

‘It alters the nature of the sin,’ said Volusius. ‘And you did not answer the question of forgiveness directly.’

‘I did not,’ Guilliman admitted.

‘You seek forgiveness?’

‘I desire it.’

‘The Emperor’s or your own?’ the Chaplain probed.

‘It isn’t a question of receiving forgiveness,’ said Guilliman. ‘It is a question of earning it.’

‘Earned through self-denial? By not returning to Terra, you turn away from the possibility of receiving the Emperor’s forgiveness directly.’

Guilliman shook his head, uneasy. ‘Our strategy is dictated by the practical. Sanguinius must confront Horus. That is his destiny.’ Acknowledging the reality of fate was still difficult, but he had seen too much now to do otherwise. ‘The Blood Angels must reach Terra. The break in the Ruinstorm is a narrow one. The immaterium is still too violent for long jumps, and the traitors will seek to ambush the Ninth Legion. Our fleet is the largest and most able to engage the forces that will try to stop Sanguinius.’ Of this much he was sure.

‘There is no other reason for this choice?’ said Volusius.

Guilliman did not answer.

‘How is forgiveness earned?’ the Chaplain asked again.

‘By preserving my father’s dream,’ said Guilliman.

II

The Matter of Atonement

Madness clutched at the fleet. It found no grip, repelled by Geller fields. It slid against the hull of every battleship, cruiser and escort, screaming frustration and trailing flames of murdered colours. Scores of ships cut through the empyrean with a directness of purpose long denied them, rushing towards a threefold mission. They would strike in support of another fleet. They would strike in the name of salvation. And they would strike in the name of vengeance.

In the strategium of the battleship Ultimus Mundi, the Lord of Ultramar contemplated the fragility of dreams, and the nightmare of force needed to preserve them.

‘We’ll be fortunate if anything of Diavanos remains,’ Titus Prayto said. It seemed that he, too, had been thinking about fragility. The Librarian shook his head. ‘It is not a world that could withstand the attention of the Twelfth Legion for long.’

‘The cry for help the astropathic choirs intercepted is a recent one,’ Drakus Gorod pointed out. ‘If Diavanos was able to get a message out, then the World Eaters have only just arrived.’

Guilliman thought for a moment, then he tapped the controls of the tacticarium table. The hololithic display of the threatened world became a map of the subsector with Diavanos’ system at the core. ‘We may be the indirect cause of the attack,’ he said, making a further adjustment. The trajectory of the Blood Angels fleet towards Terra appeared, along with the known positions of traitor blockades.

‘Our first report of the World Eaters fleet placed it to the galactic east of Diavanos,’ Guilliman said.

‘They know the Blood Angels are coming,’ Gorod said. ‘Diavanos is an excellent staging ground for an ambush on the route Sanguinius must take.’

‘That is a new redeployment then,’ said Prayto. ‘There may be hope for Diavanos yet.’

‘Destruction and hope,’ Guilliman told his sons. ‘We are the bearers of both.’

It was hope that obsessed him. Prayto must have seen it in his face, or perhaps the same thoughts haunted the Librarian. ‘It would mean much to preserve this world,’ he said.

‘It is what the Imperium can be,’ Guilliman said. It is part of my atonement, he thought. He would not see it fall to Angron’s monsters.

And if he did save it, if in this present moment he preserved the world’s past and its future, and did so in service to opening the way for Sanguinius and the salvation of Terra, then that would be another step towards his personal atonement. He did not think he would ever truly expiate the sin of the Imperium Secundus. But saving Diavanos was important in practical and symbolic terms.

He returned to the practical now. He studied the trajectories of the Ultramarines and Blood Angels fleets. Timing their movements was approximate. It would have been even if the warp were not in turmoil. But the distance to Diavanos was short in galactic terms. ‘The World Eaters will need to be moving out of the system if they hope to intercept Sanguinius,’ he said. ‘Their emergence will have to coincide closely with our translation at the Mandeville point. We will act accordingly. I want the fleet in attack formation, weapons ready. We shall be the arrival of lightning.’

The ships of the XIII Legion stormed out of the warp, and they were both gladius and shield. Their formation was impenetrable, their numbers so great that there could be no hope of going around them. And they struck with a violence that cut the night of the void open with terrible light. They emerged with torpedoes in launch tubes, cannons loaded and lances primed, already looking for the enemy.

The enemy were where Guilliman had foreseen they would be. The World Eaters had left Diavanos behind, and were just beyond the orbit of the outermost planet of the system. Their ships were close together. The Ultramarines came at them from the port flank. Guilliman’s fleet was more than twice the size of that the World Eaters had mustered, its front wider than the length of the XII Legion’s formation.

Finally, Guilliman thought. Finally, we strike you traitors as you deserve to be struck.

The civilisation-killing barrage from the Ultramarines hit along the entire flank of the World Eaters fleet. A coronal chain of fire blasted across the traitor ships. The darkness blazed with explosions and the flare of overwhelmed void shields.

‘A strong thrust,’ Guilliman said as the blinding glare filled the oculus. ‘We have cut them deeply.’

Battleships and grand cruisers survived the initial moments of the barrage, but the smaller vessels were less fortunate. Catastrophe roared through their hulls. The cruisers Galerus and Clavam died immediately. The Galerus’ engines ruptured. Multiple torpedo and cannon hits from the Gauntlet of Power vaporised the forward third of the Clavam, and its ordnance exploded at once. Twin suns shone in the centre of the fleet. The titanic plasma explosions washed over the other ships, compounding damage, taking out the frigate Bellicose and crippling the battle-barge Iaculum.

The bridge of the Ultimus Mundi erupted with shouts of ‘For Calth! For the Five Hundred Worlds!’

‘It is good to see them burn,’ said Gorod.

‘Burning is too merciful for them,’ Guilliman said. ‘But you’re right. These are pyres that have been long in coming.’

The World Eaters responded to the attack eagerly. Their ships turned slowly. Their grace and majesty was due to their immense mass, and belied the bloodthirsty madness of the monsters who commanded them. Their weapons were fast, though, and the fury of the XII Legion hit back against the righteousness of the XIII. Angron’s sons tore across battlefields like maddened beasts, yet they still possessed the discipline of warriors. They knew how to respond to the great fleet that had come for them. As the burning vessels turned, weathering the unending barrage, they did not break formation. The devastating shock waves unleashed from the slain ships were a huge push outwards. The fleet could easily have lost all coherence, wounded beasts lashing out from the collapsing centre. Instead, the World Eaters tightened their formation, all the while maintaining ferocious retaliatory fire from their broadsides. Bleeding flame, rents in their hulls spilling freezing gases and bodies into the void, the monuments to savagery drew closer and closer together, altering their trajectories until they were bow to bow with the Ultramarines, and the fleet had become a battering ram.

The system’s sun was a distant, tiny spark of blue-tinted white, so far away it stood out from other stars only by the intensity of its light. Its cold eye faded beside the fury that had erupted in the far reaches of its system. The Legion fleets clashed with the force of a nova, a vast, roaring aurora of crimson and violet surrounding the vessels. The violence of the battle seemed as if it should tear open a new rift in the materium. With their fire heavily concentrated, the World Eaters hammered the Ultramarines’ wall. They destroyed the Rectitude and the Integritas and the Objective Truth. The grand cruiser Infestus accounted for two of the killing blows before it perished in its turn. The nova grew brighter still, and the World Eaters’ battering ram began to lose coherence. It failed to break through the line of the XIII Legion. More ships died or fell back, engines damaged and unable to keep up the charge.

On the bridge of the Ultimus Mundi, Guilliman tracked the advance of the battle, consumed by the demands of the immediate moments across the fleet. His sons acquitted themselves as he knew they would. Every piece of the primarch’s colossal war machine acted in consonance with the purpose of the whole, and the purpose was devastation. Guilliman ordered adjustments to individual trajectories that cumulatively became the movement of the advancing wall. The fleet closed with the World Eaters as a unified, unyielding whole, and Guilliman viewed the enemy as a single, great beast, assessing moment to moment which blow was needed to bring it down.

As individual vessels fell away from the whole, he shifted his focus away from them, leaving them to the elements of the fleet that were tasked to finish them off. When the battleship Gladiator veered away from the formation, its port flank blackened and pulsing with flame and flickering power levels, he gave a slight nod, satisfied to see the fleet’s leader taken from the fight. He did not let himself be lulled by the hope that this represented a decapitation of the World Eaters. They would fight to their last, brutal drop of blood. Because he was not distracted by the Gladiator, he saw that the Bringer of Ruin took over command of the formation from the centre, and he directed the Ultimus Mundi and the Triumph of Espandor to bring a new concentration of fire against it.

Because the Gladiator had left the front line of the void battle, Guilliman did not follow where it went as the distance between it and the XIII Legion grew. Because he did not follow it, he was able to mark the moment that the current of the battle became definitive. The World Eaters still fought, and drew blood, but there was nothing they could do. The Ultramarines’ wall curved around them and tightened, closing off all avenues of escape. The beginning of the end of the struggle had come.

We have cleared your path for you, Sanguinius, Guilliman thought. We will do so again. You will reach Terra.

Then Iasus, Chapter Master of the 22nd aboard the strike cruiser Cavascor was on the vox. ‘The Gladiator is making for Diavanos,’ Iasus said. ‘We are in pursuit.’

Guilliman saw what the commander of the World Eaters was doing. The traitor also knew that the battle was lost. And he saw how to strike one last, festering blow. The symbolism of Diavanos was as clear to the World Eaters as it was to the Ultramarines.

‘The World Eaters cannot let the promise of Diavonos survive,’ said Prayto, echoing Guilliman’s thoughts.

‘Can you close with the enemy in time?’ Guilliman asked Iasus.

‘We have engaged it, but its defences are holding. Lord primarch, we will destroy it, but not before it burns Diavanos. I have ordered a Caestus boarding attack.’

‘Prepare two assault rams,’ Guilliman ordered. To Gorod he said, ‘Gather an Invictus squad. We are teleporting to the Cavascor. Diavanos has not seen its final dawn. I swear this in my father’s name.’

Gorod blinked. ‘You will lead the attack?’

‘I will preserve Diavanos with my bare hands if I have to.’ And I will exact a reprisal of flesh for the Five Hundred Worlds, he thought. He was glad it was the Cavascor that was pursuing the Gladiator. Iasus commanded the Destroyers. The brutality of their way of war would be fitting justice for the World Eaters.

‘Heavy defensive fire!’ the Caestus pilot warned.

‘Can you reach our targets?’ Guilliman voxed. He stood in the troop compartment of the lead assault ram, the combi-bolter Arbitrator mag-locked to his side, the power gauntlet Hand of Dominion crackling with somnolent power on his left fist.

‘Their defence of the upper superstructure is too strong, lord primarch.’ A glancing strike strained the inertial recoil compensation systems. A bulkhead split and a conduit exploded, filling the compartment with flame and smoke. ‘We are making for a gap where the cannons have been destroyed lower down.’

‘The journey to the bridge will be much longer,’ voxed Captain Hierax, commanding a squad of Destroyers aboard the second ram. ‘Do we alter the practical?’

‘We move faster, captain,’ Guilliman replied. ‘Before the Gladiator is in range of Diavanos, we will take the bridge and decapitate the ship.’ He gave his command the force of law.

‘So it shall be, lord primarch.’ Beneath Hierax’s disciplined tone was the promise of a massacre to be unleashed on the World Eaters.

The hull rang and trembled. Smoke poured into the troop hold as the damage mounted. ‘Angron’s sons are trying very hard to stave off their execution,’ Gorod said.

‘If they do not welcome the punishment then they should never have followed Horus,’ said Guilliman. At the back of his mind, he had been calculating the seconds to impact, adjusting for the change in course, extrapolating the distance to the new target. Now he called ‘Brace for impact!’ at the same moment as the pilot.

The Caestus ram slammed into the base of the Gladiator’s superstructure and its magna-meltas turned the ship’s armour to slag. The hull jerked as if struck by a hammer, the recoil compensators dampening the shock to a mere tremor.

‘Now let the traitors know fear!’ Guilliman shouted as Firefury missiles devastated the space before the ram. The loading ramps dropped, and Guilliman led the charge. Explosions still thundered, and at first Guilliman thought the missiles had triggered secondary blasts by striking an ordnance storage facility. But the explosions kept going, and they were coming from above. The muffled crashes were huge. The entire hull rang with them.

‘Have we caused that?’ Gorod asked.

They had arrived in a crew dormitorium. The carbonised bodies of XII Legion serfs lay in a cluster near the doorway to the primary exit. Gorod was not looking at the bodies. He was staring upwards as the brass-engraved ceiling trembled again.

‘This is the doing of the enemy,’ said Guilliman.

‘Doing what?’

The explosions went on, gathering strength. It was as if an earthquake were shaking the decks above the Ultramarines. The ship boomed with the sound of terminal collapse.

Guilliman snarled in frustration. ‘They’re blocking us by destroying themselves.’

The corridor beyond the dormitorium confirmed his surmise. Both ends were blocked by compacted iron wreckage. The blasts continued, more muffled now, though the hull still rang like a funeral bell.

‘They are collapsing all the decks between us and the bridge,’ Guilliman said. The World Eaters knew the Gladiator’s hours were numbered. The ship was going to die, but it would not be turned from its act of final savagery.

‘There are vital support systems on those decks,’ said Gorod. ‘They are killing themselves.’

‘Does any atrocity surprise you?’ Guilliman asked.

‘It does not.’

‘They don’t need life support for much longer. All they have to do is keep us from taking the bridge. And they have.’ The tactic was both primitive and effective. A mountain of crushed wreckage blocked the way upwards. There was no way for the Ultramarines to blast their way through hundreds of thousands of tonnes of metal before the Gladiator hurled virus bombs or cyclonic torpedoes at Diavanos.

‘They cannot disable their weapons if they mean to use them,’ said Gorod.

‘Precisely.’ Guilliman opened a vox-channel to Hierax. ‘Captain, what is your position?’

‘Five decks below yours, lord primarch. We saw your breach before we made ours.’

‘We cannot go up. So we go down. Make for the torpedo bays. By the most direct route.’

‘Understood.’

Gorod nodded. He grasped the new practical as well. They would melt their way down through the decks to the target.

Marakus of the Invictus squad placed the first krak grenade. Its incandescent heat turned metal to liquid and ate through the deck. Guilliman stared at the detonation without blinking. It could have been the anger of his gaze dissolving the adamantium and iron.

Three decks down, Marakus shouted in triumph. ‘The mark of the Destroyers’ passage,’ he said, pointing to a crater in the deck a dozen yards ahead.

Guilliman took the lead again, dropping through the hole to a corridor scorched black by the bombardments of the Cavascor. It was only a few steps to the next breach, and a deck moaning with the wind of atmosphere escaping though cracks reaching all the way to the wounds in the hull. Guilliman passed the bodies of crew and slaves. There were the corpses of World Eaters too, but no attackers.

‘Our passage is strangely uncontested,’ said Gorod.

‘The World Eaters are concentrating their strength,’ said Guilliman. ‘All they have to do is maintain control of the weapons until Diavanos is in range. They’ll make their stand in the place they know we will attack.’

‘Instead of wasting forces defending regions we may never pass through.’

‘I doubt their reasons will be that strategic. They just won’t want to miss the bloodletting.’

‘Lord primarch,’ Hierax voxed, from only a single deck away, ‘torpedo bay in sight.’ A sustained burst of fire obscured his next words. The only word Guilliman could make out was ‘entrances’. That was sufficient. Theoretical: more than one access to the bay. Practical: use the initial attack of the Destroyers to create a surprise second front.

‘Break them in half, captain,’ Guilliman said. ‘We are moments away.’

The squad passed the Destroyers’ last breach and kept going. The deck thrummed with the crunching rhythm of bolter shells. Guilliman marched forwards, visualising the essential architecture of Imperial battleships, extrapolating variations based on the layout of the halls he had seen during their descent. A hundred yards past the first breach, Guilliman drove the Hand of Dominion into the deck. The corridor erupted with an azure flash. Layers of metal vaporised under his blows. He hit again and again. Do you hear me, you murderous animals? he thought. I am judgement coming for you.

The deck gave way completely and Guilliman dropped through. He rose from a crouch, firing the Arbitrator into the surprised World Eaters before him. Armour that had once been bone-white gleamed crimson. Brass spikes studded limbs, helms and pauldrons. Roaring, they charged him with chainaxes coated in dried blood and shredded flesh.

Guilliman drenched them with their own blood, detonating their skulls with his shells.

A few hundred yards to Guilliman’s right, Destroyers engaged Destroyers.

The World Eaters fought a version of themselves held back by self-inflicted shackles. The Ultramarines fought an image of what, without honour and discipline, they might have become. Loyalist and traitor attacked each other with a ferocity born of absolute hatred. Hierax’s squad hit the World Eaters with phosphex bombs, then rushed without pause into the inferno they had created. A cloud of white-green death crawled out of the sternward threshold to the torpedo bay. It ate into the armour of legionaries on both sides. It burned ceramite. It burned flesh. Heraldry dissolved, and the quicksilver flame flowed hungrily over blackened, gnawed, unrecognisable corpses.

The legionaries of Ultramar and Nuceria fought and killed each other in the midst of the spreading hell. Green flames licking down his pauldrons, Hierax smashed the edge of his chainsword into a World Eater’s gorget. The blade ground through, finding a weak point in the armour. The traitor struck at the captain’s helm with his chainaxe. Hierax roared with pain, but did not waver even as the helmet began to crack. He leaned into the sword. ‘You will bleed for Ultramar!’ he shouted, hunger for vengeance reverberating from his vox-casters. Gristle and bone parted. The World Eater’s head fell backwards, arterial blood spraying wide into the burning green.

Guilliman and the Invictus Guard stormed into the torpedo bay, and into a maw of bestial fury. The Red Butchers howled in mindless wrath. Madness contained within Terminator armour, they charged without hesitation into the hail of bolter shells. The storm from the Arbitrator shattered their front ranks, exploding through armour and bone. Beyond feral, blind to everything but the need to kill, the Red Butchers charged over their dead and slammed into the tight formation of the Invictus Guard.

Guilliman’s jaw was tight with rage as he waded into a maelstrom of pure destruction. These things had once been sworn to the task of spreading and preserving the Emperor’s dream. They had become every worst instinct the dream had come to purge. You were always going to fall, Angron, Guilliman thought, and with a surge of bitter contempt he slammed the Hand of Dominion into the wretches. They were things without thought, flesh-machines of empty fury.

There was nothing these warriors could do to stop him. But they might, in their berserk charge, slow him down and keep him from his target. Beyond the mass of World Eaters, past fallen gantries and slicks of burning promethium, many of the launch tubes lay open, their ordnance already fired. The largest of the vault-like doors was closed, its approach defended by a Centurion and a Dreadnought. So sealed, it meant the cyclonic torpedo had yet to be fired.

Guilliman drove the Hand of Dominion through the chest-plate of a Red Butcher. He hurled himself through the Terminators like a battering ram.

‘Drakus!’ the Centurion shouted, his voice amplified by his vox-caster. It was hoarse and rattled wetly, as if its owner were swallowing blood. ‘I rejoice to see you burn today!’

The Centurion commanding the World Eaters stood next to the torpedo door, flanked by a Dreadnought.

‘Deranax,’ Gorod voxed to Guilliman. He did not respond to the World Eater’s taunt. ‘His belief in the Great Crusade was once very strong.’

‘Then his sin is all the greater,’ Guilliman snarled. He will atone, he thought. He will atone until he is ash.

The leaping, burning streams of phosphex from the other entrance were devouring the enemy. The Red Butchers were falling before the disciplined fire of the Invictus Guard. The tide of battle was against the World Eaters. But Deranax stood in triumph. Guilliman realised the torpedo was moments from firing. Diavanos was in range.

Guilliman’s leap carried him over the heads of a cluster of Red Butchers. He came down with the Hand of Dominion at full charge. The force of his blow sent out a shock wave so destructive it was as a meteor slamming into the enemy. Terminator armour ruptured. Bodies burst into fragments. Shrapnel of bone and ceramite exploded. Guilliman ran through a storm of blood, sending a barrage of combi-bolter shells ahead of him, carving a path through the World Eaters.

The Contemptor Dreadnought thundered towards him, its heavy bolter roaring, its power claw reaching out. Deranax laughed, then turned to the controls next to the hydraulic arms controlling the vault door.

Guilliman moved too fast for the Dreadnought to track. He closed with the monster, clenching the Hand of Dominion, and fired a burst of shells into the helm. The Dreadnought shouted in incoherent wrath. The Hand of Dominion smashed through the Contemptor’s power claw, then hammered the sarcophagus.

The Dreadnought staggered. Its heavy bolter arm flailed in an attempt to get Guilliman in the line of fire. The primarch struck its chest-plate again. The sarcophagus was centuries old. It could withstand a direct hit from an artillery shell. The Hand of Dominion was much older, and was of a far different order of power. And it was wielded by a primarch. The sarcophagus collapsed beneath Guilliman’s blow. He drove the Hand of Dominion through the layers of armour shielding, and into the soft, broken thing that was all that remained of the interred legionary’s body.

The Dreadnought’s roaring cut off at once.

The hydraulic arms pulled the vault door open, revealing the torpedo. Deranax held a detonator. ‘Aim at a world and kill a primarch,’ he growled with bloodlust and triumph. There were demolition charges on the casing of the torpedo.

The Centurion had used Diavanos as a lure, Guilliman realised. Deranax had waited until Guilliman was before him, and now he was going to trigger the cyclonic torpedo’s detonation inside the Gladiator. Instead of destroying a planet as his final act of brutality, he would take the Emperor’s Avenging Son with him into his funeral pyre.

Guilliman fired. The shells struck Deranax’s wrist before he could pull the detonator’s trigger. They destroyed the World Eater’s hand but spared the detonator. It flew behind him and howling he lunged for the device. Guilliman seized Deranax with the power gauntlet and smashed him against a wall. He squeezed, channelling the Hand’s power into a crushing grip. The Centurion’s limbs and his immolating design came apart. Guilliman jammed the muzzle of the Aribtrator against Deranax’s helmet.

The Centurion snarled, dying but undefeated. ‘It all burns in the end,’ he choked out.

Guilliman pulled the trigger.

As he turned from the corpse, Iasus voxed from the Cavascor. ‘Lord primarch, have you taken the bridge?’

‘It’s unreachable. We have the torpedo bay.’ The Red Butchers and the Destroyers were still fighting. They would until the end, but the end was coming fast.

After a moment, Iasus said, ‘Lord Guilliman, I must urge your immediate withdrawal. The Gladiator is on a collision course with Diavanos. Thunderhawks are closing with your position. You must breach and evacuate at once.’

Through the Thunderhawk’s viewing block, Guilliman saw the fiery descent of the Gladiator. He saw the dark blade of the battleship plunge through the atmosphere of Diavanos. He saw it flare red with heat.

He saw the blinding fireball of impact and the plasma detonation. No cyclonic torpedo cracked the planet open, but the Gladiator hit with the force of an asteroid. A bloom of fire, blinding white, hundreds of kilometres in diameter, lit up the clouds. The atmosphere convulsed, transforming into a furious cauldron, storm upon storm spreading across the world of gossamer towers. A terminal wind swept the continents, scouring Diavanos of its crystalline promise, putting an end to dreams.

In the strategium of the Ultimus Mundi, Guilliman gazed at the deep augur picts of Diavanos. This is what we have saved, he thought. This is all we have saved of this world. The Gladiator had made planetfall fifty miles from Ecstasia. The blast had razed the capital city. The delicate traceries of the architecture had vanished. Broken angles of glass and iron jutted through the clouds of ash and dust. There was nothing but grey now, grey forever under a sky of dark lead. Ashes fell, as they would for centuries to come.

‘Some of the industries in the southern land mass are still viable,’ Gorod said. ‘The population has not slipped below the critical mass. Diavanos will survive.’

‘Survive,’ Guilliman repeated. The word was as dry as the ash in the air. ‘Survival is not enough, Drakus. Look at what has been lost. Millennia of culture has been extinguished. Diavanos was a beacon through the Age of Strife. Where is its light now? Mere survival means decline. This will become a place of darkness and ignorance, unless we can kindle a new fire. Only the Imperium can do that. We do not fight just for the survival of the Imperium. We fight for the preservation of a dream.’

There was no atonement to be found here. There was only determination, and a vow. ‘The Imperium will never be reduced to this darkness,’ he told Gorod. ‘It will be forever worthy of my father. Forever. I will hold it in the light. And if I have to fight forever, I will.’

CANTICLE

David Guymer

The boy had no name.

The capsule that had first brought him to this world had labelled him X, but he had earned a great many names since that day of his awakening. The storm giants of the Karaashi Pinnacle, elementals of dark rock fused into cognitive sheaths of mineral armour, artificer-sages and warrior-mystics, had called him Cataclysm. It had been his planetfall that had sundered their mountain monastery, and his explorations that had unwittingly released the great wyrm from its captivity there. The boy had not been able to stop it. He had not been strong enough. From that day, the boy had called himself Hunter. Following its path of destruction brought him to the black ice of the surface world. The undying phantasmagoria that haunted the foothills of Karaashi – shades of code-personality mis-phased from time and dimension, and from sanity itself – had called him The Finality. Further south, where black ice gave way to gritty tundra, the pyramid complexes of aeons-lost civilisations broke through the layers of dust, their perfect geometries unscarred by the howling storms, their seals unbroken until the coming of the boy. The mecharachnids and phasewraiths that guarded the labyrinths of those tombs had not sought to name him, only to kill him. But the eidolic algorithms that had, as a last resort, sought to communicate had called him Rehew Netjer. It had meant Son of Man.

The fragment warlords of the Subliminat had called him Flesh.

The name had, at first, been extemporised as an expression of desire, for a resource too priceless to leave unnamed. Then with contempt, as their efforts to assimilate the boy into their worker collectives proved fruitless. Then with fear-code, as the boy dismantled their harvester cohorts one by one and came for them.

Of all the names he had worn or been given, it was the one that had resonated with him the most.

He was flesh.

But it had not stuck. What need did he have for a name?

He had walked from the wreckage of the Black Pinnacle and the ruins of the once-mighty civilisation therein for a time he could not track and a distance he could not measure, ever south, following the trail of the biomechanical beast he had set loose.

If there was a sun around which this black world turned then it was alien to the boy. If there was a season then it was winter. Its changelessness was a black cloak over a landscape where each blast of wind was an apocalypse. There was no day. There was no night. Light emerged spontaneously. Frenetic windspeeds and an abundance of electro-dense particulates in the air generated frequent, albeit erratic, electromagnetic bursts. The boy had been taught none of this, but he knew it, intuited it, pursued such understanding with the same voracious appetite with which he submitted his changing physiology to each new trial of its limits.

And if it had any then the boy had not reached them yet.

He had gauged the erosion of time by the new challenges that he faced, and by the steady lengthening of his limbs as he walked, the thickening of muscle, the slow change of his body from that of a boy into something else that he could not yet define.

For not once in all that time had he encountered a being that came anywhere close to resembling himself.

The boy reached out towards the dead thing.

It was marginally smaller than he was, encased in a bronzed ceramic shell that had, before grit and dust and age had scoured the curved plates to senility, borne some kind of pictorial script. It had two arms, two legs, a single head. Though similar to many of the robotic, semi-robotic and infernal creatures that he had encountered, vertical symmetry was an uncommon template in the boy’s experience. There was something intuitively familiar about this body’s design however, something that appealed to his sense of logic.

He brushed dust from the corpse’s face. The wind broke against the back of his hand, black sand quickly piling up past the line of his middle finger, briefly shielding a visor screen. A network of shatter lines tunnelled through the tempered glass, opaque rings where windblown particulates had impacted but without force enough to break the material entirely. Some of the damage looked significantly older than others, the stress halos wider. The boy did not think the body had lain here long enough to account for the damage. Raw material, flesh or otherwise, did not stay unpicked for long. What the wind did not bury or destroy, every techscavenger with even a partial auspex in range would soon be flocking towards.

He looked through the cracked visor.

Inside, a face.

It was hard and pale, a face painted on bone, its own internal symmetry framed by a mess of long, ash-black hair. The forehead lay against the inside of the helmet, as if glancing away, hair covering the mottling bruises. The eyes were wide and dark. The lips were blue. The boy stared, fascinated. He had always understood that he did not belong to this world. He knew, in his bones, that he had a purpose that went beyond the bruising challenges of his immediate environment. He did not know what it was, only that it was out there, somewhere, and that he needed to be strong enough to face it. This frail corpse was not it, but it felt like another step on the path he would take towards finding it.

He looked up.

The mountains of the northlands lay behind him. Ahead, a lowland of fierce winds and biting, almost predatory squalls of dust. A trail of metal fragments littered the desert. The wind animated them. Twists of metal walked end-over-end, misshapen legionaries of dark iron that for all their apparent vigour went nowhere, the wind pushing them two steps backwards for every two steps forwards, burying them piecemeal under black sand.

Soon, they would all be gone.

Then they too would be sand.

Beyond their trooping ranks, a great trapezoidal hulk of weather-beaten steel lay on its side. The scaffolding of its undercarriage lay exposed. Like an armoured creature tipped onto its flank to bare the soft parts beneath. Solid rubber tyres taller than the boy, with treads as thick as the length of his hand, jutted into the wind. Bits of track lay strewn amongst the wind-tossed debris, along with other, larger, fragments of sponson, hull armour, and coils of sense array. The boy mentally reassembled the super-heavy vehicle. It was long, low-slung over a bed of enormous tyres and nail-studded tracks, with a low centre of gravity that nothing short of a once-in-a-millennium storm would put onto its side. To the boy’s intuitive understanding it was obvious that the monster had been attacked. The warping of the armour shell was consistent with that of a plasma blast. The body he had discovered had probably been crewing one of the sense nests before being thrown clear by the explosion. They would have been killed in the blast or expired shortly after when their exo-armour’s umbilicals had been torn, severing them from their vehicle’s environment.

The boy withdrew his hand.

The dust buried the face anew.

He looked again over the wreckage, largely succeeding in ignoring the growls of complaint from his belly.

He subsisted on a diet of sand, supplemented by whatever minerals and metals he could scavenge. His physiology was able to metabolise whatever inorganic material he could ingest, but even scraping the organic tissues from the cyborgnetic ghouls and skin-wearing demimachinic reavers he could run down and kill did little to soften the pangs. The last time he had been truly sated was when he had slain the last fragment lord of the Subliminat. He had broken into their amnioesis vats, feasted on amino acid slurries and lipid pastes until he had been too full to move so much as an eyelid, but even that banquet had not satisfied his metabolism for long. In a way, the boy almost liked the feeling of hunger. It was like a spirit familiar, keeping him focused, keeping him sharp.

If not for its growls, he might have ignored the vehicle wreck and carried on south.

He considered breaking open the corpse’s exo-armour and devouring the meat inside, but he did not. The boy was not entirely sure why, except for that haunting familiarity of face and form. He hoped he would not regret it. He knew he could not guarantee that the body would still be there when he returned.

With a creak of metal, he rose.

Even by the definitions of later years his armour would be considered a masterpiece, limited only by the materials available to him and the tools he could obtain to work them, but not by the visionary genius that underpinned the whole. Adamantium plates were bolted together with bronze rings, ribbons of kineto-mimetic crystal chemically welded to sheets of ultra-hard glasteel. The tapestry of colours and materials unavoidably left parts of his body bare. His left forearm, both legs, his hands, his head. His eyes shone like silver coins. His hair was rugged and black.

The wind broke against him with storm force and the boy set his jaw, enjoying the sensation of its pushing, clawing, his muscles bunching and resisting.

Winning.

He drove the haft of his weapon into the sand.

It was best described as a bardiche. The long pole had originated within the spinal cabling of the seer-king of the storm giants. The curved blade had been the claw of a phasewraith. It seemed to have retained some of its transdimensional properties even after the boy had torn it from the ghost machine and it had blended itself to the weapon shaft as if moulding itself to the boy’s vision. He had discovered any number of ranged firearms in the desert, powerful solid projectile weapons, devices that harnessed exotic forms of matter and every type of energy his innate genius could conceive, and had assembled several of his own design from found parts. He had built conversion blasters powered by electromagnetism and autocannons to fire bullets of compacted sand. But however much ingenuity he bent to the task he had not been able to craft a weapon that could kill as reliably or well as a blade wielded with his own two hands.

The boy crunched over the first rank of wind-tossed debris as he walked, the tear in the super-heavy crawler’s side gaping dark and savage, and curiously enticing.

No corpse stayed unpicked for long.

He found a scavenger chewing on the circuitry exposed by the evisceration of the sense nest. The creature was hunched over the torn-out panelling with the intense focus of an invertebrate predator. Metallic encrustations and strings of cabling blotched the cadaverous black flesh of its back. As the boy’s bare foot creaked onto the crumpled metal bulkhead that had since become the floor, the creature’s gaze shot up from its meal. Half-chewed wires spilled from its mouth. Its eyes had been refashioned with dull sense augmetics, lasers crisscrossing the violated cupola and splashing across the boy like weak acid. It moaned. A low-wattage kinetic field flickered as it rose, capable of casting off the low-mass, high-velocity impacts that would shred the flesh parts from a cyborg zombie’s metallic skeleton in moments.

It was next to useless against a blade.

The boy impaled the zombie on his bardiche before it could rise off its haunches, cracking open torso armour before driving through at an angle and pinning it to the corner of the bulkhead it had been feasting on.

The weird energies bound up in the material of the blade dumped their charge into the electrics, forcing a blizzard of sparks from the wall. The cyborg zombie jerked and blackened before the boy’s eyes, a hundred small wires stuffed down its throat and force-feeding it electrical power, but despite everything, it failed to die. It continued to chew on the wiring that was cooking it from the inside, grasping for the boy with both hands.

The boy was not sure whether it was the construct’s hungry moans or the spark cascade that signalled the others.

Narrow corridors went left and right from the cupola, deeper into the immobilised hulk. A drop hatch revealed an iron-runged ladder that the vehicle’s current list had turned from a straight vertical climb into a horizontal crawlspace.

Bestial groans and metallic squeals issued from all three.

The boy spun as a cyborg zombie raced from the corridor to his right. Its body was sheathed in bladed edges, eyes glowing, its metallic exoskeleton tearing sparks from the conduits as it ran. These creatures were slow to get moving, but once they identified a target they were almost as swift in the hunt as the boy. Their lower limbs had been replaced by spring blades and pistons, their bodies studded with electro-stimm grafts and crawling with waste energy.

Leaving the bardiche to pin the first zombie to the bulkhead, the boy caught the second cyborg’s grasping claws in his palm. He twisted the cyborg’s wrist behind its back, then drove his right hand into the side of the zombie’s face and smashed it against the wall. Brain paste leaked through his fingers. Electricity spasmed across the wrecked cranium, shocking the boy’s fingers, as the now headless zombie tore into his girdle plating with its talons.

The boy scowled as a third freed itself from the net of cabling hanging across the corridor behind him with a moan of hunger.

He had expected destroying the organic brain to kill them.

Throwing the headless cyborg from him, the boy turned to deliver a kick that slammed the newcomer into the bulkhead.

A fourth pulled itself from the drop hatch.

With, at best, a second before he found himself surrounded, the boy grabbed it by the provoker rods that dotted its scalp and dragged it out of the crawlspace. Clamping the zombie between his fist and the frame of the hatch like a metal sheet for beating, the boy dropped a punch onto its spine. Something cracked. One arm fell limp as motor control died.

The boy performed a mental calculation. He put the motive cortex somewhere between the twelfth and seventeenth vertebrae. Taking a guess, he smashed his fist down a second time.

The creature’s back bent a V towards the bulkhead and the lights behind its sense augmetics blinked out.

The other two recovered their footing at about the same time. The headless zombie swayed, thrashing wildly at the air with its talons. The other moaned and ran into the boy’s arms. The stink of electrically stimulated carrion flesh filled the boy’s mouth as he struggled to push the unliving cyborg off. Its talons ripped at his armour. Mechanical buzz-jaws ground for his face. With a roar, the boy drove the zombie into the bulkhead. Blunt trauma squelched the cyborg’s soft tissues. It did not react. It bit down on the boy’s shoulder. The buzz of its teeth became a shriek as the zombie gorged on the mineralogic content of his armour. Next to the riches offered by the downed hulk’s electricals it must have been a meagre feast, but the boy supposed that the zombies’ scavenger protocols worked to a hierarchy that directed them to devour immediate threats first.

The headless cyborg stumbled in behind him, butting the back of his head with the wet stump of its neck. It was still trying to eat him. The boy realised that he probably had a matter of moments before its core programming reassessed the situation and redirected it to ripping him apart with its talons.

With the first zombie content to feast on his shoulder plates, the boy reached behind him to rip out whatever wire and circuity he could tear loose from the headless cyborg’s neck cavity. Bits of gristle and rubberised tubing came away in his grasping fingers before he had dug away enough meat to uncover the bevelled head of a copper spindle. The boy pulled hard. It parted. A large chunk of augmetised respiratory system came away with it and the thing finally died, asphyxiated, a rubber lung and a spidery jumble of associated machinery jammed in its neck.

His shoulder plate was almost gone.

The pain was horrific.

With a roar, the boy shoved the last zombie off and punched.

His fist broke through teeth, through brain, through the back of its skull, and proceeded to do superficial damage to the bulkhead behind it. Switching algorithms, the cyborg attempted to grab him with its talons, only to find itself securely pinned by the boy’s arm in its face. Claws raked the boy’s already tattered armour as he planted his heel in the zombie’s midriff and, with a growl of effort, tore the cyborg’s torso from its legs. He dug inside the creature’s rotten abdomen for the motive cortex and crushed it.

Walking unsteadily, the boy planted his foot on the shoulder of the zombie he had left skewered in its half-crouch against the bulkhead and pulled out his bardiche.

Then, breathing hard, pinning it to the floor underfoot, he smashed the animate construct to pieces using the butt end.

The boy quickly decided that there was no way his body was going to fit through the drop hatch, so he entered the crawler via the corridor. With a fifty-fifty decision to make, he went right. The stale odours of a contained environment had sunk deep into the metal, and in spite of the gale that howled through the cupola mere metres behind him, the corridor still reeked of oil and urine and sweat. The fit was tight, even for a boy, and he crawled on his belly along what was supposed to have been a wall for about five metres before his nose wrinkled from a fresher and fouler stink.

He dropped out of the ‘wall’ and into a cylindrical chamber of scuffed metal, fluff-choked ventilator stacks and crumpled radiation grilles. An array of consoles folded into the ceiling, now the left-hand wall, but the attack and subsequent cannibalisation of the vehicle had caused them to drop down, gut-like spools of heavy cabling looping towards the ground. The consoles and wiring had been well chewed. The half-eaten pieces of one of the crew lay scattered over the equipment trays. The source of the smell. There was not much of a face left to speak of, but enough to suggest a familial resemblance to the body that the boy had found outside. A man, like him. There was no sign of exo-armour. The boy supposed that there had been no need for such protection before the hull had been breached.

Paying the body parts a cursory glance, the boy turned his attention to the consoles. They still had power. Just the occasional brown-out and sputter where the cyborg zombies had chewed through the data insulation. He checked over the displays quickly but methodically, noting anything that pertained to an inventory or an equipment manifest. Food. Fuel. Weapons. Material. The boy tugged ruefully on the pauldron of his armour, able now to fit all four fingers of his right hand through the bite that the cyborg zombie had taken out of the plate. A repair was long overdue anyway. His body had not stopped growing yet, and he had already started to outgrow the plate.

The downed super-heavy certainly represented metal enough to rebuild the entire harness, but only if he could hold it, which he knew he could not.

The cyborg zombies would just be the beginning. Every ghoul and reaver with an auspex unit and a taste for metal would be drawn to a carcass this large and the boy knew that even he could not fight them all.

The northern tundras taught a boy to be strong, but they also taught him to be wise, to fight only the battles that he could win and to forget those that he could not.

Chewing thoughtfully on the digits of a hand that he had torn from one of the cyborg zombies in passing, the boy tapped at a likely looking display. Operating the data interface felt almost akin to an instinct. In the same way that he had emerged from the wreckage of Karaashi knowing how to fight and how to survive, he somehow understood the belligerent pictorial text by which he could navigate the crawler’s computer system. It was as if it had been purposefully designed and built for his mind. Or his mind had been purposefully designed and built for these systems. The boy called up what looked like a blueprint, enduring the agonising lag intervals as the simplistic interface intelligence rerouted his requests to bypass cannibalised pathways.

He tapped on the image as it finally manifested.

The screen fuzzed.

There was a strong room in the middle of the crawler, at the furthest point from the exterior, equidistant between the critical locations of the engine plant at the rear and the drive room at the front. According to the schematics in front of him it had its own parallel power supply, environment shielding, and instrumentarium.

If there was anything of value here worth scavenging then it would be there.

The boy punched the glass from the terminal, then ripped out the interface panel. He had already memorised the schematics and did not want to risk something or someone else finding the same information and cornering him in the tight passages of the hulk. Finishing off the zombie hand, his teeth grinding on bone, the boy spat metal nuggets into his own hand to stow for later.

Then he took up his bardiche and crawled back into the corridor.

There were six more cyborg zombies.

Two scratched at the blast doors like mechwolves at a dirt grave. Another licked and gnawed at the control systems. Its electro-stimmed strength and undead patience had succeeded in tearing away the fascia panels, but the door lock’s cryptex keys looked several orders of magnitude of complexity beyond the zombie’s basic decryption wetware. The last three ate the lumes from the bulkhead sconces and the ceiling tubes. The few remaining lights flickered with their last life, casting the feasting zombies like the cyborganimated nightmares they were.

On open ground the boy could take six. But in close confines like these, his armour already hanging off him like foil strips, he was not so confident. Not confident enough to charge headlong into another battle.

But whatever was in that strong room that they wanted, he wanted.

The boy unclipped a grenade canister from his bandolier and rolled it into the anteroom.

It clattered over the riveted wall-cum-floor, six sets of sense-augmetics swivelling towards the sound. He had picked it up from a wreck like this one, albeit much older, picked bare, forcing the boy to dig just for that much, but it had proven its value. He used it to carry water. When he had water. Now it was empty, but for a few grains of sand, but the cyborg zombies could not know that. Their sense-augmetics perceived a grenade, and their scavenger routines reacted to it accordingly.

Tracking the canister with their ‘eyes’ they lurched out of the way, unbunching from the immediate vicinity of the blast doors and turning their backs as the boy entered.

A scything blow from the bardiche beheaded the zombie nearest to the corridor. The boy took one more step inside, turning, using the combined momentum as he shortened the grip on his bardiche, wielding it like a sickle, and ripped it across the zombie’s midriff. Ropes of atrophied intestine spilled from the cyborg’s belly. The force of the blade’s exit dragged the zombie forwards, lifted it a centimetre from the bulkhead. Flesh tore away from metal as the construct’s abdomen sailed another metre after the boy’s blade. Its legs folded to the bulkhead. The boy spun the bardiche back under control, turned again, then delivered an uppercut that carved a second zombie in two from groin to cranium. One half slumped to the ground, dead meat weighted with lead. The other spasmed in epileptic overload as it dragged itself with one arm and one leg towards the boy.

By then, the other four had updated their algorithms.

The air took on a tang of charge as electro-stimm grafts fired, filling the ante-chamber with the smell of soured meat and reheated blood. There was a pop of autopropellant as the nearest one still standing threw itself at the boy.

He raised his bardiche like a barrier. The flying zombie smashed into it. Raw momentum forced it onto him. The boy backpedalled as it champed over the haft for his face. He roared, turning his upper body and driving the zombie up against the wall. Leaning into it, he relieved one foot, kicked back. The bone of his heel connected with a zombie’s pectoral plating and knocked it to the ground. It fell on top of the bifurcated cyborg that was still crawling towards him, effectively terminating its spasms.

The boy drew the bardiche across the cyborg he held pinned to the wall. Electrical discharge and sluggish fluid systems gushed from its chest as the boy back-handed the blade into the shoulder of another creature. Encased in thin plates of some ultra-dense metamaterial, the transdimensional blade simply banged off it. The actual damage might have been minimal, but the boy was strong enough that the force of the collision alone was enough to send the zombie sprawling.

The boy made a mental note to return for that shoulder plating after the battle was done.

Moaning cyborgs converged on him from all sides.

Three left.

He bit, kicked, chewed, butted, ripped metal and flesh from decaying bodies even as their energy-wreathed talons tore at his. Brute strength dislodged one against a wall, threw off another, gave him a handful of moments in which to beat one to total shutdown before the other two could recharge and return. One was marginally swifter, leaping back on spring-blades. The boy caught it by the metal protrusions of its chest-plates. Turning his wrist palm-up he made a fist, and then with the strength of one arm and a cry of rage drove the zombie’s head through the shattered lume sconce in the bulkhead above them. The boy let go as electricity jagged through the cyborg’s body, animating it for one last flurry of kicks. The last zombie was still running at the boy as he backed off. He stamped down on its leg. He timed it perfectly. The zombie’s metal-plated shin snapped in mid-charge, crashing it into the bulkhead and slewing it across the boy before he skewered its spinal cord with his bardiche. A flurry of up-and-down strokes walked the crooked length of its spine until all four of its limbs lost motor control.

Its jaw continued to gnash at the bulkhead, but the boy could live with that.

The boy took a deep breath, then bent to wrench the exotic metal sheath from the fallen zombie’s shoulder. He attached it to his belt, then moved to crouch over the control console embedded in the ‘floor’ by the blast doors.

The zombies’ unsubtle attempts at decryption had done little to damage the core hardware. The doors were an adamantium alloy sheathed with some kind of energy dampening ceramic, designed to withstand a melta bomb or a chain fist or even a ramming by another armoured vehicle. That kind of durability would hardly have been worth the value of the materials involved if the underlying systems could be forced so easily.

A cursory examination revealed several layers of defence around the core spirit, a series of biochemical and genetic keys providing the initial authentication screen before expanding to present a string of increasingly hostile runephrase and pattern recognition demands. The cyborg zombies would not have broken its encryptions in a thousand years of trying. If the boy, or whatever else would be drawn to the vehicle after him, had not intervened then they would very likely have continued to attack the door lock with basic combinations until their bodies crumbled around their working brains.

It took the boy about five minutes.

The fight beforehand was only marginally less challenging.

There was a clunk of disengaging locks and the blast doors hissed open.

The boy stepped inside.

The walls were lined with aluminium shelving, bolted to the walls in order to keep them and their contents secure over harsh and changeable terrain. It had presumably worked too, before the crawler had been thrown onto its side, dumping tins and jars and packets of dried food onto the bulkhead. With his foot, the boy sifted through his haul. He smiled. It was food and water, mostly. There were also some medicae supplies and ammunition clips, neither of which he had any great use for, but added to the metal he could scavenge from the blast doors and the zombies, plus some of the instrumentation from the sense nest to upgrade his own auspex unit, then this would have proven a worthwhile expenditure of energy and time.

The boy toed a packet of dehydrated protein bars from another corpse.

This one was better preserved than the last. His white skin, black hair, and the hand-sewn leather panels of his clothing remained uneaten. Only the crater in his back and the ring of curdled, melted tissue that surrounded it spoke of an unpleasant end.

‘Drop the spear…’

He looked up from the ground, and froze.

A woman in scuffed black exo-armour crouched behind a small barricade of tins at the other side of the strong room. She was holding a weapon that fell somewhere in the grey categorisation zone between a heavy pistol and a compact assault weapon, all twitching vanes and bulky power cells.

The boy was fluent in over a dozen languages.

He had mastered the inscrutable linguaforms of the storm giants, translated the hieroglyph code of the great tomb computers, the tongues of past and future and of the realm beyond, where machine-spirits dreamed, but he had never heard the words of mortal flesh spoken until then.

‘You are… like me.’

‘Throw it on the ground.’ She emphasised her grip on the trigger. ‘You can drop whatever you have in those belt pouches too.’

The boy looked down at his belt. He looked back up.

‘No.’

‘I am holding the gun.’

The boy smiled. His eyes were as cold as silver.

He opened his mouth to speak again, to remind her that her crawler had been ambushed and immobilised, overrun by cyborg zombies, the basest vermin in the lands of shadow, and that she had been trapped in her own strong room. He would then have pointed out to her, for the boy did believe in fair warning, that with the charge level indicated by the colour gauges on the pistol’s casing she would have at best one shot, one shot that she would in all likelihood miss, before he crushed that gun along with the bones of her hand. Considering the weapon, however, he hesitated. It was a plasma talon. He looked again at the marks on the body on the floor. He recalled the damage to the outer hull. He noted that the woman was wearing exo-armour. Both of the corpses he had passed inside of the vehicle had been clad more simply.

‘You are not one of the crew. You were one of the attackers.’

The woman took a step forwards. ‘I said drop the spear.’

His smile broadened.

‘Last warning,’ she snarled.

‘What is your name?’ the boy asked.

‘What do you care?’

The boy considered the truth of that, and nodded.

‘It took strength to bring down a vehicle this size. Its crew were too confident in its power. It made them weak.’ He glanced at the bardiche in his hand, then threw it down. ‘Take it. You have earned it. I do not need it.’

The woman’s gaze flicked to the discarded weapon, then up again. Her pistol’s aim stayed fixed on the boy’s face. The bars of glare on her visor masked her expression.

‘You could come with me,’ she said. ‘Between the cannibals and the crew I’m the last one left. My clan could use someone like you.’

The boy gave it thought.

He shook his head.

‘What is your name?’ she said.

‘There is something I still have to do. When it is done… When it is done, perhaps I will be able to tell you.’

FIRST LEGION

Chris Wraight

The Nightsward’s back was bleeding, torn along the spinal ridge with entire comms towers ripped from their foundations. The frigate’s engines rattled arrhythmically, beating out a limp staccato that made the decks throb and shudder. Long scars ran down its outer flanks, each one the product of nightmare weapons still barely understood by the gunnery sergeants. For all that, it was still in service, still on duty, pushed out hard spinward of the main fleet deployment, just like hundreds of others. There was no alternative, this far out, and no complaints from those who had survived.

Captain Arnaid stood on the strategium deck, surrounded by the staff of his tactical command, assessing the options ahead of him.

‘Not Rangdan?’ he asked.

The question was not superfluous – the Rangdan xenos, in addition to their many other abilities, had proven able to mimic the sensor profile of many Imperial warships.

‘No, lord,’ replied Holfad, the master of signals. ‘Absolute certainty.’

‘But not one of ours either,’ said Arnaid.

‘Not this far out,’ agreed Ertha, the ship’s mistress. ‘Unless a casualty.’

Arnaid smiled darkly. ‘Much like ourselves, then.’

Ahead of the gathered officers and legionaries, over a black hololith column, spun the schematic representation of near-space – a lattice of runes and trajectory skeletons. The image flickered from time to time, hit by the Nightsward’s faltering power generators, but Arnaid could see enough to share Holfad’s assessment. The ship on the scopes was Imperial, larger than they were, and heading on a corkscrewing course through the void that would eventually take it, if not intercepted, under the plane of the main Dark Angels fleet. The ship did not appear to be hurrying, which was unusual, for the northern fringe of the extermination zone was not a place to tarry without purpose.

‘Still no reply to hails?’ Arnaid asked again.

‘Nothing,’ confirmed Holfad.

Arnaid weighed up the options. Their last encounter had left them badly damaged and with heavily depleted ammunition stores. Mounting any kind of assault, particularly against a larger vessel, would be difficult. The prudent option would be to report the sighting and then shadow, hoping that a Legion ship of the line could respond before the fleet perimeter came within range. Then again, the entire complement of Legion vessels was already accounted for and fully occupied, caught up in the punishing round of tit-for-tat brutality that had marked the six-year-long xenocide campaign. They would not want to be pulled from duty unless absolutely necessary.

‘Move to engage,’ Arnaid commanded. ‘Full combat order, make preparation for boarding.’

The Nightsward swung around onto the intercept course, shifting with commendable agility given the state of the plasma drives. Soon the frigate was boosting through the void, tracing the geometry laid in by the navigation master.

Arnaid reached for his helm. He was still in his armour – none of the Legion ever took it off any more – and felt the familiar suck-hiss as the atmospheric seal took. He walked down from the tactical bridge pulpit to meet the five surviving members of his command group. He could see from his helm’s sensor-scatter that the remainder of his company – the 45th, of the Eighth Order, of the First Legion – were already racing to take up boarding positions. There were only a few torpedoes left, but they had Stormbirds in the hangars still, and the close-range broadside gunnery was in reasonable shape.

‘Not Rangdan?’ asked Talladan, first squad sergeant, hefting his chipped bolter sourly and checking the ammo-counter.

Arnaid could forgive the repeated query. They had been fighting the xenos for so long, with such sustained, attritional violence, that it had come to seem as if no other opposing force existed in the galaxy, and across the entire lifetime of the Legion there had never been an enemy that had tested them as much.

‘Not Rangdan, sergeant,’ Arnaid said, reaching for Bloodspite, his power sword. The blade was Calibanite, expertly wrought from dark metal with a long snaking dragon etched along the facing edge. ‘A conundrum, but the truth will out.’

Proximity klaxons began to chime, and the close-range sensors began to display their quarry. Arnaid summoned a hololith cube and zoomed the focus.

It certainly looked like one of theirs – Imperial, with that familiar dagger-prow, hunched back and heavy shielding. A Rangdan warship was all spines and flails and trailing metal tentacles, like an iron jellyfish cast adrift in the void.

‘Still no reply to hails,’ reported Holfad, calling out from behind his nest of cables and picter lenses.

Arnaid watched it come closer. ‘Ready broadside,’ he ordered. ‘Athwartships, no damage-shot unless I so order.’

‘Damned fools,’ muttered Talladan. ‘Don’t they know this is a warzone?’

‘I doubt they are unaware,’ said Arnaid, observing the ship come into visual range. ‘Sensor mimicking has cost us – they may be being cautious.’

The details of the ship were obvious now. It was unmarked, dark-grey like unpainted ceramite, a slab of unvarnished metal hanging in the dark. It appeared undamaged, which was a rarity in this region of the galaxy, and powered along capably with its thrusters firing clean.

‘Ready warning shot,’ ordered Arnaid. ‘Maintain standard hail.’

The interloper moved into the danger zone. There was no sign of its own weapons being run out, nor of gunship wings being loosed.

Arnaid drew in the breath that would have given the order to open fire, when finally his sensor-arrays flooded with incoming data.

‘A transmission, my liege,’ said Holfad.

Talladan growled low in irritation, a sound that echoed darkly within his helm. ‘What games are these?’

‘Show me,’ said Arnaid to Holfad, taking his hand slowly from the hilt of Bloodspite.

A hololith burst into half-scale instantiation, showing the ghostly outline of an Imperial Space Marine. His armour bore no insignia, and looked as blunt and unadorned as the ship he came from. The armour mark was newer than Arnaid’s – Mark IV rather than the First Legion’s widespread Mark II – and, like the ship he came from, showed no sign of battle damage.

‘This the First Legion ship-of-war Nightsward,’ Arnaid said, adopting the formalities. ‘You are undeclared and entering the proscribed Rangdan extermination zone. Power down and prepare for inspection, or I shall be forced to engage.’

‘There will be no need for that, captain,’ came the Space Marine’s voice. It was an odd voice – lighter than the average for a Legiones Astartes warrior, though with the usual supreme self-confidence. ‘We had to be sure we were in the right place. These xenos have proved adept at mimicry, we understand.’

Arnaid’s eyes narrowed. The subterfuge annoyed him. If this genuinely were an Imperial vessel, then without demonstration of a genuine cause the hide-and-seek felt pointless.

‘Declare yourself,’ Arnaid said, blink-clicking an order to the gunnery captains to remain on alert.

‘A friend,’ came the reply, with perhaps a hint of a smile audible in the helm-hidden words.

‘There are no friends in the void,’ said Arnaid, initiating the pre-firing cycle and moving his gauntlet back to his blade-hilt. ‘Your final chance.’

The hololithic head bowed a fraction. ‘Your reputation for bravery is not misplaced,’ he replied. ‘Even given the odds here, the condition of your ship, I believe you might actually fire. Very well. This is the strike cruiser Perseus, nine weeks out of Raf Deep-Anchor. Forgive the lack of identity – we do not as yet truly have one. The Twentieth Legion will do, if you insist on such things. And as for me, Captain Arnaid of the Forty-Fifth Company of the Eighth Order of the First Legion, you may call me Alpharius.’

He runs, body close to the leaf-matter, the stink of the mulch on his feet. The moonlight bars the ground faintly, for the clouds are running and the shadows are deep.

He is panting. His body is superlative, a gift beyond price, but he has been running a long time and even he has limits. He remembers, dimly, a time before this one, when it was all the howl of another reality, of whispered voices and the echoing cry of the infinite. He does not know how he came to leave that place and enter this one, overlooked by these iron-hard trees and their nightshade canopies. He does not know his name, nor his past, only that he is here, on a world that carries death in the sap of every twig and pain in the cry of every beast.

He runs harder now, letting the fatigue pull at him. It is as if he has to get used to having a body; as if, once, he was just an idea or a belief in another’s mind. He is caked in dirt. He is latticed with scratches. One wrong turn, and you are up to your waist in sucking mud, or caught in briars with thorns the length of a thigh. This world wants to kill you. It wants to kill everything.

He carries a weapon in his hand – a horn, discarded from the picked-clean corpse of another great beast. He has stabbed it many times into creatures that would have ended him, had he not got there first. He has plunged it into the flanks of the horrors of the wood, feeling the hot, black blood gush over his hands before it cut down into the bone. Now it is like a part of him, jabbing out from his fist, a mere extension of a body that does not belong in this place, that has been transplanted here and has to learn how to master its surroundings.

The beasts are everywhere. They fight one another, they fight the weak, they fight the strong. They leap through the canopy, their leathery wings pinned tight. They lurk in the undergrowth, tiny eyes burning under the thick snarl of tortured growths. There are beasts at the roots of the world, curled fast around its snaggling tendrils in the ancient soil, too massive to move, too bloated to breathe. You could never kill them all, not if you had eternity to spare. A few must always linger, poisoning the black earth.

He seeks higher ground, dropping to all fours to scrape his way up the bank. He is naked, but his skin has become very tough. He will have to find something to drape over himself – the flesh of another beast, a blood-flecked hide, pulled from the meat of something he kills. Until then, the wind flails him, cold as lies, dragging at his long hair.

It will rain soon. The moon-silvered heavens will break, dousing the earth and the spear-sharp leaves until all is a foment of bubbling slime and filth. This world is always in flux, the bark creaking, the earth sliding, the night’s gales shaking the boughs.

He ascends with labour. He slips, and feels the catch of thorns on his calves. He staggers, and feels the cool mud well up between his toes. For a moment, he thinks that the dark and the clinging brambles will choke him at last, wrapping themselves around his neck and hauling him down, but then he breaks the rise, charging out and up, wrestling free from the clutch of the limitless forest.

He is exposed then, upright against a churning sky. Black rocks jag into the racing air, whipped by the wind. He can finally see a long way, thrust up onto the outcrop that juts clear of the all-smothering canopy.

The clouds are tearing, re-forming. The treetops shake, rustling like bags of snakes. Ahead of him is the great valley, delved like a wound in the world, twisted and gasping with its competing growths of grey, black and darkest green.

He must go down there. The greatest beast of all is in that place, hunting him just as it is hunted. This one is the nightmare of the deep wood, the canker that turns this world against itself, the gall that has no salve. He cannot turn aside from it, for it knows of him as surely as he knows of it. He can smell it in the leaf-mould, and see its foulness in the oily pools that linger under the arched roots.

He hesitates. There is a part of him that falters. He sees the cloud-barred stars again, just for a breath’s intake, and knows that, once he ducks back into that light-gobbling netherworld, that he will never truly leave it. He wonders if there might be an escape, a place to hide, to wait until the storm has passed and the kills can be made by other, greater animals.

But there was never that choice, not really. The nightmare is calling him, beckoning him down into the valley, waiting to test him. Mastery of a world like this belongs to those who can stare into the abyss.

So he coils, he hunches, and then he is running again, down, down, down and into the dark.

The stranger was brought over to the Nightsward. He came without an escort. A counterpart team led by Talladan travelled to the Perseus. It felt like a hostage-exchange. After the transfers, the two ships lay immobile in the void, waiting for clearance to proceed.

Arnaid took Alpharius to his own chambers. He did not request that he remove his weapons. By the same token, he kept his own within reach.

On the way from the shuttle hangars, the newcomer looked around carefully, drinking in the surroundings. ‘I heard you take your homeworld with you,’ Alpharius said, staring at the carved stonework over the bulkhead lintels, the lanterns burning softly in their alcoves.

‘All Legions do,’ said Arnaid. ‘Even yours, I imagine.’

Alpharius smiled. His shaven head was elegant, with a bronze-edged hue to his skin. His armour was dull and blank, though it clearly worked well enough – in comparison to Arnaid’s battle-ravaged plate, he looked as if he had just stepped off the forge production-line.

‘You have very many questions, I expect,’ Alpharius said.

‘It matters not what I wish to know,’ Arnaid said, reaching the doorway to his chambers and extending a hand. ‘If you are who you say you are, the Invincible Reason will have the necessary records.’

Alpharius hesitated on the threshold. ‘You’re not even slightly curious?’

‘Curiosity is not much prized, here.’

‘Interesting. With us, the opposite is the case.’

They went inside. The space within was all Calibanite orthodoxy – stone walls and floors, naked flames in braziers, weaponry hung on iron racks next to battle-records and embellished lists of the dead. It had a sombre kind of beauty to it, redolent of the draughty war-keeps of the forest world, and Alpharius seemed to be observing it all carefully.

‘Tell me of the Rangdan,’ he said.

Arnaid sealed the door behind them. ‘They are an abomination,’ he said, flatly. ‘The end is in sight now, thankfully.’

‘It has been a hard campaign.’

‘As all are.’

‘Not like this one, I think.’

Arnaid found that he did not like Alpharius much. There was a distinct sense of superiority in his manner – nothing overt, but there nonetheless, as if he were young and fresh and clever while all about him was mouldering in the past, exhausted and ready to fade into obscurity.

‘They have proved hard to wear down,’ Arnaid admitted. ‘We have never truly been able to neutralise their ability to foil our tactical instruments – every fight is unbalanced, fought on terms that are seldom of our choosing. At the start of this, the difference was the Emperor. Now, it is the primarch. I would swap all their subtle devices for his presence. He has been their destroyer.’

‘Yes, that is what they are saying on Terra.’

‘We have not had word from Terra for a long time.’

‘It’s still there. But how stands your Legion, after six years?’

Now it was Arnaid’s turn to smile. ‘You wish me to give out details of our deployment? To you, who do not even wear a company badge?’

‘Forgive me. Curiosity, like I say. But this ship has taken serious damage.’

‘We fought a Rangdan Harp-ship, off the Uriba Angle. Two of ours were lost, we scraped out intact. A high toll, but every one of those we end, the closer this thing comes to completion.’

‘And you are still on patrol.’

‘None can be spared. Not now.’

‘Doing your duty,’ said Alpharius. ‘That is important to you.’

‘Of course. As to you.’

‘You are a serious Legion. You do not laugh, you do not boast. You are here, on the edge of the known, bleeding for the Imperium. I wonder how many of the worlds you protect know that.’

Arnaid shrugged. ‘Few of us would care.’ He moved across to a low stone altar, over which a secure comms station had been erected. He activated the link with a gesture, waiting for the coils to warm. ‘I am a Terran,’ he said. ‘But I spent time on Caliban, and that is all you need to do, to understand this Legion. On that world, the darkness is always creeping back. You torch the forest, and it comes back. You cut the trees down, and they rise to smother you again. So they ride out, again and again, striking down into the defiles, hunting for the worst beast in the worst brake. They slay it, and then they may have an hour, or a day, or a week. But something will come back again. So you are always riding. You do not expect thanks. You do not think of it as duty. It is life, and to live it is the source of all honour.’

‘Some would call that pride.’

‘Some?’

‘Some.’

‘Well, if it is pride to trust in your weapons, in your war-keep, in your liege, then I have no quarrel with that.’

‘Could another Legion have done what you are doing, here?’

‘I do not know.’

‘But you doubt it.’

‘I trust in my weapons.’

‘And in your liege?’

The comms station suddenly blushed a dull red, and the lens filled up with runes.

‘You will be able to find out for yourself,’ Arnaid said, studying the incoming screed. ‘Word from the flagship, and all is granted. Consider yourself fortunate – the Lion wishes to speak to you in person.’

As he runs, he grows stronger again. The scent of blood is in the storm-wind, splattered on the leaves and pooled in the root-curls. Even as the rain starts, he smells it among the rival smells of the deep wood – the decay, the fungus, the sweet drift of carcass-spoor.

The undergrowth is sodden now, shining in the wavering moonlight. The trees are like the bars of a prison, massive and unyielding.

All paths lead him downwards now, away from the dying light and into the troughs and sloughs of the twilight realms. Birds scream overhead, their wings snapping as they burst from their eyries. Lesser creatures cower in sets and dens, their eyes like black jewels, their claws pressed tight into the dank earth.

The sickle-curve horn is in his hand, dripping with rainwater. He grips it so tight he thinks now that he shall never let it go. The further in he travels, the more the stink of his enemy grows in strength. Everything is stained by it, here. The heartwood reeks of it, the mires reflect it.

He shoves his way through a tangle of thorns, and they rake at his back. He skids on the loose mud, and nearly loses his footing. There is no place for stealth – all scents are out in the open. He must be like a shadow of the storm, leaping through the flickering half-light, using his speed and his power to overwhelm the nightmare that waits for him.

He has heard tales of the creature from many mouths. The beasts sing of it, and they cower; the birds crow of it, and they shudder. Perhaps that is why he has come to this world. Perhaps only he could ever have had the strength to wrestle such a creature to the blood-rich earth, to throttle it and stamp its entrails into the sucking mulch.

The smell becomes overwhelming, an equine musk, a tang of iron. He is close, he is very close. The sky splits with a flare of lightning, serrating the lashing heavens, and he sees the stark black spine of the wind-bent trees.

It is there, pawing at the ground, holding court within its narrow clearing, its nostrils wide and steaming.

He does not hesitate. He leaps, bursting from cover with the tendrils of the grasping wood trailing from his shoulders. The nightmare charges him, thundering right back at him, making the earth hammer under churning hooves. For a second, he is in the air, suspended, blade high, staring at it. The storm growls again, flooding the clearing with a second flash of silver fire.

It is enormous, clad in a shell of black iron, its eyes hidden, its shoulders curved under armour. It carries a long straight blade that glints dully against the storm’s cold fire. Too late, he sees that it is not one beast there, but two – a rider and its mount, each armoured, each colossal, glossed and slicked in the streaming rain.

He strikes out with the horn, and drives the tip against the creature’s armour. The horn shivers in his grip and shatters. The nightmare lashes out, swinging its great blade two-handed. The blow is impeccable, too fast to evade, too strong to survive. He feels the dark iron bite deep, rending his own flesh as he once rent the flesh of other beasts.

He howls, and the world spins. The nightmare thrusts again, point-first now, aimed at the heart with unerring precision. He tries to scrabble away, but is pinned, and this time the agony is all-consuming. He can feel the howl of the netherworld coming for him again, the dissolution from which he came, and knows the price of failure.

The nightmare is looming over him now, drenched with both storm-rain and thrown blood. It looks haggard and grotesque, a foul parody of old nobility.

‘First Son,’ he snarls, summoning speech from the bowels of his rapidly dissipating body.

It twists the blade, and comes so close that its eyes are almost visible between the narrow slit of an iron helm.

‘You are the death of this world,’ he spits.

The nightmare crunches its spurred boot onto his neck, choking the last vigour from his corporeal husk.

‘Call me by my name,’ it tells him, in a voice of such studied, arch contempt that it burns his peeling flesh away. ‘The hunter. The slayer of beasts.’

Arnaid was given the honour of accompanying Alpharius. The Nightsward made its way from the fringes of the engagement zone towards the heart of the grand fleet. As they travelled, Arnaid saw the state of the ships – hacked and marred and gouged, all of them, like herd animals bearing the claw-scars of predators. The numbers were down on what they had been, and even some of the big battle cruisers appeared to be missing.

They passed through a number of challenge-stages, each one overseen by a larger warship, until they were heading into the congested centre where the true leviathans stood at void-anchor. There was no mistaking the flagship – the Invincible Reason was long, lean, dark and spare, like a spear of obsidian against the void. Its gothic turrets still reared proudly from its back, though many were blackened from xenos particle flayers and some whole sections had been stripped from the adamantium superstructure.

The final approaches were shadowed by Legion Stormbirds bearing the hexagrammatic sigils of the Ravenwing. Despite giving the correct pass-ciphers at every stage, primed guns overwatched them the whole time. That was standard procedure in the extermination zone, but Arnaid couldn’t help but wonder if it had more to do, on this occasion, with the passenger he carried with him.

They passed under the shadow of the Invincible Reason’s main hangar and entered its cavernous, echoing embrace. Once disembarked, they were met by an honour guard of paladins, each draped in ivory cloaks over nightshade-black armour. They were escorted courteously, but firmly, to the turbo-lifts and grav-lines, after which they swept through the many halls and armouries towards their destination.

On the way, Arnaid stole occasional glances at Alpharius. He liked to think that the newcomer would be impressed – the Invincible Reason was by a distance the most famous ship in the Imperium. It had been the first of the Gloriana class, and in its subsequent service a vindication of the Emperor’s ambition to create something so vast, so powerful and so fast that nothing in the galaxy would ever rival it. For a long time it had been the only such vessel in the entire crusade, and the very rumour of its presence was sufficient to quell warzones and hasten compliances. Now a number of other Glorianas had been put into service with other Legions, but the old lustre from this one was still not quite gone. Every hammerbeam roof and vaulted alcove spoke of sombre, patient craftsmanship, the melding of the mechanical genius of Mars with the dark, lethal majesty of Caliban.

Eventually they reached the primarch’s private chambers, and Arnaid prepared to withdraw. As he did so, one of the paladin escort prevented him.

‘He wants you too, captain.’

And so Arnaid went in. He walked alongside Alpharius up the long nave, his boots treading into the rush mats laid over cold granite. He passed the banners of the Legion’s many companies and battalions, all hanging stiffly in those mournful, candlelit shadows.

The Lion was waiting for them on a throne of white alabaster, a long, ermine-trimmed cloak hanging from his shoulder in a heavy cataract of velvet. A battery of hololith projectors had been set about the throne, and all were active, showing schematics of more than a dozen active void-engagements. As ever, the primarch’s silent presence proved quietly dominating, like the cold pressure of night air before the onset of a storm. Perhaps, though, as one got closer, it was possible to detect a degree of strain in those chilly eyes, a faint weariness hanging over those great shoulders. So many had died here, slain by an enemy that had nowhere to run and so fought with all the desperation of a cornered beast. Many more would die before the end, whatever tactical genius was brought to bear on the remaining engagements, and so every planned deployment was scrutinised, checked and revised, over and over again.

It was said by some that the Lion cared not for his warriors, and would sacrifice any number of them to achieve a strategic advantage. That rumour, though widespread, could hardly have been further from the truth. This primarch had been raised amid the Order, for whom fealty and feudal obligation were everything, and so every death of those sworn to his service weighed heavy on his austere soul. If he chose not to show that emotion, thus giving rise to whispers from lesser men, that did nothing to reduce the burden. He was a closed book, the Lion, though one whose secret pages were etched with the blood of those he led.

‘Captain Arnaid,’ he said as the two of them approached the dais. ‘I was appraised of your recent service at Uriba. You give honour to your Order.’

Arnaid bowed. ‘The honour is mine, lord primarch,’ he said.

The Lion turned to Alpharius. Arnaid stole a sideways glance too, and was satisfied at the erasure of smugness on the Space Marine’s face. There could be no gentle air of superiority here, not in the presence of a true son of the Emperor.

‘And you,’ said the Lion, resting a great gauntlet on one armoured knee. ‘What am I to make of you?’

Alpharius bowed. ‘Whatever you wish, my lord. I am here to answer your questions.’

‘You come from a Legion that does not exist, and give a name that has no correspondence in any record,’ the Lion said. ‘You show no badge and give no assurance, and yet demand an audience here, in the heart of my fleet and on the eve of coming battle.’

‘The Twentieth is real, lord, as you can plainly see,’ Alpharius said. ‘And, if I may say so, I do not think its existence could ever truly have been a secret to you.’

‘I had heard rumours. A Legion of ghosts, they said, coming and going without leaving a thread to ravel. But a Legion needs a primarch, and you have none, so by what right do you give your warband the title?’

‘Legions existed before their primarchs, even this one. We are the last, but our master will be discovered in time. Perhaps then we shall become more than ghosts.’

‘Or perhaps you won’t.’

‘The choice will be made for us, that is certain.’

Arnaid watched and listened. Though superficially different, there was something disconcertingly similar about the way the two of them spoke. It was as if the words were only surface-deep, and that the true import of what they said was still unspoken, locked in hidden caskets of meaning.

‘Tell me why you are here,’ said the Lion.

‘I bring a ship, containing a company of our finest warriors. There are others coming, all apt to be placed under your command. They will serve faithfully and without question. We have studied your war against the Rangdan, admiring it from afar. The xenos will not prove a surprise to us. Take the offer, and this will be over far more swiftly.’

‘A generous gift. It comes from my father, does it?’

‘It comes from ourselves. We have a certain… licence, in this, at any rate.’

‘There are many Legions fighting in this crusade. No others have offered us help. Why should you?’

‘We wish to see the crusade completed.’

‘So do all my brothers.’

‘We wish to see the Rangdan destroyed.’

The Lion’s visage hardened. ‘Let me advise you a little, ghost,’ he said. ‘There are those of my esteemed brotherhood who possess warm hearts and ready humours. They are tolerant men, who will listen to the tales of travellers with indulgence, enjoying such discourse just as they enjoy their plays at combat. I am not like them. My heart is not warm, my humours are sour. I have seen my Legion bled to the marrow by this war, and now spend every waking hour striving to preserve what is left. We have killed so many in these charnel-systems that our hands may never be free of the stain of it, so if you value your neck then start speaking the truth – I do not keep this sword at my belt for idle show.’

Alpharius’ eyelid twitched, just a little. The serene visage frayed at the edges, just a little. But he held his ground, and he held the primarch’s gaze.

‘You must be Warmaster, my lord,’ he said.

The word lingered in the shadows, an unfamiliar echo in those grey and sombre halls.

‘What do you mean?’ the Lion asked, warily.

‘The day will come,’ said Alpharius. ‘The last primarch – ours – will be found, and then this pretence at equality must end. An emperor does not lead his armies once his generals are in the field, and this one will be no different. Do not feign ignorance, my lord, for you cannot be unaware of what has long been talked of among your brothers.’

‘You bring danger on yourself, with these words.’

‘I merely state what must take place,’ Alpharius said. ‘You were the first. Your Legion was the greatest and the most numerous. You should be preeminent still, the first choice for the station that must come in time. In conception it was you. It still can be.’

‘You speak as if the decision has been made.’

‘You are destroying yourself in this war. The Thirteenth Legion is now more numerous for the first time, though its master is a pale shadow of you. If you continue to absorb this rate of attrition, you will never overtake them again. Others have risen in favour, too – the Tenth, the Sixteenth. There is a crown ordained for you, lord, but it is slipping from your fingers.’

‘And you can restore it to my brow.’

‘Yes, if you withdraw your strength now. Let us complete what remains of this task, while you recover your numbers. None could doubt your valour for what has already been done. Return to Caliban and build anew, and none will also doubt your right to rule.’

The Lion thought on that. His steep brow furrowed for a moment, and armoured fingers drummed across his knee.

‘And you would be kingmaker,’ he said.

‘No obligation would be placed on you.’

‘Then why make the offer?’

Alpharius smiled, in what seemed like almost embarrassment. ‘Because we have been created the same way, your people and ours. You know what it is to keep both a promise and a secret. You know what it is to carry the blade on your belt and the one under your cloak. If Guilliman is made master, none of this will survive. That is why.’

The Lion smiled for the first time then, as chilly and hard-edged as any of his gestures. ‘One day, if the fates allow, your own primarch will be found. Why not place your hopes in him?’

‘We are not what you are.’

‘And what are we?’

‘The First.’

The Lion did not respond for a moment. He seemed to withdraw into himself, as if those two words were as much a curse as an honour.

‘Go, now,’ he said, grimly, pulling the cloak a little closer about himself. ‘Return to your grey ship and your empty flags. You will have my answer within the hour.’

After Alpharius had left, the Lion turned to Arnaid.

‘What did you make of that?’ he asked.

‘A strange offer.’

‘Very. Do you agree with his assessment of the war?’

Arnaid hesitated. ‘It is not my place to–’

‘Your honest view, captain.’

‘He’s right.’ Arnaid lifted his gaze to meet his primarch’s. ‘We will win here, but we will also leave much of our strength in these stars.’

The Lion nodded. His eyes flickered briefly across the various tactical hololiths, all buzzing with runes and deployment vectors.

‘I had a dream last night, Captain Arnaid,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘I dreamed that I was back on Caliban, before my father had come, when the deep woods were still alive with horror. I was in the mind of a beast, come to slay me. Or perhaps the beast was in my mind, and it was the hunter. I do not recall ever meeting such a creature in life. As I ended it, it spoke to me. Did that ever happen, truly? I do not know.’

Arnaid listened, a little awkwardly, unsettled by the glimpse, however slight, into his primarch’s inner life.

‘It, too, called me the First,’ the Lion said. ‘I cannot have known what it meant, then. Ever since, though, the title has been both honour and burden, hung around our necks like lead weight. Now we have more ghosts emerging from the void to tempt us with future visions of a greater politics to come. Always, at every turn, such ghosts have been there, believing they know what I must wish for, or must do, or must be.’

The Lion smiled a second time, a little less coldly.

‘A Warmaster,’ he said, musingly. ‘A first among equals. The ghost is no doubt right – something like that will surely come. And, if we persist in fulfilling our oaths here, we damage our chances of taking it. Every creature of temptation, it seems to me, comes out of the shadows bearing words of truth. That is why they are dangerous – we are used to lies, on a world made of them. Only truth imperils the soul.’

‘Then, should we…’ Arnaid ventured.

The Lion looked back towards him, a flicker of dry amusement lingering on his face. ‘Should we what, captain?’

‘Should we accept the offer?’

The Lion sat back in the throne.

‘The offers change,’ he said. ‘The answer never does.’

He comes out of the trees on foot as the sun rises, his armour bearing the mark of many claws. The rain has long ended, but the air is still grey and heavy with moisture, the land is sunk into mire, the tracks waterlogged and the fields lumped with sod and clay.

Ahead, on the horizon, his war-keep rises into a grey sky, its black walls crowned with pennants. It is enormous, built to subdue the land around it, but even so, set against those trackless forests beyond, it seems like a fragile dominion. Men and women are moving in long cavalcades through the mud, tramping their weary way towards the gates. All are watched over by the warriors in dark armour, standing sentinel on their heavy barded destriers.

He is met on the road by knights of the Order, themselves fresh from sallies into the shadows. One takes off his helm, revealing a close-shorn scalp, a noble visage, a battle-toughened skin.

‘Son of the forest!’ the knight hails, saluting him. ‘Another victory?’

He looks up. He is weary beyond imagining, and the words of that last creature, the one that had the form of a man and spoke with the speech of mortals, still echoes in his ears.

‘The day will come,’ he says, shaking the filth from his gauntlet.

The knight dismounts, comes closer. He leans in, like a conspirator. ‘Yes, eventually,’ he says, softly. ‘But while we purge these forests, the other Orders grow more powerful. You know my counsel. Turn aside from the hunt, my liege, just for a season.’

He does not look at the knight. He looks at the people making their way towards the safety of the war-keep. They give no thanks for what is done on their behalf. They were not party to the oaths that bind their protectors, even though their future depends on them.

‘We made a promise, brother,’ he says.

‘You think the others will keep theirs?’

‘What does that matter to me?’

‘Because this world will one day have a single master. It must be you.’

He starts to walk again, his boots sinking up to the spurs in mud. Every movement is ponderous, freighted with ingrained fatigue.

‘Have a care for destiny!’ the knight calls out after him. ‘An oath can be forgotten. Power cannot.’

He keeps walking.

‘Then what do you wish to be known for, my liege?’ the knight asks, a final plea. ‘When the annals are written, what do you wish them to say of you?’

He keeps walking. He never looks back.

‘That I was ever, and only, thus,’ he says, tasting the raw, frigid air of another Caliban dawn. ‘The hunter. The slayer of beasts.’

A GAME OF OPPOSITES

Guy Haley

Confounding the foe is one sure way to victory. When this strategy is pursued, war becomes a game of opposites and expectations.

At all times, present your enemy with the reverse of the truth. When you are vulnerable, appear strong, when you are strong, appear vulnerable. When close by your enemy, appear far from him, and when far away, appear close by. Weakness may thus be turned into strength.

A cunning strategist will show the enemy a mirror image of the truth, but the master strategist will accord his lies with his enemy’s expectations. Learn what your enemy believes of you. Present that image to him at all times. In using his intelligence as a cloak, you might hide your intentions, and strike as a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky.

– Jaghatai Khan
Tenets of War

The Storm Eagle hovered uncertainly over the mountainside. The site landing pad had been taken out in the attack, forcing the ship to put down directly onto the slope. Its engines whined, struggling to keep it over the flattest part of the terrain in the strong crosswind. After five minutes shifting from side to side, the Storm Eagle touched down awkwardly. Landing claws gouged white scratches into rock as they slipped. Engines howled again, pushing the ship back into position. Tentatively, the machine sank into its hydraulics. The engines cycled down and finally cut out. The craft sat unmoving a moment, wind screeching around its body.

The front ramp opened slowly, as if the Storm Eagle feared knocking itself from its precarious perch. Red light spilled out into the dim afternoon. An angry voice, distorted by the voxmitter of early pattern power armour, came with it.

‘Curse it all, can this landing sequence go any more slowly?’

‘The landing area is unsafe, Warsmith Xyrokles.’ The second had the long-suffering air of a man often criticised.

‘Always got an answer, Phideark,’ growled Xyrokles. ‘It is one of your least attractive habits.’

‘Yes, Warsmith.’

‘And stop agreeing with me when I insult you. A dignified silence is more becoming.’

‘Yes, Warsmith.’

Within the ship a group of Iron Warriors waited for the ramp’s cautious descent. The Warsmith stepped out as soon as the edge bit the mountainside. The slope was such that the ramp was angled awkwardly, and not all of the toothed lip made contact with the ground. The ship creaked ominously. Xyrokles looked up sharply at the tilted prow.

‘Steady, my brothers,’ he said. ‘It would be embarrassing if we lost our ship to heavy footsteps.’

As lightly as a transhuman can move in power armour, the Iron Warriors disembarked, fanning out along the slope, guns ready. Xyrokles stomped ahead of them, his heavy boots slipping on the loose rock.

‘What are you doing?’ he said, waving at his warriors impatiently. ‘Quickly! If they are still up there we are all dead.’ He looked up at the construction site. ‘We are sitting targets here. Who trained you fools? Get up to the ridge, cover Phideark and me! Go!’ He waved them forwards. The servo-arm mounted on his power plant half extended with his irritation. The warriors lumbered up the mountainside. Xyrokles and Phideark followed.

‘What a mess,’ Xyrokles said when they crested the brow.

‘They have done a thorough job, my lord,’ said Phideark.

‘Shut up, Phideark,’ snapped Xyrokles. He stamped on. The level ground the construction teams had so painfully cut from the mountainside was cratered and fouled with construction machinery carefully positioned before being destroyed to prevent landing there.

Xyrokles waited for his bodyguards to fan out further before venturing on. He stopped again, shaking his head at a collection of new buildings, now all in flames. Black smoke twisted sideways in the wind.

‘Everything, command centre, landing pad, comms arrays. All of it gone.’

A massive turret, which had been close to completion, had been levelled with melta-charges. Bubbled flows of melted plascrete clung to the slopes, frozen quickly in the mountain chill.

Fires from the construction site blew flat along the ground, only their ferocity keeping them from being blown out.

‘This happened recently,’ said Xyrokles. ‘What was the exact time contact was lost?’

‘Fifty-second segment, four hundredth millichron,’ Phideark said faithfully.

‘A few hours ago at most. These fires are still burning.’ Xyrokles looked up at the mountainside where fresh craters made white starbursts fringed in black on the reddish stone. ‘Those bastards are probably still up there, watching us.’

‘I detect no power sources from active vehicles or war-plate.’

‘It means nothing.’ Xyrokles moved on, skirting a burned out earth mover slumped into the remains of its tracks. ‘All this work, all wrecked, a week away from the installation of the primary armament.’

They spotted the first bodies near the outer defence lines. A firing line of Iron Warriors lay scattered by a missile hit. More were dead behind the short parapet guarding the principal blast doors, their wounds unmistakably inflicted by power weapons.

‘There’s one of theirs,’ Phideark pointed.

‘Shut up, Phideark. Shut up, shut up now. I am trying to think,’ said Xyrokles. He went over to the dead warrior anyway. ‘Typical hit and run tactics.’ He kicked the dead warrior’s chest-plate. His gunmetal boot made a dull sound on the white ceramite. ‘White Scars! I knew it was too good to be true when Harkaton said he’d driven off their warfleet. That attack on the outer solar line was a distraction to allow the slippery cheminerikoi to sneak in here.’ He used an Olympian profanity with no true parallel in Gothic. There were several near translations of varying levels of offensiveness. ‘But if they snuck in, it means their strength will be low. A raiding party, come to make our lives difficult – well, they’ll regret it.’ He stared up at the fire gutting the command post, and shook his head again. ‘Have you alerted the other sites?’

‘Yes, Warsmith, as requested.’ He paused. ‘Site five has been hit. Similar timing to this.’

Xyrokles swore. Phideark stood stoically by as his commander worked his way through five city-states’-worth of gutterspeak.

‘The same result?’

‘The same. Total destruction.’

‘Damn it all, Phideark!’ He looked down to the Storm Eagle. ‘What’s that still doing there? Order the ship up. Do I have to do everything? It’s vulnerable. Tell the men to start site recovery.’

‘Shall we begin reconstruction?’

Xyrokles snorted. ‘No. The enemy will keep knocking down every castella we put up. It’s a wearying game. We need to deal with them before we can deal with that.’ He pointed at the burning complex.

‘Then what are your orders, my lord? Shall I order patrols out around the site?’

‘Are you joking with me, Phideark?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Then attempt more workable suggestions!’

‘Then, we defend.’

‘Also idiotic. They will hit us and hit us and hit us, that’s what these savages do. We can build as many forts as we care to, it won’t help. We don’t have the manpower in-system to protect all our assets here, not while they are half-finished.’

‘Then your suggestions, Warsmith, so that I might act upon them.’

‘That’s more like it, captain. We do not pursue, and we do not defend. We have to tempt them out, get them to attack us, and box them in.’ He nodded at his own suggestion. Lens glow glanced off the dull metallic armour plates. ‘Yes. The only way to stop something that loves to move is to give it no opportunity to move at all. Order up our orbital fighters and gunships, standard search pattern.’

‘My lord, we have less than half a grand company at our disposal. The weather is closing in. We are unlikely to find them.’

‘Finding them is not the point,’ said Xyrokles. ‘They’ll be expecting us to search. Let’s not disappoint them.’

Some six hundred metres above, five White Scars stood in guard around a rocky eminence. Four wore the insignia of clan lords, the bond-kin of a khan of the Ordu. The fifth was the Khan Ishigu of the Third Tempest. He was a warrior of high rank and renown, but at that moment he stood with his warriors as a common sentry, for he waited on the Khan of Khans, Jaghatai, primarch of the White Scars.

The primarch knelt on a boulder above them, magnoculars to his eyes. He was leaning far out over the drop, thin air and a painful, fatal tumble down sharp rocks awaiting should he fall. Ishigu Khan and his men did not fear for their gene-father. He was the lord of all Khans, a son of the Emperor. Such a slip for him was unthinkable. A man might as well expect the sky to stumble.

Runic notifiers blinked in Ishigu’s helm. He evaluated them and, finding danger in the warning, addressed his lord.

‘My Khan,’ he said. ‘Two groups of enemy aircraft are moving in from the west and south on intersecting courses. Five lightning crows, a dozen gunships, mixed classes. They will be over our position within ten minutes.’

The Khan of Khans lowered his magnoculars.

‘They begin their search for us, Ishigu.’ He grinned back at his men. ‘They will find nothing. We leave now.’

Xyrokles’ men engaged in constant searches to no effect. In the meantime, three more sites were attacked and badly damaged. All was as the Warsmith expected, and so he was not unduly concerned.

‘I know how this Legion thinks,’ Xyrokles told his five line captains. ‘We must behave as they expect, in order to hide our intentions.’

‘Why, lord?’ asked Captain Melias, head of Xyrokles’ armoured century.

‘Because it is what Jaghatai Khan would do,’ said Xyrokles. ‘Helpfully, their primarch has put down a number of his thoughts on the nature of strategy. Misdirection is a keystone of his tenets of war.’

‘They fight dirty,’ said Captain Herakt.

‘Dishonestly,’ corrected Xyrokles.

Herakt picked up one of a number of slender pamphlets from the table. It was made of pounded grass paper, and written in hand-painted Chogorian ideograms. He held it open in his dull metal fists. His helm clicked as his suit cogitator attempted a translation.

‘Know one’s self, know one’s enemy. If you do not know your nature, it cannot be honed, but remains blunt. If you do not know your enemy’s nature, your attack will likewise be blunted…’ Herakt laughed. ‘What gnomic nonsense is this?’

‘It is irritatingly composed, but taken together there is a certain poetry to it,’ said Xyrokles.

‘He’s not exactly a plain speaker, is he?’ Herakt tossed the book back onto the table.

‘He is not. But the concepts expressed in these books are valid.’ Xyrokles tapped a small stack of the pamphlets. ‘They are a useful insight into his mind and the tactics of his Legion.’

‘You’ve been studying these texts, my lord?’ said Herakt.

‘I have. There are more forms of war than ours alone. A mastery of sieges is of little use when your opponent scorns walls. I told you, I know this primarch.’ He poked his finger into the tri-d map on the chart desk they stood around. The projection fizzed around his finger. ‘Enough to know that station nine will be next.’

‘That’s my site,’ said Captain Garazhk, looking up from a book of logistical tables suddenly.

‘I am glad you are paying attention,’ said Xyrokles.

‘Then I shall evacuate,’ said Garazhk.

‘You will do no such thing,’ said Xyrokles.

‘Stand easy, brother captain, there’s only a few of them,’ said Herakt mockingly.

‘Easy to say when it is not your men at risk,’ said Garazhk, irritated easily by Herakt’s baiting, as he always was. ‘Why should we stand and die? Nobody else has had any luck against them. Warsmith, it makes no sense.’

‘It makes perfect sense,’ said Xyrokles.

‘I protest, my lord,’ said Garazhk. ‘If you order me to fight, I shall, but I request reinforcements. Divided across the construction sites as we are, we have insufficient manpower at any one to stop them. We must meet them in force, and let them break themselves on the walls of our bodies. We have lost, how many?’

‘Fifty-nine of seven hundred men,’ said Melias.

‘None of them yours,’ said Captain Kyrix sourly.

‘There will be no reinforcements,’ said Xyrokles.

‘Then… what?’ said Garazhk. ‘You want me to stand there and die?’

‘I want you and your line company to make a show of defying them. You know they are coming, make them pay. Those are your orders.’

‘We’ll still be dead,’ grumbled Garazhk.

‘That is up to you,’ said Xyrokles. His captains looked at each other. Xyrokles was exhibiting a great deal of patience, and he was not a patient man. The only time he did not snap and berate his warriors was when he had some kind of clever strategy in mind. These were usually successful, but costly in blood. ‘Some of us are going to die,’ that’s what the captains’ shared glances said.

‘We cannot dig in. They will neutralise the defence laser network before it is finished. Need I remind you of Lord Perturabo’s orders? We must deal with them quickly. If we allow the attack on station nine to proceed, we will have the White Scars exactly where we need them,’ said Xyrokles. ‘Captain Tar-Julsk.’ He addressed the only captain who had not spoken. Tar-Julsk was thoughtful, and had spent the whole edification examining the data Xyrokles presented.

‘My lord Warsmith?’

‘You will prepare a convoy of materials to repair the four damaged sites.’

‘I thought we weren’t repairing the sites?’ said Phideark.

‘We are not. Not yet. I only want it to look like we are, because that’s what they will be expecting us to do.’

‘My lord, doing what he expects us to do will lead to defeat!’ protested Garazhk.

‘Wrong,’ said Xyrokles. ‘I have not finished. If I hear more objections, I will be looking for a new seventh captain.’

Garazhk shut up.

‘I see your strategy,’ said Tar-Julsk. He leaned forwards. The light of the cartolith danced in his eyes.

‘Explain to the others,’ said Xyrokles.

‘I gather the convoy here, in the safety of the canyons leading up to the peaks.’ He pointed to a maze of canyons the Iron Warriors had been using as a way up the mountains. ‘I will take a full complement of guards, double the amount doctrine demands, in fact. We will reveal ourselves while the enemy are attacking station nine. They will identify me as a target of opportunity and strike, even though they will be weakened, low on ammunition and fuel, because I will be too tempting to ignore. You will counter-attack. They will be pinned into place, and destroyed.’

‘That is almost correct,’ said Xyrokles. ‘We will ambush them, but allow them the opportunity to withdraw. We will then hit them repeatedly with attacks here, here and here.’ Xyrokles traced a line through the unforgiving mountainous terrain. ‘They will be caught here.’ He stabbed his armoured fingers down on a wide plateau. ‘Our fighters will cut off their retreat. Melias will be lying in wait with his armoured century. They will be surrounded on all sides, and we shall obliterate them.’

‘Risky,’ said Tar-Julsk. ‘Melias must get into position without being seen.’

‘I can do it,’ said Melias with a shrug. ‘If they’re engaged at station nine, they won’t be looking.’

‘They will withdraw,’ Xyrokles gloated. ‘That is their habit in the face of unfavourable odds. They will take the bait, unwittingly run into larger forces and withdraw again. We will direct their every move, until they are trapped.’

Tar-Julsk nodded. ‘A good plan.’

Garazhk was relieved. ‘So I will not face a full attack for long.’

‘Can we be sure they will take this route into the mountains?’ asked Herakt.

‘It is a steep valley, limited opportunity for our fighter craft to take them, plenty of terrain for them to lose our ground forces in. What would you do in their position?’ said Tar-Julsk.

‘Our armour is the key to this fight. If we get them to face Melias, our problem will cease to be,’ said Xyrokles. ‘You have your orders. Let us rid ourselves of this irritant.’

Ishigu swept around the defence laser construction site. There were three dozen similar stations set around the planet’s equatorial mountain chain, where they could target ships arriving at Epsilon-Garmon’s Mandeville point. Epsilon-Garmon was a small orange star, its system tiny and of little strategic value, but the Khan, and evidently the Iron Warriors, thought Lord Guilliman’s Legion might come that way.

Weapons fire chased his brotherhood across the planet’s dusty sky. Sharp bursts of Chogorian battle talk kept the swarming flights of jetbikes in formation as they swept and dived over the site. Boltgun fire from the bikes drove back the enemy, while Storm Eagles and Thunderhawks ran bombing runs. Floury clouds of rock dust burst from the ground with each missile hit. Fire flashed in the clouds. The Iron Warriors were tenacious foes. Ishigu’s brotherhood would have to land to finish them off.

‘Khan,’ his bond-brother Hesegai voxed him. ‘Their response times are getting quicker. We have enemy interceptors en route to our position.’

Ishigu roared around in a banking curve over the battlefield. The mission was not finished, but it would have to do. ‘Enemy work site is heavily damaged. Withdraw.’

The clouds of attack craft and skimmers flew apart, hurtling away from the battle in every direction. Each of the defence laser construction sites were located high up the faces of the mountains, and Ishigu sped down near-vertical slopes away from the enemy. One by one his brotherhood fell back into flight with him.

‘Casualties,’ Ishigu demanded.

His sergeants reported their losses. Three dead for certain, one more jetbike downed, though the rider’s suit signum was still active and moving away from the battlefield.

‘Log Kin-Ha’s position. We will retrieve him at nightfall,’ he said.

They dipped into steep valleys. Enemy strike fighters blazed overhead, their auspexes unable to get a lock on the speeding assault brotherhood hidden in the canyons beneath them.

‘They do not see us. Split up into your extraction groupings and make for camp,’ Ishigu said. Quick blurts of vox chatter acknowledged his order, and he was about to respond to them when a flashing mark on his helm cartolith caught his attention. ‘Hold that last,’ he said. Data screed ran quickly down his faceplate. ‘I have new orders. A convoy attempting the ascent from the lowlands. They were waiting for us to be invested in attack before making a run for it.’

‘Who knew the Iron Warriors could be so cunning?’ said Hesegai. ‘Do we engage?’

Ishigu checked the fuel gauges of his forty-strong attack force. ‘Engage,’ he said.

Hesegai sang a snatch of hunting song. ‘I am enjoying this little war!’ he whooped.

The convoy ground slowly up the mountain pass. The core of it was fifteen heavy haulers, dragging trailers laden with newly made construction equipment to replace what the White Scars had destroyed. Sixteen Rhinos and light tanks escorted them. None of the vehicles enjoyed the terrain, and they dragged themselves metre by painful metre through the primary slot canyon. Tar-Julsk’s force was an expensive lure; the machinery had taken a great deal of effort to construct and would be lost in the battle.

The Iron Warriors had been obliged to build their own road into the mountains, but the White Scars had bombed it several times, and the going was slow. The chances were Tar-Julsk’s luring force would take heavy casualties, but he bore the risk stoically. That was the Legion way.

Tar-Julsk detected the White Scars as soon as they burst out of a side canyon three kilometres to his rear.

‘They have risen to the bait,’ he voxed. ‘Convoy haulage elements, begin your escape. Squads seven to twelve, hang back and engage.’

Engines roared so loudly in the canyon that they penetrated the armour of Tar-Julsk’s command Spartan. The smell of overheated drive plates filled the crew compartment from the haulers struggling ahead.

Seconds later, screaming jets echoed up the canyon. Gunfire sounded from the rearguard of Whirlwinds and Sicarans. A moment later the White Scars were among them, their jetbikes screaming, bolters banging. The whooshing roar of melta weaponry came next as Land Speeders followed the faster bikes. An explosion rocked Tar-Julsk’s Land Raider.

Comms chatter from his men was calm in his vox-bead.

‘Hauler six destroyed.’

‘They are fast. I cannot target them.’

‘Enemy elements regrouping for second attack run.’

Tar-Julsk’s face set. ‘Iron Within, Iron Without,’ he muttered to himself.

Ishigu flew over the convoy. The Iron Warriors behaved true to form: their tanks covering the rear, chasing the jetbikes with gunfire as they raced by, looped around and flew back, while the haulers attempted to escape forwards.

‘We have them,’ Hesegai laughed. ‘They are trapped!’

A second hauler exploded, the tractor unit lifted up so violently it upset its trailer, spilling the crane it carried onto the rough road.

‘Squad Screaming Hawk, target the foremost hauler,’ Ishigu commanded. ‘Block the pass. Stop their escape.’

‘As you command, khan,’ Screaming Hawk’s sergeant voxed back. Scimitar jetbikes accelerated past Ishigu, protecting a Proteus-class Land Speeder at the centre of their tight grouping. Ishigu watched them jink past the fire of the Whirlwind tanks. Missiles burned past them, evaded at the last possible moment. The targeting systems could not regain locks in time, and the missiles slammed into the cliffs, bringing down noisy rockfalls onto the pass.

‘They do our job for us,’ Hesegai said.

Screaming Hawk swooped on its target, strafing the lead convoy elements with mass-reactives. But before the meltaguns of the Land Speeder could do their work, a second barrage of missiles came down from above, fired from the canyon lip.

‘Enemy troops on the ground, coordinates–’

A direct hit turned Screaming Hawk’s sergeant into a ball of fire. A second jetbike exploded immediately after. Missiles rained down and cut up from the canyon floor, creating a crossfire that even the White Scars could not evade. Lascannon fire flickered up the canyon, and Ishigu’s augurs rang urgent alarms.

‘Enemy aircraft coming from behind,’ he voxed. ‘This is a trap. Break off attack. Accelerate forwards, punch through, and regroup.’

He depressed the accelerator on his bike, sending the Scimitar surging forwards. His men followed.

‘Fly on and out,’ he commanded. But as soon as he spoke, more aircraft burned overhead, creating a ceiling that boxed the White Scars into the canyon. He craned his neck to follow their flightpaths. They circled like eagles, content to wait for the moment to strike.

‘Up the mountain, then,’ Hesegai voxed.

‘Reading more troops ahead!’ Ishigu voxed urgently. ‘Bank left. Take canyon spur.’ He sent a datasquirt highlighting a narrow defile to his warriors’ displays. Still accelerating, they pulled up, sweeping about. Though they turned just before they came into the firing line of the men hiding up the canyon, one of his men strayed too far, and took a multi-laser volley from the position. The engine lit up with explosions, and the Space Marine fell on a tail of black smoke to his death.

‘Ride the storm, my brothers!’ Ishigu commanded, opening his throttle to full.

The canyon spur was very narrow. Rocks flashed by, some close enough to touch. The spur ran out a few kilometres ahead, breaking up into several short tributary formations that led up onto a plateau.

‘Reach the end, break by squad, gain the mountainside and escape. Designate point Cheng Shek as rendezvous.’

The defile was too narrow for the enemy fighters to follow, and too overhung for them to fire effectively from above. The Iron Warriors didn’t appear to have any skimmers to chase them with, but Ishigu was concerned nonetheless.

‘They’re herding us,’ Hesegai said.

‘They are,’ Ishigu responded. ‘It has been tried before. No one can catch the wind.’

They raced up the defile, swerving around its sharp corners. It broadened out momentarily. A small lake, low in the dry season, blurred by. Five feeder valleys as crooked as arthritic fingers led off.

‘Split, split, split!’ Ishigu ordered.

The enemy were there too, guarding the entrances to the valleys, firing down on his men. The White Scars were exposed as they crossed the lake, and the aircraft joined their fire to that of the ground troops. Two more jetbikes went crashing down before the dwindling raiding party made it to the relative safety of the smaller canyons. These rose steeply, and Ishigu’s gravplates warbled in protest at the angle of the climb. Shadows crowded him. His shoulder pad rang, fountaining sparks as it brushed a volume in the rock. A millimetre more and he would have been torn from his saddle.

Thundering more loudly than the sky gods of Chogoris, the Scimitar burst from the canyon onto the plateau. From the other chasms, black cracks in the ground no wider than a few metres, the rest of his force shot upwards and spread out, racing for their rendezvous.

‘Enemy tanks, dead ahead!’ someone shouted, at the instant Ishigu’s helm systems clamoured.

Cresting the rise of the ridge at the end of the plateau came a full century of Iron Warrior armoured vehicles.

Xyrokles watched from the safety of his personal Land Raider.

‘Annihilate them,’ he voxed.

Few things stirred his soul as much as an armoured century opening fire together. Twenty-five tanks raked the sky with laslight and bullets. The White Scars powered through it, but such was the weight of the attack that they would all be killed before they reached safety again. Xyrokles estimated that the party represented the majority of the White Scar forces on Epsilon-Garmon II. Typical Chogorian raiding tactics, small forces sent out to cause maximum damage, hard to catch, but once caught, easily dealt with.

‘I have the measure of you!’ he said to himself. ‘Iron Within, Iron Without!’

He was still congratulating himself on the success of his plan when the Land Raider next to his exploded violently. He instinctively searched the skies for more aerial contacts, but there were none. It was not until another tank died in a flaming ball of shrapnel that he scanned the ground.

A dozen White Scars tank hunters were racing onto the battlefield, cutting across the armoured century’s advance and firing as they came. The fleeing raiding force ceased their ragged rout, and flowed together. A second skimmer force lifted off from concealed positions up the mountain and split, half attacking the line of tanks, the rest speeding off to hunt down the corralling forces Xyrokles had placed in the canyons. A final chorus of chimes alerted him to White Scar interdiction fighters powering up and dropping from orbit onto the Iron Warriors atmospheric force.

Within a few moments, it was over.

The White Scars dragged Xyrokles from his burning tank and stripped him of his damaged armour, leaving him grimy-faced and clad in his tattered body suit, kneeling in disgrace with his hands bound behind his back.

He seethed inside as the savage White Scars went over the battlefield, executing his men and reducing his vehicles to slag with fusion charges and phosphene bombs. Heat washed over him from the burning wrecks of his task force. His captors laughed with one another, jesting in their sawing, singsong barbarian’s speech. A single warrior, his armour more heavily decorated with primitive markings than the rest, stood guard over him. Otherwise Xyrokles was ignored, and he ignored them in return.

A heavier tread made him look up. He found himself staring into the face of Jaghatai Khan himself.

Xyrokles fought back his unease at being in the presence of a primarch. Even now, after years fighting half of them as enemies, it was hard for him to overcome his awe of the Emperor’s sons.

‘Your presence explains my defeat,’ said Xyrokles. He sagged in his bonds. ‘White Scars staging a tank assault. Concealed troops. Not true to type at all. I never had much of a chance.’

‘Did you not?’ Jaghatai Khan squatted in front of the Iron Warrior. ‘Look at me, Warsmith.’

Xyrokles had no choice but to obey.

‘My men would have beaten you even if I were not here.’

‘I disagree,’ said Xyrokles.

The Khan was hiding something in his fist. He opened his hand, revealing Xyrokles’ copies of his books.

‘You have studied my philosophies,’ said the Khan. ‘You think you understand me because you know my Legion’s preference for lightning war. This is false understanding, Iron Warrior. You read the words, but did not fully comprehend. If you had, you would have anticipated my actions. All this was a simple game of opposites. You allowed yourself to be confident in the reading of my Legion, when all along my purpose was to make you fall prey to hubris. Your attempt to concentrate and misdirect my force was well chosen, but flawed from the outset, because you did not consider I could be here personally, or that my men might employ different strategies. You did not see my tanks because you did not look for them.’ He smiled, a white flash in his tanned face. ‘I admit, I am a little impressed. It is unusual for your kind to be flexible in battle. Unfortunate for you that, in the war of storms, I am the stronger wind. Know that failure is not a sin. You fought well.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Xyrokles asked. ‘You have killed all my men. You will execute me in moments.’

The Khan shrugged. ‘Maybe my words will live on in your spirit when you are dead. Think on them in your next life. May they increase your wisdom, and profit you. I give them freely.’

The Khan stood. His master-crafted power armour made barely a sound.

Xyrokles began to laugh, a chuckle that turned into full-bellied humour, and ended in a bloody cough. He spat. Something was broken inside him. ‘The next life? You should have followed the Warmaster.’

‘Why would I do that?’ asked the Khan neutrally.

‘Don’t demean yourself by playing ignorant, my lord. You know exactly what I mean. What you say does not conform with the Imperial truth.’

‘My father’s truth is His truth. It is not my truth,’ said the Khan. ‘Every truth is a lie to someone. I am the son of the storm as much as I am the son of the Emperor. You are not the first to try to sway me, but if the thunder in my heart will not be tamed by my father, then it will not be tamed by my brother, either. I choose my own path.’

Xyrokles shook his head. ‘You’re on the wrong side. The Emperor lied. He used us all.’

‘That is what you believe,’ said the Khan. ‘Rightness in a war is relative, as is truth. I choose to be loyal to the Emperor’s ideal even if I do not believe in His truth. You are a traitor to all mankind.’ He smiled again. ‘In the end, I won, and you have lost, that is all that matters here. I thank you for the contest of wills.’ The Khan dipped his head.

‘Pompous, double-talking wretch!’ Xyrokles snarled. ‘Why don’t you go and…’

Jaghatai Khan moved too quickly for the Warsmith to see. Xyrokles felt a firm grip on his head, a sharp twist, something part in his neck, and life was done with him.

The Khan set Xyrokles’ body down gently.

‘Rouse your astropaths. Summon the fleet here,’ he said to Ishigu. ‘You did well, but we have a little work left to do, and it must be done quickly. I wish to neutralise more such places and clear the way for Guilliman before we head back deeper into the cluster. Sanguinius needs us. The Warmaster has mustered many more Titan Legions at Beta-Garmon than we suspected.’

Ishigu bowed. ‘What of this one, my Khan?’

Jaghatai stared down at Xyrokles’ corpse for a moment.

‘Bury him with respect. He fought well, and with finesse.’ He turned his gaze skywards, already calculating where his attention should fall next. ‘In this war, an enemy with finesse is no small thing.’

BETTER ANGELS

Ian St. Martin

I do not know why I have been chosen, or how, only that I am.

My footsteps are quiet against the sweeping mosaic that spans the floor of the passageway. I walked slower then, in those early days of ascension, when each new-drawn breath brought new insights of my changing flesh. It was well enough that way, for it granted me the time to drink in the magnificence that surrounded me.

The walls are lined with masterworks in oil, fresco and gold, every piece flowing perfectly into the next and each one more incredible than the last. The vision, the detail of them, is enough to send gooseflesh rising over my scar-laden skin. Any single one of these pieces would take pride of place anywhere on any world, with the exception of Terra.

This continues on into the next corridor, with wondrous art filling every surface: wall, floor and ceiling above. It would be easy for me to forget where I was, were it not for the ever-present thrum of the Red Tear’s heart.

At last my destination comes into view. A pair of high double doors lie ahead, intricately carved with a stunning scene of angelic beauty in pearl, ruby and gold. Two of the Legion’s Terminator elite stand guard before it, still as statues until my approach sends their fibre-bundle musculatures snarling into life.

No word of challenge is spoken, but the hall rings with the clash of swords brought together to bar my path. I lower the cowl of my simple crimson aspirant’s robes, revealing to them a face still shedding the last vestiges of a past humanity. The Terminators scrutinise me for a moment, and my now-enhanced hearing detects the minute clicks as they speak with the lone occupant of the chamber beyond the doors.

With a sharp rasp of steel, the Terminators lower their blades, and part before me as the doors slowly open.

For a few long moments, I stand upon the threshold, simply content to stare at what lies in front of me. I had expected a sprawling chamber of high, painted ceilings and prized works of incomparable beauty sitting upon plinths or gently hanging within the cool hum of stasis fields. What I find is a plain, simple studio, little different than what one might find in any city of any world within the expanding Imperium of Man. But that isn’t what roots me in place.

Standing in the centre of the studio is the source of the transcendent blood that flows through my veins. Such a being belongs in a gallery surrounded by other masterpieces, yet even then he would effortlessly reduce them all to pale imitation. His wings stir a fraction, their pinions pale as pure snow, as he looks at me with a noble countenance that demands loyalty, or even worship.

I have to physically resist the overwhelming urge to sink to my knees in the primarch’s presence, to hold back tears at the mere sight of him.

The Angel.

‘Hello, my son,’ says Sanguinius. ‘I have interest in seeing you work.’

It is only then that I notice the equipment filling the studio. There are tools and benches, a furnace and kiln, and a sweep of different sands and crushed minerals that, when combined, could render wonders.

Like all other neophytes, I had been exposed to the myriad avenues of artistic endeavour as part of my Legion training. I had composed sonnets and symphonies, painted portraits and scenes from Baal’s history, and moulded clay and stone into heroes of the past. But like all Blood Angels, one art form called out to me with insistent strength, and for me that art form was glass.

In truth, the medium had likely ingrained itself upon me much earlier. The memories I have of life before the Legion fade with each passing day, swiftly disintegrating, but there are sometimes fragments. Here an image, there an untethered emotion.

I remember the day my tribe died, raided and butchered by the mutated hordes that terrorised Baal and her moons in the age before the primarch’s arrival. I remember the flames staining the ground, turning the sand to filthy, jagged glass. It was with a sliver of that glass that I survived, fighting to escape into the endless dunes of the sour, rad-poisoned wastes, before my eventual masters discovered me.

‘You have the materials you need?’ asks Sanguinius, jarring me from my thoughts.

‘Yes, lord,’ I nod quickly. ‘This is more than adequate.’

‘Go, then,’ Sanguinius gestures to the furnace and tools. ‘Be about your work. Act as though I am not here.’

‘That is impossible, sire.’

The primarch smiles softly.

I proceed to the furnace, selecting a combination of sand and ground glass fragments and pouring them inside. The contents within quickly grow molten in the intense heat, forming a pool of searing liquid at the base.

I draw in a breath and take up a blowing iron, a hollow tube just longer than I am tall. I drive the iron into the furnace, rolling and turning it in my hands to gather up a portion of the molten glass around it. The material is the consistency of honey, and I quickly set about shaping and forming it, reapplying heat from a hand flamer to keep it pliable before it grows too cold.

After hours of heating and cooling, cutting and shaping, and finally annealing within a ceramic kiln, my work is complete. When it is cold enough to remove, I pull the piece out, placing it on a plinth before my primarch, who has watched its creation in silence. I step back, head bowed, tugging off the insulated protective gloves that are rapidly growing unnecessary for me to use.

Sanguinius looks down, and sees his own visage reflected back at him. I have sculpted an exact likeness of the primarch’s face. I worked with painstaking detail, stealing glances at the Angel to ensure that the resemblance is uncanny, apart from the colour. The glass shines a brilliant forest green, as though it is carved emerald.

‘The colour,’ says Sanguinius, letting the question hang.

‘Soil from Baal,’ I answer. The iron-rich earth of the Legion home world, a famously deep crimson, transformed into green when applied onto the molten glass.

‘Your coming brought rebirth to Baal,’ I elaborate. ‘The unification of the tribes, peace, the Emperor, it was all a transformation and spring of new life for us, and the hope to return our world to what it once was.’

Sanguinius turns the sculpture over in his hands, tracing the features with his fingertips. ‘This demonstrates skill, passion, even vision. Yet it fails in the most critical of ways.’

Fails. The word from my gene-sire’s lips makes me go cold in an instant, like a knife blow to my spine. ‘I do not understand, lord.’

‘You failed,’ continues the primarch, ‘the moment you created something for me, rather than something from within yourself. You sought to flatter, rather than inspire. The artist must create his works as though he would be the only soul to behold them, shards of his very self rendered into being. Otherwise he is simply an artisan, a merchant selling wares for coin at a market.’

I feel my heart sink, and my hands tingle. It is a sensation not unlike when I took my first life, in the trials of ascension. The sense that I have crossed a threshold that I can never return from, but this time in failure.

‘For your next piece,’ says Sanguinius, setting the sculpture back down on the plinth and stepping away from it, immediately forgotten, ‘I expect to see you, rather than myself.’

I look up. ‘My next piece, sire?’

‘Yes, Jehoel,’ the primarch smiles. ‘Now, start again.’

With the years come change – to the Imperium, the Legion and the Blood Angels who fill its ranks. The constant wars of the Great Crusade spread the Emperor’s dominion wider across the galaxy, won at the edge of the Legions’ blades. New scars mark the golden hull of the Red Tear, and the sons who walk her passages.

I myself carry my share of those scars, the collection of ragged marks that crisscross my post-human physique earned in battle overtaking those made by the Apothecary’s knife. War is my purpose, the reason my hearts beat and my lungs draw breath. But by my father’s design, it is not my only purpose.

The studio is a welcome refuge for me, a sanctum to refocus my mind from weapons drill and training in the art of destruction, to turn my thoughts to different endeavours. As my battle company continues to enact tireless compliance upon world after world, star system after star system, I have not been able to sculpt in many weeks, and I relish the opportunity to feel the heat of the furnace upon my face once more.

But it does not take long for my sanctum’s tranquillity to vanish.

I spit as I pull the finished piece from the kiln, disgusted with the misshapen sculpture that had been annealing in its intense heat. My initial gather had been poor, an unequal collection of material that formed the core of the work. The angles I have wrought are clumsy, the cuts and pulls of the molten glass with my pincers awkward and inelegant. My proportions are lopsided. Looking upon the piece, it resembles the work of an amateur, a child even, rather than that of a Legion warrior who has spent years perfecting his craft.

With a snarl of rage I dash the sculpture to the ground, shattering it into a heap of jagged glass shards that scatter over the deck. Breath slashes from my nose, and between my teeth. My fists ball and unclench, one callused and dark with soot from the furnace, the other a clicking simulacrum of dark iron.

‘What is it, my son?’

I start, so rapt in my anger that I had not even noticed the change that the air takes in the primarch’s presence, the extrasensory radiance that beams from him wherever he goes. It is normally a boon to lift one with inspiration, but standing here, with my destroyed work spread around me, I feel only guilt.

‘It is my hand, father,’ I reply, ashamed by my lapse in discipline. ‘Ever since we completed the scouring of the Adryantis, since I lost my arm and this machine took its place, I can no longer shape the glass.’ I hold up the augmetic, the metal fingers whirring as I flex them. ‘It is as though the touch has fled from me.’

The primarch does not answer me right away. Instead, he walks a slow circuit around the studio, his great wings stirring in soft rhythm with his breathing. He stops briefly at each piece that I have created, favouring every sculpture, vessel and figure with a moment’s attention.

‘Tell me,’ Sanguinius says finally, ‘how do you define art, Jehoel? What does the word mean to you?’

I consider for a moment before answering. ‘Art is the attempt to define those aspects of our minds and hearts which resist definition,’ I say. ‘It is a manifestation of emotion.’

‘I did not ask for what a text would say,’ the primarch laughs softly. ‘I asked what it meant to you, my son.’

I look to my gene-sire.

‘We gave much to you,’ Sanguinius continues, ‘as we did to all those who have ascended to the ranks of my Legion, but there is also much that we take. The cost paid in exchange for becoming one of the Adeptus Astartes is high, and so many of those who walk beneath the banners of my brothers cast aside the ties to their birth, some with relish, even. But not all vestiges of what we once were must be sacrificed.’

He stops at a sculpture I created six years ago, one of the more abstract works that came in the dying moments of a battle won against the horrid greenskin xenos breed.

‘There are endeavours,’ says Sanguinius, ‘that can bind you to the race you once belonged to, that remind you of your purpose and the beauty of what we protect. That is why each brother of the Ninth is to practise an art of their own choosing. For as much as we are a force of destruction, we must never forget that we also have the ability to create.’

Sanguinius stops beside my basins of materials, gathering up a measure of fine sand and letting it slip slowly through his fingers. ‘One day, our crusade will end. This entire galaxy shall be my father’s realm, and there will come a time where there is no more cause for destruction, no need to shed blood. What will the Legions do then, Jehoel? What will become of us?’

I cannot find an answer, because in truth I have never considered such a future for myself. My life within the battle company has taught me that the foundations of the new Imperium are to be built with the lives of the Legiones Astartes, the stones of its grand edifice joined with our freely given blood. It is a glorious end, and it is the only one that had ever entered my mind as a possibility.

‘Will we be cast aside?’ Sanguinius goes on, repeating his circuit of the studio. ‘Regarded as nothing more than the relics of a more barbarous age, a necessary evil wielded as the means to a greater end? Or can we be more than that? Roboute has moulded his sons into statesmen, while Magnus the Red has raised a Legion of thinkers, philosophers and healers. Through art, by capturing and distilling what is wondrous in our universe and creating works that connect us with it and enhance its beauty, my Blood Angels will prove to my father that we are more than just killing machines. That there can be a place for us once His conquests are won. But to do so, it requires a triumph of the spirit.’

‘The spirit?’ I ask. While it was true that the Legion had carried over some vestiges of the mysticism from Baal, we had always followed our primarch in his adherence to the Emperor’s Imperial Truth. ‘You believe there is such a thing?’

Sanguinius hesitates. ‘I believe my father,’ he says finally. ‘Though I also trust what I have seen within my own mind.’

There is more to it than what he has said, but before I can press his meaning further, he points to my new arm.

‘You are not the first to face challenges that you must overcome to pursue your craft, my son. And you will surely not be the last. Across our Legion, my sons have endured horrific injury in service to my father. And yet, each of them still takes up the brush, the quill, the lathe. Why, even Venerable-Exemplar Jophial still works tirelessly at his marble from within his sarcophagus.’

My strongest image of Jophial is of him tearing down city gates with a siege hammer. ‘That is so, my lord?’

Sanguinius grins. ‘Try and stop him. Your touch, as you regard it, comes no more from your flesh than it does his. It is within you, Jehoel, and all it requires to usher forth is the belief that it is there.’

I dip my head, duly chastened, but grateful for his words.

‘And so,’ says Sanguinius. ‘Do you still believe that art comes from the hands?’

‘No, father.’

‘Good. Now take up your tools, and start again.’

I walk the corridors of the Covenant of Baal, the Legion’s new flagship announcing with every clanging step, every sound and smell, that it has become a monument to all that we have lost.

There is little beauty to behold here. The walls are bare plasteel and ribbed adamantium, the brutal function of Imperial shipcraft laid bare without thought for aesthetic. At a regular interval there stands a sigil or monument, or a fresco that adorns the ceiling of a thoroughfare junction, but their relative scarcity seems to only amplify the cold grey of the ship’s metal bones. I find the same reflected in my battle brothers. The past battle, and the revelations it brought forth, has stolen beauty from us.

We are a brotherhood lost, adrift in the churning tides of a warp we now know to be conscious in its malevolent intent for us. The concept of betrayal had never dwelt within our thoughts. Worlds that resisted compliance were merely ignorant, rather than treacherous. Yet now the word hangs over each of our heads, like a revenant that never leaves us. The solid ground we once felt underfoot now churns beneath us like quicksand. The things we have seen, new realities we had trusted could not exist, have changed those of us who survived.

I go now to the studio I have assembled since I came aboard. With so much cast to the wind, we each cling to what we can from that time now lost to us, only weeks past but gone forever. We strive to recover beauty, when all that we can see is hell.

The tools I have now are simpler, the furnace smaller than the one I had grown used to, but they function, and that is all I require of them. I allow my mind to drift as I work, learning to draw my creativity from what is unconscious within me. The heat and sounds of the glass hardening as I roll and smooth it are soft in my ears in this trance-like state, as the piece takes shape.

Sanguinius arrives to watch my work as he used to, though this is the first time aboard the Covenant. He walks differently now, even though his legs have long since healed. Just as with his sons, not all the scars my father bears can be seen. Some are etched deep within his mind, only hinted at in the haunted look that has never left his eyes since Signus Prime.

I withdraw the work from the furnace, my hands gently turning the rod by instinct. Setting it into a bracket I continue to turn it while I select a battered tin from my materials. I open it, unwilling to breathe in its contents as I raise it up. Like dark snow I sift the ash down, the motes of storm grey merging with the cooling glass to drive the purity of crystal away.

‘Show me what you have seen,’ says the primarch, coming to a halt by my side. ‘What have you made?’

I step back, allowing him to see my work and for the first time consciously looking upon it myself. It is a creature, a sort of impossible mingling of serpent and skinless dog, rising up from the centre of a wilting bloom and holding a bleeding heart in its black teeth. I study the precise intricacy that my hands had worked, etching in the minute shapes that covered its mottled hide, recognising the burning runes that visit me on each rare occasion where I have sought sleep.

‘No!’

I blink and the blowing rod is gone from my hands. Sanguinius thrusts it back into the furnace like a spear, still clutching the length of hollow iron to smash the piece to ruin against its scorched insides. It makes a sound like hollow bells which rings around the cramped room, seeming to me to echo longer than it should. I watch as the last shards fall away from the metal, quickly losing shape before they disappear into the slick pool of molten sand.

‘You were to take nothing from that place,’ the Angel growls as he rounds on me. I have seen my father’s wrath many times, at the height of battle, yet it has never felt this close. It has never been focused at me. ‘Nothing.’

‘We have all taken something from there with us, father,’ I reply. ‘Whether by our own choice or not.’

Sanguinius drops the blowing rod to the bare deck with a clang, nearly staggering back from me. Both of us stand there in silence, the moment dragging on an indeterminate length before I speak again.

‘When we conquered civilisations and put whole worlds to the sword I sought out those ruins, those glimpses of tragic beauty, to place into here.’ I point to the furnace. ‘The idea that I was creating, within the grander creation of the Emperor’s dream. But what do we have now? What do we do when all is ash and cold blood?’

The primarch does not answer, keeping his silence as he listens to me.

‘You ask me to show you what I see, to search out the spark that unites us and will usher in peace for all mankind. But now,’ I grind the heels of my hands into my temples, ‘whenever I close my eyes, all that greets me is monstrosity. I hear their ragged voices in my ear, things we would not countenance to exist, that we trusted were myth and falsehood, and yet they live, and breathe, and confront us. You ask that I look inside myself, yet now all I see there is madness, twisting, swelling like a cancer that threatens to spill over into us. I see what my brethren did on Signus, what I did, and how easily we shed loose from our sanity. I no longer see the spark, father, only its annihilation.’

My body moves without my mind to guide it. I scatter the basins of material with a sweep of my arm, casting ground minerals and sand onto the deck. The furnace groans as I drag it to the ground with the booming crash of a cannon shot. Molten glass oozes from it like searing blood, hot as my own feels as it thunders through my hearts.

‘Did He know?’ I ask when I have recovered my breath. ‘The warp, and the Sons. The Warmaster’s rebellion.’ My voice goes quiet as I turn to look my father in the eye. ‘Why didn’t He tell us?’

‘I do not know, my son,’ the primarch answers. I see that the mention of the Warmaster harms him as clearly as any blade could, and I feel that pain reflected within my own heart. ‘Perhaps He sought to protect us, to find some way to deliver us from such darkness before it sprang forth to corrupt us and our kin.’

The Angel steps forwards, a gentle hand pulling me back from the spreading liquid glass. His grip lingers upon my shoulder, and he looks down at me with that noble countenance, still so effortless in winning my undying devotion.

‘Whatever the reason He had for secrecy, it no longer matters,’ he says with a strength I have not heard in what feels like an eternity. ‘The path before us is clear. Mankind faces an enemy unlike any we have ever known, but no shadow exists without the light that shines to dispel it. We will stand against whatever dwells within the Sea of Souls, and whoever it has turned to its whims, and we shall destroy them.’

New resolve flows with every word, radiating out from my gene-sire. For a moment, the Angel looks like the primarch that I once knew, as though he has cast off the dark ghosts of Signus.

‘Now we know the consequence that awaits us all, should we fail. As never before, we know the importance of our arts of creation and destruction, one a symbol of all that is beautiful and true that must be defended to our final breath with the other. Now, more than ever, we must summon our strength, and all of us shall start again.’

The Throneworld draws near. And with it the Siege, and Horus. After Ultramar, and the second Imperium we have all sworn to deny, a grim resolve exists amongst my brothers as our fleet cuts itself loose from the Ruinstorm. There is a sense of the irrevocable confrontation that awaits us, as we make ready to repay the treachery of those we once knew as kin.

For all his follies, the Ninth owes a debt to Guilliman, for the shipyards and skilful labour that have restored the Red Tear to its rightful place as crown jewel in our Legion’s fleet. Without her, we may never have escaped the Ruinstorm, and reached the cradle of our species in time to stand beside the Emperor in defence of humanity’s future.

It is still strange, walking her halls. So much was lost when the Tear fell onto Signus, the destruction or desecration of priceless works beyond counting. We threw ourselves into the effort of winning her back to us, of driving out every last trace of the warp’s taint from the flagship. Yet the traces of it remained, insistent against our efforts of annihilation.

I did my part, working in squads to comb every metre of the ship to purify her, burning out any corruption we found. And when that work was done, I turned from my talents for destruction, and worked to restore the Tear through creation.

Sanguinius is already there when I arrive, walking his regular orbit around a collection that now spans more than five decades, from the golden days of the Great Crusade through the darkness of Horus’ rebellion, and now to the final days as Terra grows within sight. He watches me as I prepare and then set about my work, glancing at me in between plinths as I labour before the furnace. He is not yet encased within his suit of brilliant artificer armour, becoming the very manifestation of man’s mythical angel of death. But the time for that draws nearer with every beat of our hearts.

The piece reaches a stage where it must anneal for a time. As I close the kiln, sealing it away, I have nothing left to distract me.

‘Why me, father?’

I had not meant to ask, yet the words were spoken all the same. It is the question I have carried since my first day in this studio under the furnace heat, and every day after. Perhaps it is the sense of looming change hanging over me, of the great atrocity that lies ahead on Terra. The foreboding sense that if I do not ask now, I may never have the chance.

‘What?’ asks the primarch, stepping forward from among the plinths where he has been watching me work.

I realise, then, that the reason does not matter. But I am committed now. I have asked my father at last.

‘Why me? Of all your Legion, why spend your attention here, through all these years? Surely there are many greater warriors, more skilful artists, better Angels than I.’

Sanguinius looks at me, his eyes telling me that he has been expecting this.

‘Because you are the Blood Angels, Jehoel. I have watched you across these many years, the path you have walked, and as it has wound, so has that of my Legion. You rise, you triumph, you fall and grow stronger from it. Of the Legion, few embody its strengths, its follies and its dreams like you. Because, more than almost any other of my sons, I see myself in you.’

I am, as I so often am in his presence, unable to summon the words to speak. What could I possibly say in answer to such a thing? To have the primogenitor think of me in such esteem, it is beyond my ability to fathom.

‘Now, let us see what you have made.’

‘It is unfinished,’ I hesitate, looking to the kiln. ‘There is still much to do, details that have not been completed yet.’

‘Show me,’ he repeats, beckoning me over. I remove the piece from where it has been annealing, and after it has cooled enough to touch, I pass it to him.

It is Terra, but not the one that awaits us. Though none, perhaps save the Emperor, know the exact truth, I took the licence available to me and created my vision of the Terra that once was, before man turned his eyes upwards and made his first, tentative steps into the stars. It was a sphere of deep, boundless blue, indicative of the great oceans I read had once covered nearly all of her surface. Then the continents, irregular shapes of green and gold, with raised bands of the great mountains where the Emperor would one day build His palace.

Sanguinius rotates the globe in his hands, drinking in every detail. ‘If only you could see this now, on the first day you worked under my eye.’ The primarch smiles. ‘The progress you have made, Jehoel.’

‘But father,’ I shake my head, seeing only the mistakes I have made. ‘After all these decades, no matter my skill, the flaws still remain. I had hoped that with this, before we reached Terra, that my work might achieve perfection.’

‘Art is not meant to be perfect,’ says Sanguinius softly. ‘It never was. The very pursuit denies our humanity, the promise to evolve and grow with each new day. Some believed perfection was within our grasp, that such a thing could be achieved, and look upon the path that it has taken them.’

‘Without perfection,’ I realise, ‘there is no limit to what we might accomplish, so that our future is always ours to control.’

‘You understand.’ Sanguinius places the globe back within the kiln.

‘When this is over,’ I say, setting down my tools. ‘When the Siege is won and Horus is defeated, will we start again?’

‘No.’

The word stops me cold. I turn to look at the Angel as he stands in the doorway leading out of the studio. I am uncertain of what he means, but the conviction in his voice is ironclad.

‘No, this time you will learn to make do with what you have,’ says Sanguinius, his voice equal in warmth and in sorrow. ‘Perhaps in the end, my son, it is an unfinished work that is the most beautiful of all.’

THE SINEW OF WAR

Darius Hinks

I watched Macragge City burn, listening to the panicked reports flooding down the Neetum Transitway.

‘Seven cohorts. Men who were loyal to Libanus, Gallan and Palatinus. They’re murdering and burning. Captain Melotus says they were bribed. Bribed, Lord Guilliman. Killing for coin. What have we come to? They tore down the Tomb of Megaricus. They’ve lit fires all along the Proana Arch. They’re fighting outside the Senatorum and Consul House.’

Killing for coin. Every time I heard a grotesque, barbaric phrase like that it reminded me how different I was. I did not think like others. I was a breed apart. Where others saw pieces of a puzzle, I saw the whole. Whether it was military strategy, theology or philosophy, my mind seemed to function on a different level to my peers. Sometimes I found the thought reassuring, other times it troubled me. Why should I be so different? To murder, simply for financial gain, was baffling to me. It was the action of someone lost in the dark; blinded by ignorance and base, animal needs.

The transitway was crowded with people fleeing the violence, and my cohorts had to move frustratingly slowly to avoid killing anyone. Several times our armoured transports ground to a halt as panicked people struggled to move aside. No one wanted to get in our path, though. We made a fearsome sight, still filthy from battle, and those that were able scrambled as far from our tattered banners as they could. I continued giving orders as we approached the city, processing information I knew no one else would register, but the phrase ‘killing for coin’ had summoned a memory.

I was five and my father had taken me hunting. I knew why. Even then I could read people as easily as I read the military treatises in Deucalis Library. My father had seen me watching his generals and magistrates. He saw how I despised them. The greatest statesmen of the greatest city were idiots, blind to the most important resource on the planet – their own, needlessly oppressed people. They were fools and tyrants and, even aged five, I wanted to tear down the whole, hide-bound edifice. My father felt the same, I knew he did. But my place in Macragge was precarious and he was too wise to risk my life on a point of principle. So he took me away, to a place we both loved, to the cold, beautiful foothills of the Crown Mountains where we could breathe clean air and ease our fury by scrambling over rocks and scree. Away from the Senate, my father dropped the pretence that I was a normal child and we hunted together as equals. He laughed, as he always did, at the sight of my unfettered strength, proud of his strange little son. But then, when I saw him fall, grimacing at a gash on his arm, a dreadful truth hit me.

We were not equals. We never could be. My father was not like me. The man who taught me about life was not destined to live. The flash of crimson on his tunic stalled my breath. One day, Konor Guilliman would die. He would leave me behind. Leave me with the fools and the tyrants. In that moment I became the child I usually only pretended to be. Tears filled my eyes and I placed my hand over his wound, wishing it away. He laughed, shaking his head – not in mockery, but reassurance. He took out a coin and handed it to me. His face was minted on one side and Consul Gallan’s was minted on the other. He closed my hand over it, squeezing it tight.

‘Feel its strength,’ he said. Strong as I was, I could not crush the metal. ‘The coin is Macragge,’ he said. ‘Beautiful and unbreakable. Made to outlive us all. And while there is a Macragge, I will be with you, Roboute. My virtue is the virtue of Macragge. My strength is the strength of Macragge. This is not just my home, Roboute, it is my soul and it is my family. And it is your family, too. Macragge will endure. Macragge must endure. And as long as it does, you will not be alone.’

‘There’s fighting at the Tyrsus Gate!’ Captain Melotus sounded almost hysterical as we reached the city, and I gave him a warning glare. We had just crushed a revolt that had threatened the whole of Illyria, but seeing war in their own home was another matter. Again, my mind had leapt ahead, and I saw that the two conflicts were actually part of the same whole. The rebels in Illyria planned to overthrow the senate by throwing Macragge into chaos, and now we returned home to find rioting on the streets of the capital. Whoever was behind the first insurrection would no doubt be behind the second. I deployed my men with barked commands, but my mind was still elsewhere. Consul House had been attacked. Was my father there? He was no longer the man who had hunted with me in the Crown Mountains that day, but he was no less impressive. I pitied anyone who tried to take Consul House from him.

I ordered five cohorts to the Proana Arch and five to the Senatorum. The rest I took with me to Consul House. It was dawn. Coral-coloured light flashed over domes and amphitheatres. It looked like the whole city was burning.

We entered the ornamental gardens and I hesitated, struggling to hide my outrage. Even then, barely into my teenage years, I had fought several campaigns, justifying my father’s trust with every victory, but I had never seen so much as a lascarbine fired in the capital. Now its friezes were splashed with blood and its colonnades were stained by smoke. I brought to mind the training of my seneschal, Tarasha, and recited her litanies, calming my breathing and clearing my head.

The house was approached by a web of looping paths, designed to mirror the revolutions of the heavenly bodies: Macragge, Ardium, Laphis, Thulium, Mortendar and Nova Thulium, names of legend, sculpted from marble, set in fountains and circled by walls of yew so tall and meandering that they formed a labyrinth.

The crackle of autocarbines rang out through the half-light. I waved a cohort to one side of the maze and a second to the other. Then I signalled for the final cohort to follow me as I sprinted down the central path, tracing the orbit of Nova Thulium.

I was halfway to the house when a soldier ran out to confront me. He had torn the insignia from his uniform and he was swaying, clearly drunk, as he staggered towards me, a gun resting loosely in his hands and leaves stuck in his hair. Three more soldiers followed in his wake, equally unkempt and unsteady.

The first of them was an ogre of a man, so broad and powerfully built that his gun looked ridiculous in his meaty fists. He laughed as he lurched towards me, raising the autocarbine. Then, when he was close enough to see me clearly, he faltered, his face growing pale.

‘Lord Guilliman,’ he muttered, the sneer fading from his face. There were corpses in the distance. My father’s guards. The man was a disgrace. He had betrayed his people and his uniform. He was a murderer. And the idiot was so thrown by my arrival that he was trying to salute me.

I marched towards him, drew my broadsword and beheaded him.

The drunks behind him were too shocked to react at first. Then they lurched into action, fumbling with their guns.

I drew my pistol and gunned them down in a single, fluid motion. They dropped to the path with smoke rising from between their eyes.

I stood there for a few seconds, pistol raised, waiting for their spasms to subside, waiting for more soldiers to arrive. None came, so I nodded to my men and we marched on past the corpses, making for the front of the house.

There was a fierce gunfight taking place at the steps. A group of ragged soldiers, like the four I had just killed, were hunched at the top of the steps, firing wildly at a second group who had hunkered down next to an overturned ground-car. Its doors had been blasted off and there was smoke billowing from its engine, obscuring the figures shooting from the wreckage.

Shrapnel kicked from the walls as a third group approached from the maze, guns blazing.

I raised a hand, warning my men not to fire until I could make sense of the situation.

The men on the steps were howling drunken curses as they defended the doors, so I marked them down as traitors. True sons of Macragge would never behave so poorly. The men by the truck were another matter – they were too shrouded by smoke for me to know if they were traitors or my father’s men.

The point became moot as a rocket screamed across the gardens, fired from the direction of the maze, turning the ground-car into a blinding column of flames.

Shrapnel and sparks rushed towards me. My men ducked but I remained motionless, staring into the blaze. There was very little in the world that could harm me. I had learned that by the time I was ten. I kept much of the truth to myself. Even my father would have been shocked to know the full extent of my strength. On the rare occasion that something broke the surface of my skin, the wound healed itself in seconds, closing before my eyes. I was either a miracle or a curse; only time would tell which.

Men reeled from the burning truck, robed in flames. I ignored them and strode towards the steps, raising my pistol.

The drunks were so busy jeering at the burning men that it took a moment for them to notice me and, when they did, they were as confused as the men in the maze. Half of Macragge City hated me and half treated me like a saint, but no one in the capital met my gaze with any confidence.

The drunks were still deciding how to respond to my presence when I opened holes in their skulls. They sprawled across the top of the steps, their guns clattering across the rockcrete.

I waved for my men to tackle the group rushing from the maze. They were about to open fire when a familiar voice boomed through the smoke.

‘Roboute! Hold your fire!’

‘Gallan!’ I cried, nodding for my men to lower their guns.

We embraced, then he held me at arm’s length and shook his head, his eyes glinting. ‘I’m glad you’re back.’

Gallan was one of Macragge’s two consuls. Alongside my father he was lord tetrarch of the senate, and senior magistrate of Macragge’s legislative assembly. He was an imposing figure, coming almost up to my chest with a powerful, physical presence that remained undimmed by age. He wore his golden ceremonial cuirass and helmet with the assurance of a man born into leadership. Most of Macragge’s citizens would have bowed in his presence and struggled to speak. I just nodded to the carnage.

‘Who did this?’

He grimaced at the bodies and the smouldering ground-car. ‘The very people it will hurt the most. The people your father’s reforms were intended to help. The idiots took matters into their own hands.’

My men flinched as explosions ripped through Consul House, detonating with such force that the ground juddered.

We turned to face a wall of flames, soaring up the columns and windows, scattering masonry across the gardens. I signalled for my men to fan out, keeping their weapons trained on the fire.

‘Is my father in there?’

Gallan nodded. ‘He’s been holding the mob back for hours, but everything went quiet half an hour ago. I rushed over here as fast as I could.’

‘I’ve been trying to vox him since I reached the city,’ I said. ‘No response.’

‘Then we should move fast,’ he replied, striding towards the steps and readying his weapons.

The vox in my collar crackled into life, bringing news from my cohorts. They had encountered resistance on both sides of the building and were currently pinned down by overwhelming firepower.

‘Hold your positions,’ I replied. ‘I will deal with this. Make sure no one leaves the grounds.’

The entrance hall looked like a slaughterhouse. Statues of former consuls were draped with bodies and the floor was dark with blood. Gallan and I both halted, appalled by the scene.

‘How could they?’ muttered Gallan. ‘In here, of all places?’

I shook my head, trying to quell my growing fury.

We rushed ahead, guns trained on the shadows as we approached a vast, double staircase that led to the staterooms above. Gallan took one flight and I took the other, with my men trailing after us.

We were halfway up the stairs when soldiers opened fire from the doorway at the top. They were wearing the uniform of the household guard but, like the men outside, they had torn the insignia from their tunics.

The handrail exploded beneath my fingers and I staggered sideways, thudding into the wall as I returned fire, splitting the gloom with a volley of las-blasts.

Gallan ran towards the door, taking two steps at a time, firing into the darkness. My men followed suit, creating an inferno of noise and light, filling the air with shards of alabaster.

There were screams and thuds, and the attack faltered.

I righted myself and charged up the steps, entering the room just after Gallan.

It was a long, tapestry-lined gallery and there were bodies everywhere.

I sidestepped a shotgun blast that smashed into the doorframe, then dropped my attacker with a headshot. Gallan waded into the fumes, firing fast, dropping more of them as I leapt onto a table that ran down the centre of the room, finishing off the few he missed.

‘Lord Guilliman!’ cried one of my men.

I looked back to see dozens of insurgents rushing up the steps, guns barking.

I dropped from the marble table, shoved it over and kicked it across the room, sending it slamming against the wall and blocking the doorway. Then I waved for my men to take positions behind it.

‘No one gets through!’ I cried, before heading on into the next chamber with Gallan at my side.

Behind us there was an eruption of explosions and battle cries as my men leapt to obey.

We entered another long gallery, lined with colossal bookcases that soared up to a distant vaulted ceiling where plasterwork cherubs circled a painting of Old Earth. Gallan and I paused at the threshold. The lumen globes were unlit and Gallan squinted into the gloom. To me, darkness was barely different to light. It took me years to understand the obsession with illuminating our streets and palaces.

‘There!’ I said, nodding to one of the four doors that led from the room. Figures dashed through the darkness in the hallway beyond.

Gallan nodded and we rushed that way, scouring the shadows for movement.

Gunfire screamed towards us and I heard Gallan curse, rolling behind the plinth of a statue.

‘Gallan?’ I called, looking back.

‘I’m fine!’ he cried. ‘Keep going.’

I marched down the centre of the room, ignoring the shots that howled past me. There is a strange thing about power. The more you have, the less you need. My reputation as unkillable spoiled the aim of even the most skilled marksmen. As I walked calmly to the huddled group at the far end of the room, shots tore through busts and architraves, kicking up a storm of plaster dust.

The rebels were gathered beneath an archway that led into the next room. There were dozens of them, all gripping pistols and swords. If they had remained calm, I might have been in trouble. But I knew they would not. I glared at them, allowing my wrath to burn through my eyes, allowing whatever I was to shine through my skin.

They panicked, some scrambling for cover, others rushing at me, guns barking. I dodged a few poorly aimed sword thrusts and sidestepped the flurry of las-fire, easily hacking down several of my attackers with casual, lethal sword slashes.

The rest backed away, shooting wildly over my shoulder.

‘In the name of the consuls,’ I cried, ‘submit!’

They froze, confused, thinking I was offering them a chance to surrender.

I nodded, acknowledging their obedience, then removed their confused expressions with a barrage of shots. I felt no pity as they thudded to the floor, their faces smouldering and their limbs convulsing. They had turned on the senate. They had betrayed Macragge. There could be no greater justification for summary execution.

‘Gallan?’ I cried, looking back.

He walked towards me, gripping the bicep of his gun arm. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, nodding to the next room.

When we approached my father’s chambers, the fighting was starting to die down. My men were reporting only minimal resistance now. Gallan and I had dealt with the ringleaders. My father’s stateroom was palatial – a work of art rendered in ivory and gold – but the luxurious rugs were all soaked with blood and littered with dead guards, several of whom I had known my whole life. I recited Tarasha’s litanies again.

There was an eerie quiet as we reached my father’s private chambers. There were dozens more corpses and a fire spreading quickly over a tapestry that covered one wall.

Gallan rushed to the tapestry and tore it down, cursing as he stamped out the flames and surrounded himself with embers. ‘Priceless,’ he snarled. ‘And ruined by barbarians who wouldn’t even be able to read it.’

I loved Gallan but he was as strange as all of Macragge’s nobles. He had just passed all those dead men, but it took a ruined tapestry to make him angry.

I noticed an odd aroma on the air, bitter and chemical. It seemed worryingly familiar and I scoured my memory, trying to recall when I had smelt it before.

Then I saw movement on the floor near Gallan, near the burning tapestry.

‘Watch out!’ I snapped.

He backed away and we both raised our guns.

I gasped as I saw a man, crumpled on the floor like a piece of broken furniture.

‘Father!’ I howled, shaking my head. ‘No!’

We rushed towards him, but he held up a warning hand and we stopped a few feet away, both whispering curses. His ornamental cuirass was punched full of holes and his robes were drenched in blood. His leg was bent underneath him at a sickening angle and his skin was scorched and blistered. Worst of all, though, was the dark line at his throat. It looked like a second mouth, wide and leering, dribbling crimson threads. He gasped, trying to breathe, colour draining from his face.

I dropped to my knees, reaching out to him. Again, he waved me away, desperate warning in his eyes. He tried to speak but only managed a hideous bubbling.

For all my strange gifts I could do nothing as he slipped away, choking on his own blood, gripping his throat and trying to sit up. I tore some of my cloak to wrap it around his neck but he pointed a pistol at my face, fury in his eyes.

‘Who did this?’ I gasped, but he did not seem to register my words.

When I stopped trying to touch him the anger left his eyes and he tried to reach for something on the floor.

I grabbed it. It was a coin. It must have fallen from his robes when he fell. I tried to give it to him but he shook his head, indicating that I should close my fist around it.

I gasped as I understood what he was doing. He was reminding me of that day in the mountains. The day when he handed me a coin and promised I would never be alone.

‘No!’ I howled, but he was still pointing his gun at me, refusing to let me approach.

Gallan put a hand on my shoulder but I shrugged him off, gripping the coin so hard it buckled.

For nearly a minute, my father lay there, gun pointed at my head, warning me not to touch him. Then his stare hardened, focusing on somewhere only the dead could see.

As he fell back, so did I, collapsing against the wall, snarling like an animal. Gallan hauled at my shoulders, shouting something, until I realised I had fallen into the shreds of burning tapestry.

I stood and stared at Konor’s corpse. I was electrified by rage, every inch of me taut. I dared not move for fear of the violence that might spill from me. My father had not left me, he had been taken.

‘Roboute,’ said Gallan, speaking in quiet, careful tones. ‘We should go.’

‘Go?’ I glared at him. Even as a teenager I was a giant. I loomed over the consul. ‘My father lies murdered and you would have me go? You would have me leave him like this?’

‘Think, Roboute. The city is tearing itself apart. Would Konor want you to watch over his corpse while his life’s work is being ruined? Think of your duty – your duty to Macragge.’

The effort required not to hit Gallan was so great that I could not speak for a moment. But then, as the crackle of las-fire echoed in the distance, I saw the truth of what he was saying. I thought of the coin in my fist, crumpled but unbroken, and nodded.

‘The Senatorum.’

He nodded. ‘The legislature will have assembled. We must tell them what has been done here. The mob have just robbed themselves of their greatest champion.’ He shook his head, looking at Konor’s body. ‘But they have also risked the stability of the entire planet. There are too many factions vying for power. If there’s a consular election now there will be mayhem.’ He looked at the bodies scattered around the room. ‘This is a dangerous moment.’

I trapped my grief in a corner of my mind and tried to think. ‘Macragge has lost one of its consuls today,’ I said, holding Gallan’s gaze. ‘I won’t let it lose another.’

I ordered some of my men to guard my father’s corpse and, with the rest of them following in my wake, I marched back out into the city, my pulse hammering in my ears and my father’s face staring at me from every corner.

As we crossed the city, crowds spilled from every temple and hab-block. I ignored the rioters but not the chainmail-armoured soldiers. Those men saw a fraction of the rage I was holding back. I tried to kill them with the dispassion I was trained to show, but something in me had cracked. I could not stop at simply shooting them. I am ashamed to recall how I vented my rage, smashing walls with their corpses, pummelling skulls with my fists, hurling living men onto fires.

By the time we reached the lawns around the Senatorum, Gallan was shaking his head, angered by the messages that were crackling in his vox-bead.

He caught me looking his way and grimaced. ‘They want me to stand as sole consul until this is over – until we have restored order.’

‘Sole consul?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘A bold idea.’

‘It goes against every statute.’

‘Well something has to be done if we’re going to ride this out. And fast.’ I gave him a pointed look and strode on.

There was fighting all around the Senatorum gates. I was about to lead an attack when Gallan held me back.

‘We need to reach the Hall of Concord quickly. We have to speak to the assembly before they make any decisions.’ He waved me around the building to the entrances reserved for servitors and serfs.

I hesitated, glaring at the rabble by the gates. They were hurling bricks and trying to set light to the banners. They looked drunk, or deranged. Again, I found it hard to think that I was even the same species as such moronic creatures. How could they turn on the state that had given them so much?

‘Don’t let anger muddy your thinking,’ said Gallan. ‘We could be stuck here for an hour.’

‘You’re right,’ I replied. ‘I need to get you to that assembly before it’s too late.’ I ordered my men into battle but then left them to it. We rushed through the darkness to the rear of the building.

The doors were open and, as soon as we entered the lofty halls of the Senatorum, I heard things I knew Gallan would not – as well as the crowds thronging through the streets outside, I could hear the lords gathering in the Hall of Concord. An emergency council had been called. Hundreds of Macragge’s patricians had made it through the riots, determined to make their voices heard. Even from here, I could hear how craven some of them were. There was excitement in their voices where there should only have been rage. They saw opportunity in the bloodshed.

For several minutes, Gallan had been whispering furiously into his vox, talking to whoever was feeding him information from the hall but, as we neared the centre of the building he broke off from his conversation and looked at me.

‘I want you with me on the podium. It’s what your father would have wished.’

I nodded, barely registering his words, still thinking of what I had lost that day.

‘But you can’t appear before them like that,’ he said.

I frowned, confused, then realised he was talking about my battle-gear. I had not changed since returning to the city. I was still clad in chainmail and plate and it was filthy, covered in blood and ash.

He shook his head with a faint smile. ‘If you enter the Hall of Concord looking that brutal there will be a riot in there too.’ He grabbed my hand. ‘We need to be the voice of reason, Roboute. There has been enough savagery today.’

I nodded. All my life I had struggled not to bring shame on my father’s name. Somehow, in the wake of his death, that seemed even more important. I started to unfasten the wargear.

‘Here,’ said Gallan, far better acquainted with the building than I was, nodding to a door. ‘Let the serfs dress you.’

As I headed for the door, Gallan hesitated.

‘I will be quick,’ I said. ‘Go.’

He stared at me, pain in his eyes, then nodded and hurried off.

The room was lined with the woollen togas and mantles worn by the patricians of the legislative assembly. I began shedding my armour as I approached them, the metal clanging across the cold, tiled floor.

I was half undressed when a serf rushed into the room and bowed, closing the door behind him. ‘My lord,’ he murmured, rushing to help me unfasten the armour.

‘That one,’ I snapped, waving at the most understated garment I could spot – a simple blue and white toga without quite so much of the gold embroidery that covered the others.

He hesitated, then seemed to think better of whatever he was going to say and crossed the room to fetch the toga.

As I dressed I noticed something odd. I could smell the same chemical aroma I had smelled in my father’s stateroom. The same, unspoken warning tugged at my thoughts, willing me to make a connection. This time I pursued the thought to its source and an image flooded my mind. The campaign in Illyria had been brutal but satisfying. For every savage we killed, there were ten who listened to sense and dropped their guns. For the first time in my life, I had seen how diplomacy could outstrip force. But the leader of the revolt, a wiry runt called Zullis, had not been willing to bend the knee. He fought like a rat in a snare, lashing out with the same curved blade I had seen his assassins use. It was covered in neurotoxins, he had said, laughing as he hurled it at my face. I had given Zullis a decisive lesson in manners, but the smell of the poison had stayed with me.

The serf came at me with a grin, his long, curved blade flashing in the half-light.

I dodged his lunge and grabbed his wrist, twisting his arm slowly back until the bone cracked and he howled in rage and shock.

‘You killed my father,’ I said. ‘You poisoned him. That’s why he warned me away.’ My rage had passed beyond the animal fury I felt earlier. It was ice in my veins. I felt less human than ever before. I felt like a weapon.

‘Yes!’ gasped the assassin, his eyes rolling wildly as he tried to wrench his arm free. He snorted and giggled and I recognised the signs of combat-stimms.

‘Why?’

‘Money!’ he giggled, grinding his teeth, leaning closer.

Breath exploded from my lungs as he kicked me, hard, in the stomach.

I cursed my stupidity as I staggered across the room. He was distracting me. And I was far slower than I should have been. I had not slept for the duration of the Illyrian campaign and then I had returned home to find the riots. Perhaps there was a limit to even my stamina?

He came at me again, wielding the knife in his other hand, but this time I was ready. I sidestepped the blow and landed a brutal punch on the side of his head.

He went down hard, making a wet choking sound.

‘Who paid you?’ I cried, grabbing him by the neck.

The chemical smell grew stronger and he slumped in my grip, foam forming at his lips.

I dropped him to the floor and watched his death throes, feeling no pleasure in his pain. Foam bubbled from his mouth and the smell intensified further. He had bitten a capsule. Probably the same toxin that was on the blade.

I rushed to the door. As I did so, I saw something lying next to my armour – the coin my father had bade me take as he died. I snatched it up and then, as I ran out into the corridor, I halted, noticing something odd about it. I stared at it and, under the harsh light of a glowglobe, I saw the truth. ‘No,’ I gasped, bending the coin back into shape and looking at it again, not wanting to believe. Then I ran on.

When I entered the Hall of Concord, Gallan was already on the podium, trying to quell the noise. Macragge’s aristocrats had turned on each other with almost as much violence as the mobs outside.

I had emerged at the back of the podium and Gallan continued shouting as I approached him from behind.

‘And I don’t just mean Konor, I mean his son too!’ he cried, hammering his fist on a lectern. ‘They brought this ruin on our heads. They risked everything we hold dear! I watched Konor leading the rabble into Consul House. If it wasn’t for the bravery of my men he would have burned the whole building down. He murdered dozens of loyal soldiers before we could stop him.’

The crowd fell quiet, shocked, whispering to each other.

‘And as for his son, that arrogant interloper Roboute. What more could we have done to welcome him into our homes? And this is how he repays us! I saw him, not ten minutes ago, in this very building, trying to fight his way to this chamber with the very traitors he claimed to have been fighting in Illyria. What was he really doing out there? Plotting to overthrow us! We stopped him, but it was a close thing. I had to kill him myself.’

As I stepped closer to Gallan, light washed over me and the crowd gasped, staring at me in confusion as Gallan described my death.

‘I’m not ashamed of what I did!’ cried Gallan, misunderstanding their shocked expressions, still unaware of my presence. ‘He was a traitor to Macragge and I was not prepared to let him step foot in this hall. I ended his treachery in the only sure way I could.’

I finally spoke up. ‘I was with my father when he died.’

My words rang out into a shocked silence.

Gallan paled as he turned to face me.

‘And I asked him who was responsible,’ I continued, placing the assassin’s poison blade to Gallan’s throat. ‘He could not speak, but he gave me the name of his murderer all the same.’

Gallan looked panicked and confused as I took out the coin and held it in front of his face.

‘Very rare, I imagine,’ I said, turning it around in my fingers. ‘Mistakenly minted. Rather than showing both consuls, the same face appears on both sides. Your face, Gallan.’

Gallan laughed. ‘You’re alive! This is wonderful. I heard you were killed.’

I glared at him. ‘I heard you. I heard everything you just said.’

His smile froze and for a moment he seemed at a loss. Then anger flashed in his eyes.

‘What right do you have to come in here making threats? You do not belong here, boy, you never did. Where did you even come from? Do you even know who your real father is? You’re lucky I didn’t kill you when…’

Gallan’s words trailed off as a hum of angry voices swelled through the hall. Some of the patricians began jeering and swearing. For a moment I thought it was directed at me but then I realised their outrage was for Gallan. Of course. Whatever their politics the nobles of Macragge agreed on one thing – to lie in the Hall of Concord was beneath contempt. And my presence had shown them what a fraud the consul was.

I pounced on their moment of doubt, speaking to the room with the calm, magisterial tones I had perfected speaking to the Illyrian rebels.

‘My father never lied to you. Whatever is happening today is nothing to do with him or his reforms. Nothing meant more to him than this senate. And he grasped truths lost on men like Gallan. A tyrant’s power is brittle and short-lived. It dies with him. But a state that frees its people grows more powerful every year. Each new generation has more to fight for than the last. More reason to serve. We can arm Macragge with the loyalty and faith of our subjects. We can make it invincible.’

Gallan’s face was purple with rage. ‘Idiots! Yes, I killed Konor. And who do you think I did it for? Who do you think will pay for the freedom Konor promised? Whose lands do the mob want to seize? Yours! It’s your power they want. Your money. What do you think you would be if Konor’s reforms were passed?’ He was almost screaming. ‘You would be nothing! No better than the common herd! Centuries of tradition, torn down by one ill-conceived act of charity!’

I prepared to end his words, tightening my grip on the knife, recalling the pain in my father’s eyes as he died.

Then I realised the senate had fallen quiet, watching me closely, fascinated by the lurid scene that was unfolding on the podium. In their expressions I saw the future. If I killed Gallan I would prove him right. I would be the savage rebel he claimed I was. Any other truths would be overlooked in the resultant clamour. There would be a frenzy of recriminations and plots. They would turn on each other. While the city died, its leaders would bicker, letting Macragge burn while they tried to raise one hereditary claimant over another.

I thought of the savages in Illyria, dropping their guns for a place in the dream I described to them.

I lowered the blade.

Gallan looked at me in shock as I stepped away from him.

‘It is not the job of a single man to pass judgement,’ I said, looking out across the crowd. ‘It is the job of the senate. Macragge is greater than any of us. Gallan killed my father, but I would rather see him go free than tear this council apart. If you would have this man as your consul then so be it. But you heard him lie to you. He has admitted it without shame. And you must choose your course of action quickly.’

Gallan’s eyes gleamed. He struggled not to laugh, so sure that no one would listen to me over him.

‘Traitor!’ cried a voice from the back of the hall. I looked through the ranks of patricians and saw that one of them was pointing a trembling finger at me. No, not at me – at Gallan. I recognised the man. Adarin. A man who had always despised me. And a man who had denounced my father’s reforms. But Adarin’s anger was now directed at Gallan.

‘Traitor!’ cried another voice, then another, until a great wave of denunciation washed through the hall.

Gallan reeled like a drunk. ‘Idiots!’ he screamed, spit flying from his lips. ‘These people will rob you of everything. Think of what your fathers built. You will end up–’

His words turned into a howl of outrage as soldiers grabbed his arms and began bundling him off the podium. His fury turned to panic. If he were convicted of deceit in the Hall of Concord, he would face a death sentence.

I watched until he had been dragged from view, still spitting curses, then I climbed down the steps and started back across the hall to rejoin my men.

Adarin pushed his way through the crowd and barred my way, his face grim.

The hall fell quiet.

He stared at me with such murderous intent that I thought I might have to fight my way out. I had meant everything I said on the podium, but I would not stand by while my men were battling outside. I would not leave them to die.

Adarin did something unexpected. He removed the metal wreath from his head and dropped it at my feet.

There was a hiss of indrawn breath around the hall. Everyone understood the symbolism of the act. He was swearing allegiance to me.

I wondered if he was mocking me, but he looked completely earnest.

‘I don’t know where you came from,’ he said, ‘and I no longer care. I have never heard a truer son of Macragge. Your father lies slain, not a kilometre from here, and you have just spoken calmly and clearly in the face of his murderer. You put the needs of the senate before your own pain. You are an example, Roboute Guilliman.’ He looked around the hall. ‘To all of us.’

I shook my head but, before I could reply, the man next to him removed his wreath and dropped it beside Adarin’s. Then another man did the same. One by one, the patricians all pushed forwards to drop wreaths at my feet until I was surrounded by a pile of golden leaves.

Pride and shock rooted me to the spot. ‘Macragge will endure,’ I whispered, thinking again of my father’s prophecy, not intending to be heard.

The acoustics of the hall snatched my words and cast them across the crowd.

‘Macragge will endure!’ replied five hundred voices, as the council began to kneel.

THE CHAMBER AT THE END OF MEMORY

James Swallow

Night no longer existed above the domains of the Imperial Palace.

When Terra’s sun set beyond the ragged mountain peaks of the ancient Himilazian Range, a thousand smaller stars were lit to bathe the great precincts in a hard, white light, so that the armies of drone-helots, smiths and stonebreakers could toil on in their labours. Floating high over the Hall of Victories and down towards the Sprawl Magnifican, a fleet of autonomous aeronefs bearing huge lume arrays ensured that day never ended, the glow spilling all the way to the Katabatic Slopes and the outer fringes of the Petitioner’s City.

His golden wargear glistening in the endless light, the primarch Rogal Dorn observed the progress of the great siege work of his design. His hard-edged aspect sombre and vigilant, he stood aboard a disc-like contra-gravity platform.

Dorn’s only company was a mech-servile. The device resembled an avian, a hawk of some kind, and it carried upon its back an upright oval frame like the mount of a mirror. There was no glass in the surround; instead it pulsed with lambent blue light, throwing hololithic panes out in front of Dorn as he moved around the platform’s edge. Now and then, the Imperial Fist would reach into the holo-casts and make an adjustment or shift a data-point. Even at this late stage, there were always details that required his individual attention.

The smallest error in the gap between two flagstones could open a crack that would fell a shield wall. A single overlooked decimal in the wrong place could see a macrocannon magazine run empty in the thick of an assault.

Nothing must be left to chance. For Dorn, these words had become his mantra. All points will be defended. All doors barred. There would be no failure on his watch. This he swore, this oath he reaffirmed with each lost dusk that passed, as his errant brother’s invasion drew inexorably closer.

Horus Lupercal, may he be forever hated, would soon come to the Imperial Palace, to directly challenge their father the Emperor. Dorn knew that hour was almost at hand; he felt it in his genhanced blood and bones. When Horus’ blighted ships darkened Terra’s skies, and unleashed their traitors and the creatures that were their allies, these walls beneath Dorn’s armoured boots would repel them. No stronghold in the entire Imperium, not even the Fists’ mighty star-home Phalanx, was as fortified as the bastion of the Emperor’s Palace.

At least it will be, if my works are finished in time. I can only hope it will be enough. Dorn grimly nursed the thought as he directed the platform to take him north, in the direction of the Tower Aquilane. The mech-servile came with the primarch, moving to perch on the disc’s safety rail. He made more notations, redirecting a legion of masons and steelmakers from their duties at the Inner Gardens towards efforts on a series of anti-Titan revetments in the Western Quad.

Too many operations were running behind schedule. Too many things were going awry. Some incidents were to be expected, of course, but Dorn knew the difference between accident, error and sabotage.

There had been open attempts to disrupt the construction in the early months, attacks against machinery and men by deluded devotees of Dorn’s errant brother. The Imperial Fists and the Custodian Guard had largely brought such brazen acts to heel since then, but one did not need to drive a loaded promethium tanker into a building site to ruin a work. Subtle interferences, small deeds in the right places, could have massive consequences. A misplaced shipment of metals. A helot legion going underfed. A measurement on a blueprint made a few degrees off true. In a building project of such epic scope as the fortification of Terra’s capital, these things could prove fatal.

Dorn released a slow, dissatisfied breath as he found a datum lying out of synch, and pulled it back into place. A gale of white vapour from his exhale briefly wreathed him and dissipated.

He could have undertaken this duty in a photic projection chamber on one of the Bhab Bastion’s command tiers, but it was more immediate to be up here above the cityscape, up in the polar cold and thin air that would have frostbitten a mortal. Dorn needed to look with his own eyes, not second-hand via hololiths.

It was real this way. Up here, the Imperial Fist could hear the ceaseless clatter of pneu-hammers and the chipping of stone. He could taste traces of dust and the exhaust of machines as they laboured under the perpetual daylight he had put in place.

Darkness would fall soon enough when Horus arrived, and all those common souls who dwelled within the walls of the Imperial Palace would beg for the light.

Dorn looked down as the platform drifted to a halt. He was above the Investiary, and he looked upon the great building and frowned. It was the perfect exemplar of the crimes he had committed against this magnificent labour of men, this palace of ultimates.

Once, the Investiary had been a great amphitheatre two full kilometres wide, a beautiful arena to cradle wonders brought back from across the galaxy. Dorn had shed a few drops of sweat down there, fighting in sporting duels with his kindred, beneath the gaze of the towering statues that bore the likenesses of his brothers.

But now it was a massive munitions store, repurposed into a colossal powder-house accommodating megatonnes of conventional shells, para-batteries and promethium casks. Dorn had made it so because the arena’s central location put it in good range of all this quadrant’s gun emplacements, and the sunken design was tough and durable. It had been a delight to behold, once. The Imperial Fist had transformed it into something blunt and unlovely.

‘When did I lose sight of that?’ His words crackled in the cold. At some point, Dorn had forgotten the beauty, forgotten that he was sullying what made this place so incredible. It had been lost in the myriad needs of the war, fading beneath the weight of the duty; the weight of new stone, like the brutalist bulwarks that now masked the once-glittering spectacle of the Investiary’s ornate walls.

Would you tear them all down?

The question rose in his memory. Malcador, saying the words to him, down there on the floor of the amphitheatre. The Sigillite and he, in better days, when the suspicions between them had not been so open, so bitter.

Another casualty of the conflict, he thought. Something else lost – or discovered – in the chaos of this siege-to-come.

His reverie was drawn from him as the cyber-hawk emitted a warning cry, a split-second before a peal of thunder reached Dorn’s ears.

As he pivoted in the direction of the sound, he picked out a curl of black cloud rising up from a minor donjon towards the centre of the Indomitor Bastion. There was a survey crew in that zone, checking redundant buildings for suitability to be cut down, their granite foundations to be used as buttresses elsewhere.

But that area contained nothing of import, so he recalled, nothing that could explode with such force, only art galleries and the like. Malcador had told him to leave that quadrant alone, Dorn recalled, citing the inestimable value of keeping safe its fragile esoterica. But such things would mean nothing if the walls protecting the Palace were weak, he had countered.

‘The needs of the war,’ he muttered, taking the platform’s controls in his giant’s hands. Rescue flyers, alerted by the same alarm that had stirred the hawk, would already be launching to investigate the explosion, but Dorn was close and could get there first. He put the disc into a steep dive and sent it towards the source of the smoke.

It was a depository minaret, one of thousands of similar buildings that existed all across the precincts of the Imperial Palace. An ugly burn scar defaced one side of it, and through the rent in the construct, the black smoke was already thinning, fading.

Dorn stepped off the grav-platform and saw where the survey crew had left their ground transport waiting in the courtyard. The big, six-wheeled machine lay silent, and the primarch’s nostrils twitched as he approached it.

Blood, within. He smelled human death, the particular tang of it well known to him, without the heavy compound odour of legionary vitae or the acridity of something xenos-born. He came upon a dead man lying half-out of the driver’s seat. The body of the work-ganger was slack and still warm. His eyes were crimson pearls, and dark fluid oozed from his ears and his mouth.

Shock death. Dorn categorised the method of the man’s ending with a warrior’s dispassion. Catastrophic overpressure or a pulse-wave weapon could have killed him in such a manner, but secondary damage did not support that conclusion.

The primarch drew a weapon of his own; the formidable master-crafted bolter dubbed the Voice of Terra had been presented to him by the Adeptus Custodes, on the day he had been anointed as Terra’s Praetorian. Glistening gold like his power armour, the gun shimmered in the false daylight as it led Dorn into the shattered minaret. He moved with caution; if Horus’ insurgents had grown bold again – if this was their doing – the threat could be grave.

Within the tower he found a curious architectural anomaly. The building concealed a long corridor, a false arcade dotted with clever archways designed to trick the eye of the unobservant. More dead men littered the floor here, all of them killed in the act of fleeing. Dorn paused to examine the nearest and found the same fashion of death as he had upon the work-ganger in the transport. Blood-red eyes staring sightlessly up at him, a face twisted in agony.

Something subtle and distant in his thoughts pushed at Dorn to go no further. And by rights he should have done exactly that, waiting for the Arbites to arrive, waiting for the medicae and their servitors. This site was still a danger zone until someone could fathom what had happened here, and many would have said that Rogal Dorn was too important to concern with something so minor.

But Rogal Dorn was never one to accept the idea of a thing he could not do. He strode forwards, advancing down the arcade at a march, scanning every shadowed corner and dark alcove for anything that resembled a threat.

The further he walked, the worse the manners of the deaths became. The primarch found workers whose limbs appeared to have exploded from within, killed instantly by intense hydrostatic impulse. Other bodies ended at the neck, the stumps haloed by a mess of shredded brain matter and bone. And further still, there were the dead who could no longer be recognised as human, their corpses turned into a crimson-black slurry painted up over the ornate marble pillars and pale ouslite ceiling.

With each step he took, the forbidding pressure inside Dorn’s thoughts took form and gained potency. It was as if the corridor itself did not wish him to walk within it, as if the very walls were trying to repel him. Unbidden, his pace slowed to a halt and Dorn’s armoured gauntlet tightened around Voice’s grip.

The end of the corridor was within sight, and he could see it concluded in an anteroom dominated by two great doors that were scaled for transhumans. Even from this distance, Dorn could surmise what had happened.

He saw the dying plasmatic flame of a cutting tool where it lay on the tiled floor. The worker who had wielded it was a red mess now, perhaps the same unfortunate fool who had cut into the shattered seal that previously had walled off the anteroom from the rest of the world.

What did they trigger in here? What line did they unwittingly transgress?

There were symbols on the doors. Dorn took another wary step, narrowing his eyes to see them clearly.

And so he did, but before the fullness of his discovery could be processed, a pungent acid reek seeped into the air. Dorn recognised the spoor of witchery. He had walked into a trap.

Eldritch fire burst from points on the pillars, the walls and the floor. Arcane symbols lit up, revealing themselves where wards had been carefully concealed in the ordinary designs of tile and stonework. Psionic kill-forms, shrieking masses of inchoate ectoplasm formed from warp-matter, attacked the primarch from all sides.

He battered them away, his bolter rising to blast the ones that were beyond his reach. Each dissipated with a concussive howl of power, hitting him with shockwaves forceful enough to make even the Stone Man recoil.

Dorn retreated a few steps, gathering himself, and the ephemeral attackers drew back towards the psychic cantrips that had spawned them. His jaw set, the primarch picked out and put huge mass-reactive rounds into each origin point. As the shots blasted open the stone, thin spurts of organic fluid leaked out and he saw what might have been blobs of cultured cerebral matter buried in the walls.

Psionic trip-mines, he reasoned. Warp-weapons that had lain dormant here until the work gang had unwittingly triggered them. These things were defensive artifices, to protect what lay beyond the chamber at the end of the corridor. But such devices had no business being here. Dorn glared at the distant doors once more, then stalked away, back towards the courtyard.

When he stepped out into the false day once more, the cluster of Arbites and rescue specialists who had arrived in the flyers fell into line and made the salute of the aquila. Dorn did not return it, pausing only to order the senior incident officer not to enter the corridor.

He cast a glance up into the night sky, beyond the burning lights aboard the aeronefs. Dorn tapped the vox bead in the gorget of his armour, opening a priority channel to the Phalanx out in orbit.

‘Heed me,’ he told his warriors. ‘You will go to the Seclusium in the bowels of our fortress. On my authority, open the gate there and recover one of the brothers you find within.’ Dorn shot a look back at the rip in the minaret’s wall, as the full weight of the decision he was about to make fell upon him. ‘I require a Librarian.’

‘Your will, my lord,’ came the reply.

The primarch did not acknowledge the reply, his thoughts dwelling on what he had seen in the anteroom at the end of the corridor. A pair of giant’s doors, built not for men, not even for a legionary, but for one of greater stature.

Upon those entrances, laser-etched into the metal, the symbols for the numbers two and eleven.

Yored Massak emerged from the troop bay of the Stormbird and scowled at the hard, directionless glare from above. Like any Inwit-born son of his Legion, he had not paused to question why he was suddenly summoned from his meditation in the deep spaces of the Phalanx, accepting that this was by the order of his gene-sire, and thus as immutable as if the command was carved into granite.

But now, as the Imperial Fist set foot on Terra – and within the bounds of the Emperor’s Palace, no less – it was difficult for him to silence the torrent of questions that flooded his thoughts.

Ever since the Decree of Nikaea had forbidden the use of psykers such as himself from line duty among the Legiones Astartes, Brother Massak had willingly surrendered his status within the warriors of the Librarius and followed Lord Dorn’s edict: to accept isolation in the great psi-negating Seclusium chamber along with his fellow practitioners, and wait.

The Decree cast them as liabilities to their Legions, as potential vectors through which the dangers of the infernal warp might enter the material realm. There was truth to that threat, Massak could not deny, but he had always believed that the sons of the VII Legion were beyond such things. They were the Imperial Fists, the mailed gauntlet of the Emperor. They did not break, whatever the trial.

Some – those of weaker character, those caught in moments of despair – had dared to think that Lord Dorn had abandoned his Librarians as the Warmaster’s rebellion grew to overwhelm everything, but Massak eschewed such sentiments. Their primarch obeyed his father’s word, as the Fists obeyed the word of theirs. When the moment was right, Dorn would call them back to the line. They would be ready when he needed them.

Was that moment nigh, Massak wondered? Before him, his liege lord stood as a towering, gilded sentinel, one hand resting on the hilt of his baroque chainsword, the other at his chin as he mused. The Librarian bowed and slammed his fist across his breastplate in salute.

‘I answer your summons, my lord.’

‘Brother Massak,’ Dorn intoned, giving him a measuring look. ‘I have need of your unique skills.’

‘I stand ready.’

His gene-father was silent for a long moment. He seemed troubled.

‘In any other circumstance, you would not be here. But there is danger here… Its origin is unclear to me, but your insight will not be so clouded.’ The primarch told him of the explosion, the dead survey crew, and weapons hidden in the walls of the corridor.

Massak’s head bobbed in a shallow nod as he took this in, and the Librarian couldn’t stop himself from reaching up to gesture at the inactive psychic hood affixed to his power armour, and the force sword sheathed at his hip.

‘I will confess, sire, that I did not expect this, nor to be given my weapons and wargear.’

Dorn held up a hand. ‘This is not the day,’ said the primarch, anticipating Massak’s question before he uttered it. The legionary’s heart sank as his master went on. ‘The moment you hope for is not yet at hand, my son. But there is danger here, in this place. Of the kind you and your kindred are best suited to understand.’ Dorn pointed at the minaret. ‘You will walk with me. You will tell me all that your preternatural senses reveal to you. Know that this is not a decision I have taken lightly, or in haste. This defiance of my father’s commands has been forced upon me.’ Then his primarch said the words that left Massak both elated and filled with dread. ‘For this day, I grant you respite from the Decree of Nikaea. Put your talents at my command once more.’

‘Your will,’ whispered Massak, and a flood of ghostly potency shot through him. The crystalline matrices of his psychic hood hummed, and the warrior felt renewed, alive, empowered. He was a blinded man suddenly given sight once more, his ephemeral talents surging back from the dormant state they had languished in for so long. Massak took in a breath, centring himself.

Immediately, a flood of psychic after-images buffeted the Librarian’s sensorium. He felt the current of fear and awe in the humans standing in the courtyard, as the motes of their commonplace life-forces orbited around Dorn’s fiery, potent self. Massak moved past these surface perturbations to the resonant echo of the death-howls that still hummed in the places where the survey crew had perished.

Dorn entered the corridor and Massak fell in step at his side. At any other time, the warrior would have been proud to be in such circumstances, but not now, not here. The air was filled with foreboding as much as the reek of murder.

He cast his gaze over the bodies and the blood, seeing the shape of them through the veil of the real and into the shadow realm of the immaterium, which seethed like an invisible ocean beneath the physical world.

The men and women of the work gang had died fast – or rather, their corporeal forms had. Their psionic essences, what idolatrists might have called their souls, were still in the process of slowly being torn apart. The psi-weapons that had stripped their energy from their crude matter were cruel and potent things. It struck Massak that the devices were overpowered for such simple targets as ordinary humans, and gravely he relayed this to his gene-father.

Dorn gave a grunt of assent. ‘Are there more?’

Massak could sense them as they progressed along the corridor. ‘Aye, lord. I fear, if anything, more potent than those already deployed. Waiting for a trigger.’ And there was something else, a peculiar telepathic mark in the making of these things that Massak knew but could not place.

A signature, he decided. The psychic fingerprint of the one who seeded the weapons in this place.

‘Awaken them,’ ordered Dorn, bringing his bolter and his chainblade to the ready.

Massak drew his own sword and reached inside himself for the sleeping lightning he knew lurked in his bones. The crystals in his psychic hood flashed white and the Librarian cast out his hand, releasing a bolt of energy along the corridor’s length.

The lightning flickered and bounced from wall to floor to ceiling, and in each place it touched, stone burned away to reveal more hidden wards that seethed with arcane power. Shrieking, protean globes of pure madness erupted from their hiding places and swarmed them.

‘Advance!’ snarled Dorn, and he sprinted into the mass, meeting the attack with an incredible, focused ferocity.

Massak put aside his desire to merely stand by and watch the primarch at his art, and fought his quarter of the brief engagement. Swords screamed, bolts thundered, and the warriors beat down the mindless kill-forms, obliterating every one of them.

When it was done, Dorn marched on, and Massak tarried behind him. The Librarian went to each origin point for the psi-forms and ran his force sword through the glyphs carved there, rendering them unable to regenerate. As he caught up to his master, Massak heard the rumble of his words cutting through the air.

‘I know these rooms,’ mused the primarch, as they reached the chamber before two great doors. ‘I remember them… They were on the other side of the Palace.’

‘Is that possible?’ said Massak. ‘How could–?’

His words became ashes in his mouth as a terrible silence gripped him.

The Librarian was bombarded by psionic sensations. Not just the agony of the newly dead and the torture their spirits were enduring, not just the hateful echoes of the psi-forms, but the shadow of a gargantuan psychic presence. A mind of intricate, lethal magnificence, its passage invisibly marbling the walls where only one such as Massak would be able to perceive them.

The full power of it was concentrated in the doors. To the right, a brass portico bore the numeral II, in the old way of scribing. To the left, an identical entrance rendered in steel was etched with the numeral XI. Massak beheld those ill-fated symbols and the genhanced blood in his veins ran cold.

‘The Second and the Eleventh.’ He could barely say the words. It was forbidden to speak of them, by the censure of the Master of Mankind Himself. Every son of every Legion, be they loyalist or traitor, knew the rumours of the twin tragedies of these lost titans, the truth of their losses forever shrouded and unknowable.

Once, the Emperor had forged twenty sons from aspects of his own being, Rogal Dorn one of the mightiest among them. But two primarchs had been struck from the rolls of honour long before the Warmaster’s rebellion, each consumed by a catastrophe of such fell scope that few knew the full dimensions of it. Massak could only call upon rumour and half-truth for his knowledge, but as he looked up at his gene-father’s face, he knew that Dorn held the bleak memory of that disaster deep in his hearts.

‘My brothers…’ Massak’s primarch put away his weapons and walked to the doors. Dorn reached out both hands, and placed the palms of his gauntlets on the metal. The psyker had rarely seen such reverence, such reluctance in the Fist’s actions. ‘If you were here now, what would be different?’ Dorn asked the question to the cold, acidic air, as if he had forgotten that Massak was still with him. ‘How would the course of this war be altered, if you stood with us? Or with them?’ He shook his head. ‘I wish I could know.’ At length, Dorn withdrew his hands and glanced back at his warrior son. ‘What will be said of them in the deep future, I wonder? Will they be remembered, Massak? Will we?’

The question seemed to bring Dorn physical discomfort, and Massak watched the muscles harden in his lord’s lantern jaw.

‘What is this place?’ The Librarian forced out the utterance. ‘The very air itself is heavy with psionic potency.’

‘These are the chambers of my lost kindred,’ said Dorn. ‘I have my own quarters within the Palace’s domains, as do all my father’s sons. They are rarely used, but maintained in case of need. Those of the traitors were sealed at the beginning of their treachery…’ He paused, frowning as he looked back at the doors. ‘But these… they should be elsewhere.’

The creeping, inexorable growth of inevitability rose in Massak’s mind, as his recollection connected the psionic spoor around them with a point of origin. He remembered. He knew the telepathic signature. He knew who it belonged to.

Massak had stood in the presence of the author of this artifice, many years ago, during the Triumph at Ullanor. The psychic aura was as potent and distinct now as it had been then, lingering in the ether as whispers of unearthly might.

‘The Sigillite,’ whispered Massak. ‘This is his work. The traps, the door, the seals. My lord, it is as clear to me as if he had cut his name into the walls!’

‘You are correct,’ said Malcador, his robes rustling as he entered the anteroom from the corridor behind them. His black iron staff clanked against the bloodstained tiles of the floor. An icy, searing fury glittered in the old man’s eyes, and Massak felt the colossal pressure of the Sigillite’s mind crushing his in its grip. ‘You should not be here, Rogal.’

‘I know this place,’ Dorn countered. ‘Or do I? The memory is hazy. It is indistinct. How is that possible?’ The primarch shouted the last, his voice booming. ‘My father made us with perfect recall! We forget nothing! And yet…’ He gestured at the air.

Malcador turned his gaze on Massak and nodded towards the corridor. ‘Leave us. What will be spoken of you shall not hear.’

The Librarian tried to open his mouth to protest, but he could not. Moving without his conscious control – struggling, failing to command his own flesh – Massak turned on his heel and marched away, down the corridor, towards the distant light.

‘How dare you, Sigillite.’ In other times, Dorn would have shown decorum, he would have refused to allow himself to exhibit the ire that ran through him now like molten steel. But alone with the old man, there was no need for such an act of politesse. ‘My sons are not playthings for you to toy with at a whim!’

‘He cannot be allowed to recollect what he has seen here. For the good of all, he’ll need to forget.’

Dorn’s ire flared. ‘You disrespect my Legion. You disrespect me!’

‘And the Imperial Fists have never disrespected the Regent of Terra.’ Malcador’s retort was sardonic.

‘I hold the office in high esteem,’ Dorn countered.

‘But not the man?’ Malcador gave a bitter chuckle, but in the next breath it was gone. ‘You should not have entered the corridor, Rogal. I told you to stay away from these buildings!’ He peered grimly at the blood on the walls. ‘Now you know why. This intrusion must be undone. It will be edited from history as if it never occurred… I will attend to it.’

‘You lied to me about this place,’ Dorn replied, frustration written across his aspect. ‘Can you do nothing else, Malcador? Even in the simplest of your utterances, must there always be falsehood?’ He jutted his chin at the seared remains. ‘The deaths of these loyal Imperial subjects are added to your tally, not mine. But I doubt you would even notice them.’

If there was regret in the old man, Dorn did not see it. The Sigillite did not answer his statement, and instead made one of his own.

‘I can imagine what is going through your mind at this moment. I have no need to read your thoughts. You wonder if I am a traitor… Not one like your brother Horus, grasping at naked power and fuelled by enmity, but a man out for himself. A schemer and player of games.’

‘In your mind, you are loyal,’ Dorn growled. ‘I do not doubt you can justify every bloody action you have ever taken. But you are some of those things.’ He looked away. ‘The Sigillite plays the galaxy as if it were his own private regicide board. This place? This is another shrouded gambit of yours, another buried secret. I know it.’

‘I am doing what you decided on!’ Malcador’s temper flared, and with it, the plasmatic flames within the iron basket atop his staff crackled fiercely. ‘I have only ever done what I was tasked to do!’

‘Another lie?’ Dorn stared at the twinned doors as if he could see past them by sheer force of will. ‘A half-truth, at best?’

What would he find within those chambers if he entered? What answers would be gleaned, what guidance might be hidden inside? Some said that the tragedies of the lost primarchs were precursors to the schism the Imperium now faced. Could it be so?

‘I have never lied to you,’ Malcador insisted. ‘Kept things from you, yes. Directed your attention elsewhere, indeed. But there has always been truth in our dealings. Disbelieve me if you wish, but know this. Of all your kindred, Rogal, you are the one I admire the most.’

‘Don’t flatter me,’ he shot back. ‘I care not for it. I want answers, old man! You sent Massak away, you have your privacy. Speak!’

‘This place is hidden for good reason. The legacy of the lost holds within it too many doubts, too many harsh truths that would do nothing but damage the balance of our precious Imperium. Now is not the time to pull upon those threads, Son of Inwit!’

‘If not now, when?’ Dorn demanded. ‘What if there is an answer in there, a way–’

‘A way to end the war?’ Malcador shook his head. ‘Those are the words of someone cursed with hope! I tell you now, there is nothing but grief behind those barriers.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps, when the scales are balanced once more and Horus has been brought to heel, these questions can be asked. But only then!’

‘I knew them.’ Dorn took another step towards the doors, silently reaching for deep memories of the two brothers. Not all the primarchs could say they had breathed the same air as the lost sons, but Dorn was one of the few. He had been with them, if only for a while.

‘Have you ever wondered why none speak of them?’ the Sigillite replied. ‘Of course, there is the censure over all who know of the lost never to talk openly of their existence. Still, in the absence of fact, all men will speculate. But you do not. The primarchs never speak of their lost kinsmen in anything but the vaguest of terms. Have you ever wondered why that is?’

‘As you said, we are forbidden to do so.’

‘Even when you are beyond your father’s sight? Even when no one would be aware of such a discussion? Ask yourself why your thoughts always slip over recall of the lost and pass by.’ Malcador bowed his head. ‘What were they called, Rogal?’ The Sigillite seemed almost sorrowful as he asked him. ‘Your vanished brethren. Tell me their names and their titles.’

Dorn tried to grasp that vague recollection, tried to frame the questions that gnawed at him, but once more his perfect eidetic recall failed him. He could only see the phantoms of those moments. Holding on to them was like trying to capture smoke between his fingers.

‘Their names were…’ his mighty voice faltered. His brow creased in frustration. ‘They were…’

To his horror, Dorn realised that he did not know. The awareness was there; he could almost see the shape of the knowledge out on the far horizon of his thoughts. But it retreated from his every effort to see it clearly. Each time he attempted to frame a memory of the lost, it was like fighting a tidal wave. Everything else is clear, but they are ghosts in my mind.

The Imperial Fist was experiencing an impossibility. Every known instant of his life was open to him, as if they were pages of a great book.

But not those moments.

‘Something has been done to me.’ The beginnings of a new fury built in his chest, boiling at the realisation of such an affront. ‘You are behind this!’ Dorn whirled, drawing his chainblade in a glittering arc of lethal metal, bringing it to aim at Malcador’s wizened, cloak-wreathed form. ‘You shrouded my memories! You invaded my mind… For that I should cut you down!’

The Sigillite showed no reaction to the threat. ‘Not just yours. Guilliman’s, and the others who met them.’ He let his words bed in. ‘It is extremely difficult to extract a reminiscence,’ Malcador went on. ‘Even in an ordinary human. In a brain as complex and perfectly engineered as that of a primarch, the task becomes herculean. Imagine a tree in the earth, rising from a web of roots. How would one remove that without disturbing a single atom of the soil? Memory cannot be cut and patched like a mnemonic spool. It exists as a holographic thing, in multiple dimensions. But it can be adjusted.’

‘My father allowed that?’ Dorn’s sword did not waver.

‘He did not stop you.’

‘Stop me?’ The primarch’s eyes narrowed.

Malcador slowly moved back, out of the ornate sword’s killing arc. ‘The… loss of the Second and the Eleventh was such a wound upon us, and it threatened the ideals at the heart of the Great Crusade. It would have ruined all that we had built in the drive to reunite humanity, and drive off our enemies. Steps had to be taken.’ He met Dorn’s hard gaze. ‘The legionaries they left behind, leaderless and forsaken, were too great a resource to be discarded out of hand. They did not share the fate of their fathers. You and Roboute argued in their favour, but you do not recall it.’ Malcador nodded to himself. ‘It fell to me to see that they were attuned to new circumstances.’

‘You robbed them of their memories.’

‘I granted them a mercy!’ Malcador replied, his tone wounded. ‘A second chance!’

‘What mercy is there in a lie?’ Dorn thundered.

‘Ask yourself!’ The Sigillite aimed the burning head of his staff in the primarch’s direction. ‘You wish to know the truth, Rogal? It is this – what I shrouded in you was done by your command! You told me to do it. You and Roboute conceived of the scheme and granted me permission!’

Dorn’s scowl deepened. ‘I would never countenance such a thing.’

‘Untrue!’ Malcador slammed the base of his staff into the floor, the crash of the metal punctuating the word. ‘Such was the fate of the lost, that you willingly allowed it. To make safe that knowledge.’

Another denial formed in Dorn’s throat, but he held it there. He put aside his anger and looked upon the possibility with detachment, with the cold eye of the Praetorian.

Would I have done such a thing? If the matter were grave enough, would I have been so pragmatic, so bloodless in my command?

Dorn instinctively knew the answer. There was no doubt that he would.

If the Imperium was put at risk, he would give his life for it. The cost of some memories, of a fraction of his honour, was indeed a price he would pay.

Malcador approached him, leaving his staff where it stood. One bony, long-fingered hand emerged from the voluminous sleeve of his monastic robes, and the Sigillite reached up to hold it before Dorn’s face. Faint sparks of eldritch light glistened there.

‘I will show you,’ said the psyker. ‘For this instant, I will let you remember. You will know why the lost must remain a mystery.’

Dorn closed his eyes and a glacial fire erupted behind them. Deep within him, a shadow briefly dissipated, stealing the breath from his throat.

He marched along the length of the blood-stained corridor, and with each footfall the reawakened memory retreated deeper into the darkness.

Dorn could feel it fading. He knew that by the time he reached the end of the passageway, the totality of it would be gone. The truth he had glimpsed, hidden, revealed and now to be hidden once more, became transitory and ephemeral.

He did not question what Malcador had shown him. Dorn knew his own mind, enough to be certain that the Sigillite had not projected some conjured illusion into his thoughts. Awakening from the induced reverie, barely seconds had passed, but for the primarch he felt the weight of days upon him. The Sigillite, for all his allusions, was nowhere to be seen when Dorn opened his eyes.

There was still much that the psyker had said and done which the Imperial Fist did not accept, and although Malcador had professed to have been truthful with him, Dorn had doubts that would never ebb.

But not in this matter. In this, he was certain.

The lost were gone, and it was well that they were. The grand misfortunes that befell them crumbled in Dorn’s mind, but they left behind certainty.

What came to pass could overshadow everything. Dorn knew that now. The raw, hateful truth is clear to me. If they were here with us now… This war would already have been lost.

He emerged into the false daylight and found Massak awaiting him. Behind the legionary, the rescue crews and the Arbites kept their distance, knowing that what had happened inside the tower was not for them to question. By tomorrow, none of them would remember what they had seen.

‘My lord,’ began Massak. ‘Forgive me, I was compelled–’

Dorn waved away the apology. ‘You did your duty, Yored.’

Massak accepted that with a nod, then glanced back at the gaping crack in the minaret’s flank. ‘And with regards to the chamber? What are your orders?’

The primarch paused for a moment, searching his thoughts for unanswered questions. The memory of what had been spoken of inside the minaret was already gone, faded to nothing. He found only a granite-hard determination of what needed to be done.

‘Bury this place,’ he told Massak. ‘It is only a tomb now. It will be forgotten.’

THE WILL OF THE LEGION

Andy Clark

Captain Hashin Yonnad squeezed his bolt pistol’s trigger. The gun boomed as it spat self-propelled micro-missiles down the length of the corridor. Around him the warriors of Breacher Siege Squad Tybo added their fire to his, each Iron Armour-clad battle-brother expertly plying his boltgun over the rim of his shield.

At the corridor’s far end, their targets were blown messily apart. Rangy human warriors in brightly patterned enviro-armour detonated as though each had swallowed a grenade in some obscene suicide pact.

In turning their guns upon the ships of the Third Expeditionary Fleet, these Driftborn may as well have done just that, thought Yonnad. He advanced, reloading as he went. Blood and pulverised meat dripped from the walls and ceiling onto the Imperial Fists as they passed.

‘No small thing, to see such bloodletting aboard the Tribune, eh, captain?’ asked Sergeant Tybo over the squad vox as they clattered up a flight of iron steps. They passed their Legion’s sigil, embossed upon the walls in semi-precious metals and lit red by the strobe of alarm lumens.

‘It will not last long,’ Yonnad replied. ‘Our enemies fight with vicious tenacity, but they have nothing to truly threaten the Legiones Astartes. When the ships of the Third Expeditionary Fleet entered their domain, they should have capitulated at once. The Consus Drift might have been a staging post. Instead they force us to make of it a mass grave.’

He shook his head and sighed. ‘Wasteful.’

They emerged into an intersection and were met by another hail of bullets that clanged from power armour and boarding shields.

This latest band of boarders had dragged heavy munitions crates into a crude barricade. Checking his auto-senses’ map of the Tribune he saw that the fighting had brought him almost to the ship’s outer hull.

‘This position was intended as a last-ditch defence for the enemy’s beachhead,’ opined Tybo.

‘Perhaps, in their ignorance, they never believed it would be needed,’ Yonnad replied. Certainly, the fire from behind the barricade was ragged and haphazard, easily shrugged off by Tybo’s legionaries.

‘Break them,’ Yonnad ordered.

Shields interlocking, bolters fore, the Breachers pressed forward. Their guns thundered, the sound filling the intersection and drowning out the terrified screams of their enemies. Pale-skinned, dark-eyed Driftborn were torn to pieces and the stench of blood and ordure filled the air. Some tried to fire back with their boarding rifles and wide-muzzled pistols.

Futile, thought Yonnad, pitifully so.

The bullets barely marred the legionaries’ shields. By comparison, simply standing against the Space Marines’ blizzard of fire was to die. A dozen Driftborn did so in the first seconds of the gunfight; another half a dozen followed them moments later, and then the last of their number were fleeing down the corridor in animal terror.

‘Follow. We finish this.’

At their captain’s command the Breachers bulled their way through the ill-fated barricade, their heavy boots crushing ruptured corpses into the deck plates as they strode relentlessly after the retreating Driftborn.

Through another bulkhead door, down a chevroned ramp between thumping pistons the size of gunships; Yonnad noticed amber warnings appearing on his auto-senses as air-oxygen content and external temperature both dropped steadily.

‘The fools must have made an imperfect breach with our hull,’ said Sergeant Tybo in disgust. ‘Sloppy.’

Yonnad passed through one last doorway, a wide portal whose mechanisms still sparked where the Driftborn had forced entry. Then the enemy were before him, what was left of them at least. Twenty-two men and women knelt upon the decking of a fire-damaged servitor bay, looking as pale and lifeless as the corpse-machines that dangled on armatures above them. They were shivering violently, Yonnad saw, those without respirator masks gasping for breath in the thin air.

Behind them yawned the boarding jaws of their attack craft, its ramshackle interior lit by stuttering lumens. Before them lay their weapons, set down in obvious surrender.

Yonnad’s auto-senses highlighted four separate micro-fractures around the boarding craft, where its rudimentary blast-foam dispensers had failed to properly seal the craft into the hull. At the rate the air was whistling away through those gaps and the cold of the void creeping in, he estimated the defeated Driftborn could survive in this chamber for a few minutes more at most.

‘What do we do with them?’ asked Tybo, his voice dispassionate.

‘They have surrendered and will be made Compliant,’ Yonnad replied, allowing his words to echo from his helm’s vox-grille. ‘They are not tainted xenos, but lost children of humanity and as such shall be afforded the light of the Imperial Truth.’ He had heard the Driftborn giving orders and shouting battle cries, and while their dialect was somewhat adrift of Terran standard, it was close enough that mutual understanding could be easily achieved. Sure enough he saw some amongst the Driftborn relax minutely. A few faces looked up in hope.

That hope spread, if only slightly, as the Imperial Fists gestured with their bolters for the captives to rise and exit the chamber. They did as they were bidden, walking two by two, hands on their heads with Brother Lordyan walking at their fore and the rest of the squad bringing up the rear. Yonnad was the last to leave, runemarking the site for immediate attention by the ship’s servitor repair clades.

‘We do not want to risk their boarding craft wrenching free from the hull and causing a breach,’ said Yonnad, then froze as script flowed across his auto-senses. A priority summons for him and the veteran legionaries of Squad Tybo, issued from embarkation deck six.

‘Other side of the ship,’ Tybo commented, already detailing two of his brothers to detach themselves and deliver the prisoners.

‘We will take the turbolifts,’ replied Yonnad.

‘What do you suppose this means?’ asked Tybo.

‘We will find out soon enough, sergeant,’ said Yonnad and set off with Tybo and his squad following close on his heels.

Despite the marvels of Imperial technology it still took Yonnad and his companions almost thirteen minutes to reach the embarkation deck, such was the size of the warship aboard which they travelled. On their way they saw plentiful signs that the Tribune was still engaged in the ongoing void war: servitor repair clades lumbered down strobe-lit corridors, their servo-armatures sparking as they sought out battle damage to minister to; Legion helots hastened past, some towing racked ammunition tenders, all pausing every few moments to brace themselves against grab handles and wall stanchions as the Tribune shuddered under the impact of macro munitions; squads of Imperial Fists legionaries jogged with crashing footfalls up ironclad stairways and along swaying gantrywalks.

‘Making for the last pockets of border resistance, no doubt,’ commented Sergeant Tybo as another squad passed them in the opposite direction.

‘The ship will soon be cleansed of their presence,’ replied Yonnad.

‘Do you think it will stop there?’ asked Tybo, sounding almost disappointed at the thought.

‘Doubtful, brother,’ said Yonnad, eyeing his choleric comrade askance. ‘The chance tides of the warp brought us to this place just as they brought its human inhabitants before us. Yet the welcome they showed us was to tear into the vessels of the Imperial Army with boarding craft and the long guns of their asteroid cities. They set upon us like jackylworms upon an ice-stalker’s corpse. Were you the primarch, would you swiftly forgive such an insult?’

‘It is not for us to speak for the thoughts or deeds of our sire, Captain Yonnad,’ Tybo replied, a frown in his voice.

‘True enough, but whether we say it aloud or not, you know that Lord Dorn is not given to mercy nor forgiveness,’ said Yonnad, certainty growing within him that he knew what he would see as they entered the embarkation deck.

Sure enough, as they clattered up a last flight of steps and emerged onto an upper gantry, the embarkation deck spread out before them, full of the rigidly controlled pandemonium that characterised the martial preparations of a Space Marine Legion preparing to unleash its might. Stormbirds idled in launch-clamps, searing energies simmering deep within their ramjets. Squad after squad of veteran Breachers, Cataphractii Terminators and a few Templar brethren stood in serried ranks or knelt as they took their oaths of moment. Ammunition and fuel canisters passed through the air on servo-hoists or moved through the press aboard rumbling carriages. Yonnad saw Captain Ushent of the 177th Company also present, and Captain Paros, the infamous ‘Wall-breaker’ of the 193rd.

It all faded in Yonnad’s sight, though, like the shadowed corners of a chamber illuminated by a single, stark lumen.

‘The primarch,’ breathed one of Tybo’s warriors, awe in his voice.

Dorn stood amidst it all, a pillar of carved stone rising immovable from amidst the whirling tides of motion. His armour was gilded magnificence given redoubtable form. Storm’s Teeth, Dorn’s immense chainblade, hung at the primarch’s hip like the promise of annihilation to come. Yet it was to Dorn’s graven visage that Yonnad found his eyes drawn, as they always were when he found himself in his gene-sire’s presence: set as though in impermeable marble, mouth a humourless line, brows knitted in thunderous displeasure, eyes like chips of mica and lit from within by an uncompromising zeal that Yonnad felt like a physical force, even from this distance.

‘No, there will be no forgiveness this day,’ said the captain as he got Tybo’s squad moving again. ‘We have defended our fastness. Now, I think, we shall test ourselves against theirs.’

The thought should have filled him with righteous joy, for what greater purpose was there in life than to fight in the shadow of the primarch himself in the name of the Emperor’s crusade of unification? Yet as he hastened down a ferrosteel stairway to join the muster, Yonnad could not suppress the surge of disquiet he felt. These people had made a horrible error of judgement in attacking the primarch’s fleet, but their ill judgement did not make them any less human, any less redeemable or potentially Compliant.

‘I hope that when Lord Dorn is done with their punishment, there will be enough of them left alive to learn the lesson he teaches,’ said Yonnad to Tybo.

The sergeant did not offer a response.

Bare minutes later, Captain Yonnad sat in his restraint throne aboard the Stormbird Hammer of Terra as it streaked out from the Tribune’s embarkation deck and into the fire-lit turmoil of the void. Peripheral vid-feeds and data schematics updated constantly in his auto-senses, providing Yonnad with up-to-the-minute intelligence on the war’s progress.

He could see the asteroid cities of the Driftborn where they hung in the darkness, tethered one to the next by bridging spars fashioned from cannibalised shipwrecks. Around them swarmed crimson runes designating squadrons of defensive craft, while more red runes flurried like wind-driven snow across the void field to intersect with the pulsing yellow signifiers of the Third Expeditionary Fleet.

Some of the latter were translucent and cold, marking out warships and supply craft slain while they were still attempting to unshroud their auspicators. Yet many more shone with angry defiance, wheeling and flowing with expert precision as their captains reforged their formation and responded to the ill-disciplined Driftborn ambush.

Watching the data with his strategist’s practised eye, Yonnad could see that the enemy were already faltering.

‘They believed, no doubt, that sufficient surprise, panic and early losses would cause us to capitulate,’ he muttered over closed vox to Sergeant Tybo. ‘I cannot imagine how scarce resources must be in this forsaken reach of space. We must have presented a rich prize indeed to have made them so desperately reckless.’

Imperial warships were surrounding the enemy craft in packs, hammering them from multiple directions and picking them apart even as Imperial Fists assault companies scoured the shocked boarders from the last of the fleet’s compromised craft. Meanwhile, the Tribune drove forward at the spear-tip of a tight flotilla of Imperial Fists warships, carving unstoppably through the enemy’s ramshackle frigates and cruisers towards the cities the Driftborn called home.

All this Yonnad saw and understood. Still, he struggled to keep his attention upon the wider battle for, to his great surprise, Lord Dorn himself had boarded Hammer of Terra before it leapt from its restraints. The primarch now stood near the fore of the gunship’s troop compartment, boots mag-locked to the deck, his white hair touching its ceiling. He was amongst his sons, but ever singular and alone. Dorn’s face was veiled by the crimson shadows of the Stormbird’s interior lumens, but his posture spoke of simmering anger held tightly in check. The gunship shuddered and jolted as munitions detonated in the void around it, but the primarch barely shifted his posture as he rode out the violent motions.

What are we doing? Yonnad thought as the Stormbird thundered on through the void. He took a deep breath and addressed the silent primarch.

‘My lord. Respectfully, why have we not yet been briefed upon our mission? We would know your plans that we might best serve them.’

Rather than reply directly to Yonnad, the primarch instead activated a priority vox-channel. Yonnad saw that it linked to every Space Marine aboard the six Stormbirds that had leapt from the Tribune’s embarkation deck, and were now streaking in loose formation between the tumbling wrecks and bludgeoning volleys of the void war.

‘My sons,’ Dorn began, and as always Captain Yonnad felt an undercurrent of exhilaration and awe at the low rumble of his primarch’s voice.

Is this what the deluded faithful experience? he wondered, not for the first time. The ones not yet brought into the light of the Imperial Truth? The ones who believe in primitive deities? In gods? The thought unsettled him; the Imperial Fists were loyal to their primarch, utterly and unquestioningly so, but theirs was not the blind zealotry of the superstitious or the fanatical.

‘Our enemies have shown courage and martial prowess,’ the primarch continued. ‘They have displayed, also, a lamentable lack of wisdom. The former characteristics can be harnessed to humanity’s benefit, but only if their foolishness can first be remedied.’

He sounds truly furious, thought Yonnad. He had heard only the tiniest tremor in Dorn’s voice, a miniscule fault line running through the word ‘foolishness’. For one as stonily reserved as the primarch of the Imperial Fists, however, such a small tell meant much. Lord Dorn believed in the Great Crusade and the reunification of humanity – believed in it more completely perhaps than any of his brothers, or so it was said.

That belief makes him the greatest of our species’ champions, save the Emperor Himself, thought Yonnad with fierce pride. But he had also seen what Lord Dorn’s belief had wrought of those who opposed the Emperor’s goals, and his sense of foreboding grew as the primarch spoke on.

‘We will offer these Driftborn one chance to embrace Imperial enlightenment. One chance more than they offered our void-lost dead. As I speak, boarding torpedoes, Caestus assault rams and concentrated bombardments are clearing landing sites for your craft in the heartlands of the largest asteroid cities. Each Stormbird has its own designated objective. Hundreds of your brothers assail the cities’ outer defences and slaved defence platforms to prevent enemy reinforcements responding to our landings. They fight for victory but it is you who shall secure it. This Compliance will be swift and decisive. Fight for Terra, my sons.’

Why only the Legiones Astartes? Yonnad wondered as the Stormbirds’ runes divided in his auto-senses and he felt Hammer of Terra accelerating again. Why no supporting units of Imperial Army? Would that not see Compliance achieved all the more swiftly? Were it up to him Yonnad would first have neutralised the enemy’s outnumbered void assets and picked off the long guns that jutted from their asteroid cities. Once the foe’s fangs had been pulled, neat and efficient, he would have enfolded the enemy’s civilisation and struck with overwhelming force. Such methods had ensured swift Compliance before, and while they certainly would have led to a more protracted conflict they would have ensured Imperial losses were minimised.

Their craft shuddered as explosions rippled outside of its hull, and Yonnad felt the telltale jolts as the Stormbird fired back. He accessed the craft’s external vid-feed in time to see several light trans-atmospheric fighter craft disintegrating into puffs of fire and spinning wreckage that rattled from the Stormbird’s hull. The heavy gunships swept on untroubled, and now Yonnad saw their designated asteroid city swelling amidst the blackness of the void. It was a nugget of light and shadow the size of a coin, then it was a mass of rock and metal and glowing lights the size of his fist, then larger and larger and Yonnad could see illuminated city-domes and tunnel networks sprawling across the trammelled asteroid. Scavenger-built bridgeways lashed it to smaller asteroidal townships and clan-halls that in turn joined with other, more distant masses in a fragile bond of survivors’ unity.

Fires burned where Imperial Fists assault forces had already touched down, or where the relentless pounding of lance batteries and barrage bombs had flayed hab-domes open to the airless void.

Bodies floated in space, clouds of them thick as ash-flakes rising from a pyre.

Ruby beams of light leapt up to claw at Hammer of Terra as the beleaguered Driftborn sought to prevent yet more Imperial Fists landing within their city’s bounds. The pilots of the VII Legion knew their duty, however, and few of the panicked blasts even came close. The strategic map showed that battle-brothers from the 88th and 193rd companies were pushing into the city from the south and east. Meanwhile Breacher squads had penetrated the tunnel network that honeycombed the asteroid and were striking from below at its orbital defences, neutralising them one after another. Yet the Imperial Fists were certainly not having it all their own way.

‘Looks as though the Driftborn are putting up a fight to be proud of, eh?’ said Tybo over a private vox-channel. ‘Sounds like they’ve got some serious firepower down there!’

‘Who knows how many centuries they have maintained this civilisation, how many warships they’ve scavenged from, what fragmentary shards of Old Night weapons tech they may have access to?’ Yonnad replied as the Stormbird howled and shuddered in its final descent. The primarch, he noted, had deigned to take hold of a grab handle for this last steep dive but otherwise he had moved not a muscle. Nor did he speak, and in Dorn’s silence Yonnad read that responsibility for ground command would, for now, lie with him as senior ranking officer.

‘Legionaries of the Seventh, make ready to prosecute the foe,’ Yonnad barked through his helm’s vox-grille. Twenty veteran Space Marines responded, Breachers crashing fists against breastplates. Weapons were raised and flight restraints released. From outside came the muffled roar of weapons discharge, then a dull crump as something exploded with enough violence to make the Stormbird lurch.

Then the craft was on the ground, its ramp slamming down to admit billowing smoke and screaming human voices. Yonnad led his brothers out into the hard glare of Asteroid City Six.

The Stormbird had blasted a hole through the roof of a squat, armoured dome and put down amidst a rockcrete-floored plaza in which Yonnad realised a market must have been in full swing less than an hour before. Emergency void fields had snapped on the moment the dome had been breached, preventing explosive decompression from emptying the structure. That had done little to spare the place, however.

Wrecked stalls and lean-tos burned fiercely, plastek sheeting spewing filthy fumes as it curled and melted. Barter-goods carpeted the floor in surreal profusion: pieces of machinery, from scatterings of tiny brass cogs to man-high enginarius blocks and excised servitor augmetics; vac-wrapped nutri-blocks and charred vermin on sticks; brightly pigmented jars of paste; glittering gewgaws and gaudy items of jewellery; scavenged firearms and improvised mauls fashioned from plasteel rebar; a parchment parasol, lying miraculously open and unscathed amongst singed heaps of clothing – the profusion was bewildering.

Amongst the wreckage of the barter-market lay human bodies, dozens of them sprawled and burst and blackened by the fury of war. They looked miserably pitiful, thought Yonnad, despite the melted guns they still clutched in death. More figures haunted the dome’s fringes, however, and these still lived. With bullets and las-bolts whipping in towards the disembarking Space Marines, and the primarch now striding down the ramp in their wake, he had no time to offer the fallen Driftborn anything more than a glance.

‘Shields up,’ ordered Yonnad, allowing his voice to ring out as a vox-amplified boom that filled the dome. His warriors complied with a crash of metal on metal then advanced, shots pinging and whining from their armoured bulwark to little effect. A new designator was flashing on Yonnad’s auto-senses now, just as the primarch had said it would. Their objective, he saw, was a larger dome, heavily defended and located a bare four hundred metres to the north.

Command and Control Asset alpha-primus, he read as it flashed below the rune. Strategic and… environmental regulation hub. Yonnad’s disquiet became dread as he read those words and understood what his gene-sire intended. It was strategically sound, ruthlessly efficient and utterly black and white in its nature.

Capitulate, you fools, he thought as he gunned down another Driftborn. Yet they did not. Instead, the servo-hatch at their back yawned open and vomited forth another wave of screaming warriors clad in brightly patterned enviro-suits and wielding powerful las-blasters. To Yonnad’s right a howling energy beam punched through Brother Lorsan’s shield and the armoured torso behind it. To his back the primarch advanced, brows knitted in a thunderous frown, weapons not even drawn.

He does not deem these foes worthy of the fight, Yonnad thought and knew what was expected of him. And no matter his reservations, Hashin Yonnad of the 39th Household of Inwit always did his duty.

‘Advance and destroy,’ he ordered in his booming voice, firing his pistol again and again as he broke into a charge. ‘In the name of Lord Dorn and the Emperor!’

They met the stiffest resistance within the strategic hub. As Yonnad and his warriors stormed through the smouldering remains of the armoured bulkhead doors they were met by a hail of las-fire that tore glowing rents in shields and punched lances of light through armour, flesh and bone.

The captain advanced through billowing smoke and flicker-strobes of light. War cries boomed and voices screamed in pain around him. Heavy brass control consoles and banks of glowing monitors showered sparks as bolt shells and las-blasts ploughed through them. Figures moved, half-glimpsed wraiths amidst the turmoil of battle.

‘Brothers, place your shots, do not damage instruments that you need not,’ Yonnad commanded, then ducked aside reflexively. An energised blade cut the air where his head had been, crackling angrily as its wielder swung it with desperate strength. The warrior emerged from the roiling smoke, her enviro-suit more heavily armoured than those he had seen so far, her face a riot of colourful clan sigils and vivid warpaint.

Some caste of elite warriors, thought Yonnad, bringing his power sword up to parry her next swing. She was smaller than him, her armour more lightweight and flexible, but if she had hoped lithe speed would be a match against lumbering brute strength, she was soon disappointed. The captain traded a flurry of blows with the guard, her energy blade spitting and sparking each time it met his. Then, spotting a miniscule opening in her balance, he lunged inside her guard and drove the hilt of his blade into the woman’s face.

Bone cracked. Blood sprayed. The warrior flew backwards, rebounded from a console and lay still, her blade crackling and burning.

Yonnad had no time to enjoy his victory as ruby beams of light stabbed out at him. He dodged again but not before one of the blasts had raked an agonising wound down the captain’s right arm.

‘Enough of this, Lord Dorn expects,’ cried Yonnad.

Raising his bolt pistol, he fired back into the murk and saw a humanoid figure burst bloodily apart.

‘Breachers, corral and contain. Eliminate the marksmen then finish the swordsmen.’

On his auto-senses, Yonnad saw his remaining battle-brothers move to obey with rigid efficiency. Where las-blasts flashed out, hails of bolt shells answered. Where energy blades cracked and fizzed in the gloom they rebounded from sturdy boarding shields while their wielders were overwhelmed and beaten down by the Imperial Fists’ sheer, armoured might.

The smoke was clearing now, drawn away by chugging atmospheric filtrators. As it went Yonnad saw that precious few foes remained to oppose them. Three Imperial Fists had fallen, but in return the enemy had lost perhaps thirty of what must surely have been their finest troops. The last survivors were surrounded, making a stand from a raised circular dais ringed with brass consoles and crowned by a dangling mass of screens, pipes and cables. Pale-skinned civilian personnel could be seen cowering behind them, their faces drawn in rictuses of terror.

Before the Imperial Fists could finish the slaughter, a huge figure moved at their backs. Lord Dorn had not rushed to keep pace with their advance, instead simply striding through the enemy’s fastness as though walking the corridors of the Phalanx itself. Now, though, he ducked through the hub’s ruined doorway and the sheer crushing weight of his presence seemed to expand until it filled the entire room. The defenders’ weapons dropped from their nerveless fingers. They raised shaking hands in surrender, most sinking to their knees as they stared aghast at the god of war who had stepped into their midst.

Dorn didn’t spare them a glance. Instead he looked to Yonnad and issued commands the captain had hoped not to hear.

‘Captain Yonnad. Have Techmarine Covenants move up and interface with City Six’s environmental master controls. Route all functionality through a single console then await my command.’

The task took bare minutes to complete. Several of the Legion’s Techmarines went to work, aided by vacuous servitor thralls. As they laboured over sparking instrument panels and installed lengths of trunking cable, the last handful of the hub’s defenders were led away at gunpoint. Yonnad arranged Tybo and Pollas’ surviving Breachers in defensive positions through the hub’s adjoining corridors. As he did so he kept half an ear on the exchanges flitting across the strategic vox-net, both throughout Asteroid City Six and further afield where the other Stormbirds had touched down.

‘This is Captain Jorian reporting strategic hub secure, City Four. Minimal losses. Techmarines attending as ordered…’

‘…moving up to flank their barricades, brothers. Hold position until…’

‘…Gun nest confirmed neutralised. Nothing but wreckage now. Advancing on…’

‘…Brother-Sergeant Maxim is down, assuming command and repeating request for reinforcement against enemy counter-push at…’

‘They’re still resisting us,’ Yonnad muttered. ‘Everything they have is here. Their families. Their lives. They think we mean to do to them what they would have done to us, rob and strip and subjugate, and they will not give in to that without a fight. They don’t realise the magnitude of what they face. But they soon will.’

By this point, he was back in the strategic hub and stood before the control bank into which all of City Six’s environmental controls had been routed. A heavy set of switches jutted from the console’s right-hand panel, rubber-handled things that looked weighty and ominous to Yonnad’s eye. Perhaps it was only because he knew now what they would extinguish, should they be flipped.

Light. Air. Heat. Life.

No wonder we were ordered to remain helmed, he thought. No wonder the primarch did not want the army here.

He glanced back at Dorn, who stood unmoving as a statue at the heart of the strategic hub. The primarch had listened to the vox reports as each strategic hub was secured, as the Techmarines moved in to do their work, as the defenders of City Three launched a frantic counter-assault and were annihilated by Cataphractii battle-brothers who teleported direct from the Tribune.

Now, at last, as the final confirmation came in of readiness at City One, he took a slow, deep breath. With a thought, the primarch sent a command rune beaming out to every single Imperial military asset engaged throughout the Consus Drift.

Cease fire. Hold and await further instruction.

Yonnad could imagine the bewilderment of the Driftborn as their enemies suddenly put up their weapons. Warriors who moments before had cowered behind ragged barricades now found their attackers falling back to defensive positions of their own. Ship captains would be seizing their chance to limp away from the behemoths that surrounded them, hastening to order corpsmen and engineers in to do what they could.

Only the very foolish will believe this a reprieve, Yonnad thought. The wise will see this silence for the ominous pause that it is, and wonder what horrors come next.

They did not have to wait long to find out. Raising his head, Rogal Dorn began to speak. As he did so, his voice was carried through the Imperial comms networks to broadcast from every Space Marine vox-grille, every sequestered speaker horn and transmission emitter throughout the asteroid cities.

‘Driftborn, I am Primarch Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists Space Marine Legion,’ he began, and his voice echoed like menacing thunder through the tunnels, domes and warships of the enemy. ‘I address you on behalf of the Emperor of all mankind and I give you this one chance to surrender. Were we to press this conflict we would have to all but exterminate you before you would capitulate, and for that I honour you. But I tell you now, you will not have that chance.’

Yonnad stood before the console, breathing slowly and steadily, feeling his twin hearts thump sickly in his chest. It was not that he shrank from the righteous prosecution of the foe, for no threat to the Imperium could be permitted to endure, be it xenoform or human in nature. Yonnad would fight any battle, face any foe, and he would do it gladly. But what might come next was not battle; it was extermination.

‘I see you, who you are, what you value most,’ Dorn continued. ‘Understand me now. When I finish speaking, you will offer your immediate and unconditional surrender. You will submit to the Imperial Truth and offer your immediate compliance. If you do not do this, I will extinguish all life support systems throughout your asteroid cities. Your armies, those they fight to protect, your very civilisation, all will perish at my command.’

Capitulate, thought Yonnad, his hands hovering over the switches. In the name of whatever heathen gods you hold dear, do not doubt that my Lord Dorn will give the command. And do not doubt that I will follow it.

Yonnad felt something akin to horror at that thought. In that moment he was more deeply conflicted than he had ever been in all his long and bloody years. Not because he doubted whether he would have the will to follow his primarch’s deadly command, but because he knew that he would follow that order without a moment’s hesitation should it be given.

We are meant to be liberators, not butchers, Yonnad thought. Is it so easy for me to obey him in this without question? Should it be?

Yonnad tried to tell himself that he could do this because he recognised the threat that these people represented to the fledgling Imperium. He dismissed the notion impatiently as soon as it came; what threat could a stranded civilisation of scavenging pirates offer to the star-spanning glory of the Imperium?

Perhaps it is because I see, instead, the greater peril to Imperial morale should the Emperor’s Legiones Astartes show leniency, he thought. If we were to issue such an ultimatum and then fail to carry it out, how might that story spread? How might word of it empower those who truly do present a threat to the Emperor’s realm?

He hoped that was the case. Yet in truth, Captain Yonnad thought it likely that his obedience would come from the simple fact that his gene-sire had issued a command and, no matter its cost or consequence, his sons would see it done.

What does that say of our enlightened Imperium, or we its exemplars?

‘Do not fool yourselves that I will show compassion. Do not tell one another that it cannot be, that I would not do something so monstrous. I am an architect of humanity’s galactic destiny, and set against the interstellar unification of our entire species, your lives and those of all you hold dear are as nothing at all. Choose now, Driftborn. Surrender and become part of that magnificent destiny, or die here, now, as a people, and be forgotten amidst the airless, frozen dark.’

Dorn fell silent. Yonnad watched the seconds ticking past on his helm-chronometer. His hands hovered over the controls that would slaughter a city, his breath stilled in his chest. He felt the moment draw out, felt his hope for these people fade and somehow sensed his hope for himself fading with it.

They won’t do it. They don’t believe him. They’re going to choose death, and Terra preserve me I will give it to them.

‘They’re setting down their arms!’ came a voice over the vox, and Yonnad froze, barely daring to believe it.

‘City Three, visual confirmation of enemy capitulation,’ came another voice. ‘The Driftborn have surrendered. Repeat, the Driftborn have surrendered.’

‘City Five, here also. They have set down their arms.’

‘This is Captain Tolas of the Redemption, reporting enemy ships shrouding guns and powering down their thrusters. We have surrender in the void.’

The reports kept flooding in, but Yonnad barely heard them. He moved his hands away from the controls and brought them carefully back to his sides. At his back he sensed rather than saw Dorn nod in satisfaction then turn and sweep from the hub, his work complete.

Did he ever really doubt they would surrender? Yonnad wondered. He took a breath, then began barking out orders over the vox. Compliance had been achieved; what came next would require his full talents as an organiser and logistician to help coordinate and he threw himself into the duties gladly. Yet as he too strode from the command hub to be about his duties, Hashin Yonnad could not quite purge one lingering question from his mind.

Do we obey the primarch because we know him to be right, or do we obey simply because he is our primarch? And in the end, are those two facts truly one and the same, or are they not…?

SKJALDS

Nick Kyme

Baerelt smacks the ice from his fur-wrapped boots. It’s tough and takes three or four blows from the side of his axe before it yields.

‘We need to keep moving,’ Baerelt tells his kinsmen, cinching the cloak of pelts tighter around his shoulders. His lips are numb, his cheeks abraded.

Torvur is blowing into the cup of his hands then rubbing the palms together, trying to get some feeling back. ‘Just as soon as the ice in my veins turns back into blood.’

Ulfvye doesn’t comment. He watches the snow-choked darkness, listening to the wind for the howling of something other than the breath of the Fenrisian winter.

‘Or when we have flame to see by,’ Torvur complains, jutting his chin at Laggenuf.

Their scout is crouched in the lee of a rocky outcrop, chipping away with flint and steel, trying to coax the fire to life in his oil-swaddled torch. It flickers, barely, but the spark is snuffed by the wind.

‘Almost there…’ Laggenuf calls back, still chipping. The click and scrape of his flint is like a bell chime, lonely and desolate.

‘Hurry it up then,’ says Ulfvye, gruff and nervous. Frost clings to his bushy eyebrows, stiffening them like frozen fox tails.

‘You hear something, Ulfvye?’ asks Torvur, and goes to stand with the tall Vusslenk. The double-edged sword scrapes from its sheath as Torvur draws it. Baerelt smells the oil on its blade that keeps the weapon from sticking in the scabbard.

‘Something…’ Ulfvye replies. His eyes haven’t left the same spot in several minutes.

Baerelt follows his gaze to the same patch of darkness, out in the fathomless tundra of the Hvitir.

Torvur unslings his shield, a wooden circle wrapped in leather with a heavy knuckle-like boss. He looks eager. Afraid. The cold forgotten.

‘Laggenuf…’ says Torvur. He wants the light and doesn’t want the light, Baerelt realises. If he sees what’s out there, he can fight it but then he’ll also have to acknowledge that it is something and not just a trick of the wind. This deep, this bad a storm. Nothing sane wanders these wastes.

Well, nothing sane except four Vusslenk clansmen on the hunt.

It took a village. Just one at first. Slaughtered the inhabitants and left them steaming amidst the ice. Lying on red snow.

Then it was two villages, and then a third. The ferocity of it. The sheer speed. Its trail was baffling. Vusslenk has stockade walls and a broad river on its northern border. Hills shoulder the south, watchmen posted amongst their crags. They had offered some protection. A warning. Still, it had taken several of their kin. Slain six watchmen and another six warriors of the clan before it retreated from their spears. Baerelt’s only son. Torvur’s brothers. Laggenuf’s grandfather. Ulfvye lost his wife. He had been grim before, but now he cuts a fell figure in the ice and frost.

‘Leave the fire, Laggenuf,’ says Baerelt, unslinging his spear and standing by his clansmen.

The wind is rising.

‘Can’t hear it any more…’ murmurs Ulfvye, clutching that spear of his. A fine spear. His best, he said.

‘Hear what?’ asks Torvur, glaring at the dark from behind his shield. ‘Skitja! I can’t hear a damn thing.’

Baerelt gently lays a hand on the warrior’s shoulder, and presses a finger to his own lips as Torvur turns to regard him.

Listen, the gesture says.

The wind howls, reaching a fever pitch that sets Baerelt’s teeth on edge. He grimaces. It isn’t just the wind.

Laggenuf gives up on the torch, leaves it gathering snow behind him, mounding up like a grave. He joins Baerelt, spear held in both hands, and shares an anxious look with the veteran hunter.

It comes then, resolving through the sleet and snow. A wizened thing, it looks female, naked to the bone and grey as old ice. Straggly hair hangs across its face, though only as far as the eyes and nose. Its mouth yawns, too wide, the teeth like nubs of coal. The tongue is black and dry as cured leather.

‘Draugr…’ Torvur almost drops his shield. It slips marginally in his grasp and he has to look down a moment as he retightens the grip.

The draugr is upon him in seconds, claws raking at his hastily upheld shield, splinters flying like the sparks Laggenuf failed to ignite on his torch. Baerelt wishes they had it now, for the winter is blacker than hel ice and the wailing wind disorientating. His spear throw arcs wide, the draugr wriggling from its powerful trajectory, but at least she’s off Torvur. The hunter’s shield is badly rent. Laggenuf attacks with a thrust, two-handed to keep the foe at bay. A defensive fighter, is Laggenuf. The draugr snaps his spear haft in two. She opens her maw, the gaping chasm of her mouth stretching until a gruesome wail peals from it.

Baerelt feels his teeth shaking, his jaw clenching shut. He resists the urge to clamp his ears, and manages to draw his axe. Laggenuf falls, bright red blood flecking his hair and beard, drooling from his nose and ears. He cries out, agonised, but the wailing smothers it. The draugr sweeps down at him, limbs bending in the opposite direction as if the joints are reversed. Needle-like fangs extrude, glistening with poison saliva. One bite and Laggenuf is bound for mardrom, the pain-dream. The spear jutting from her back prevents her finishing off her prey, Ulfvye having made the throw. Any mortal thing would be dead from a throw like that, Ulfvye’s arm as thick as an iron-trunk.

It barely slows her down.

But Baerelt sees the ichor dripping and hissing as it melts the snow where it touches. She’s wounded. A wild swipe of his axe and she’s lost a hand. Another shriek fills the air, but this one is galvanising.

It can die, Baerelt reminds himself as the draugr whips around the ice storm like a tossed flake of snow, flitting here and there, wary of her prey now.

Laggenuf has rolled drunkenly to his feet. Torvur helps him and they stagger to where Laggenuf dropped the torch.

Baerelt and Ulfvye try to herd the draugr between them as she weeps and wails and curses in a language no one has spoken on Fenris in centuries. A claw strips the pelts from Baerelt’s shoulders. It’s so fast he barely sees it, though that could also be the snow in his eyes. The pelts stop her from tearing through his arm. He backs off, his axe braced in both hands, loosely gripped and ready.

Meanwhile, Ulfvye has retrieved Baerelt’s cast spear and holds it at his shoulder like a harpoon. The storm thickens, ice and snow congealing in a white miasma. She’s close. Baerelt can smell her corpse stench. Hear the click and rasp of her bones…

The wail nearly fells him and he cracks a tooth as he grimaces. Instinct makes him lash out, a broad sweep of the blade that hits something brittle and embeds itself. The draugr is screaming, thrashing at the end of Baerelt’s axe, frantically clawing. It’s all he can do to keep her at bay and stop her from ripping off his face. A spear impales her right through the breastbone, down through the other side and into the frost-bitten earth. Ulfvye roars, driving the spear with such ferocious strength that he pins her.

She’s still not dead, even when Torvur plunges his sword down her gullet and severs that black worm of a tongue.

A flare of light draws Baerelt’s attention – Laggenuf with his torch. It gutters in the wind then the oil catches and the wood burns brightly. He douses the draugr in fire, letting it flicker over her corpse-dry skin. It might as well be parchment for the way the flames devour it hungrily. Her stifled screams are the things of nightmares but they die away as she dies, slowly burned, even her skeleton reduced to ash.

Baerelt is breathing hard, belatedly aware of the cold seeping into his bones and knowing he must recover his pelts from where the draugr tore them loose. Torvur has sunk into a crouch, his sword held at arm’s length as hot ichor drips from the blade. Ulfvye is coping better than most. He has retrieved both his and Baerelt’s spear. The haft of one is scorched but still serviceable. Laggenuf lingers over the corpse, which is now a black silhouette of ash rapidly disappearing under falling snow.

‘Was that it?’ asks Torvur, not just the question but the manner in which he asks it making it obvious his taste for the hunt has ebbed considerably.

Ulfvye hawks a gob of phlegm onto the ground. ‘The beast that massacred Ilvik and Stepnir, and killed more than twenty men…’

Baerelt shakes his head. ‘That’s not it.’

Laggenuf still hasn’t moved, as if expecting the draugr to reconstitute itself and rise from the dead again. It takes Baerelt’s hand on his shoulder to rouse him from his fear.

‘Told you I was almost there,’ he says and holds up the torch to the storm.

Baerelt smiles, nods. ‘I see a path ahead.’

The others see it too.

‘And you’ll be dead before you reach it without this,’ says Ulfvye, proffering a cloak of furs. ‘Always picking up after you, eh, Baerelt?’

‘Looks like,’ Baerelt replies, gratefully taking the pelts.

Ulfvye curses as he sees Laggenuf’s broken haft on the ground. ‘We needed that spear. It’ll be harder without it.’

‘You think this was easy?’ asks Torvur, gesturing to gouges in his shield.

Ulfvye betrays the faintest hint of a smile. ‘We’re alive, aren’t we?’

They leave the ashes of the draugr behind, just another of the many ways Fenris has to kill the weak. It’s no place for the weak, for there are wolves on Fenris.

Baerelt had not thought it possible for the storm to worsen but worsen it does. They are standing at the foot of a narrow pass through the mountains, roped around the waist, one man tied to the next in train.

Laggenuf’s torch is still flickering, though much of its vigour is diminished. He has the front, hand held above his eyes to keep out the snow as he tries to see what’s ahead.

He turns, calling over his shoulder to Baerelt. ‘No way through.’

Baerelt looks back the way they came, at the winding and treacherous slope, the chasmal plummet on one side.

This is where the trail has led them. They swore to find the beast. Kill it if they could.

‘Skitja!’

He scowls and Ulfvye, who is next in line, quickly catches on.

‘A cave…’ he says, after casting about, pointing with a fur-wrapped hand. The fine spear in his other hand is more a walking staff than a weapon. It’s a poor use for such a thing but a necessary one.

Baerelt sees the cave, a little farther down and tucked in from the side of the cliff.

‘How do we know it’s empty?’ shouts Torvur, his voice muffled behind the pelts swaddling most of his face.

‘We don’t,’ answers Baerelt, ‘but you are welcome to trek back down the mountain, if you wish.’

Torvur grumbles something under his breath and heads towards the cave.

It’s dry inside the cave and mercifully sheltered from the wind. If a beast has laired here, it has not done so for some time. There are no bones, no spoor. The cave is deep enough to admit all four hunters and allow a fire. Laggenuf gathers scraps of wood, detritus blown in by the storm, and enough kindling to get it burning. He keeps the fire low, just enough to stir the blood back into the hunters’ bodies. Not enough to draw unwanted attention.

Soon, it is warm enough to pull off their cloaks of furs and wrapped pelts. The hunters crouch around the fire, watchful but glad of shelter. Frost melts, garments dry, a little meat and drink is shared between the men. A little humour returns with it.

Torvur’s eyes are sharp and bright. Young.

‘How long will it last, do you think?’ he asks.

Baerelt drags his fingers through his short black beard. He’s tending a piece of dark meat on a spit. ‘Hours, at least. Maybe even a day?’

Laggenuf pokes at the fire, sending little sparks flurrying. His beard is as wild and red as the flames. ‘Long time. Long enough for a tale or two,’ he says, ‘take our minds off the storm.’

‘And what’s out there…’ Torvur remarks. Fair-haired, less grizzled than the others, he both looks and sounds the younger. ‘Assuming it still is,’ he adds, hopefully.

Vim and vigour are just fine until one is called to use them for something dangerous, thinks Baerelt and pities the youth for his fear.

‘It’s out there,’ Ulfvye confirms. He is standing at the mouth of the cave, just out of the wind, leaning against the rock. He chews a piece of uncooked, toughened meat. One hand is on his sword pommel and his grey locks whip like kraken tendrils. His spear is leaning too, and within reach. Not for the first time, Baerelt thinks he is a grim watchman.

‘You can’t be sure, Ulfvye,’ says Torvur. ‘It could have wandered off.’

‘It wants us to find it.’

‘Perhaps, after the storm,’ Torvur ventures, as if he hasn’t just heard what Ulfvye said, ‘we should turn back?’

Ulfvye turns. He turns so sharply and so fiercely that Torvur near jumps up in fright. There’s flint in the old watchman’s gaze and that blade of his has slid two finger-widths from its scabbard.

‘Speak of your cowardice again,’ he says to Torvur, his mouth a barricade of teeth, ‘see what happens.’

Torvur thinks to speak but Baerelt holds up a hand to silence him.

‘Come…’ he says. ‘Ulfvye, sit down by the fire with us. Laggenuf,’ he turns to the red-haired hunter, ‘give us a tale then. Let us be skjalds, sharing stories.’

Torvur sits back down, wary.

Ulfvye glares but joins them, deciding he’s seen enough of what lies beyond the cave. Baerelt passes him a skewer of meat, a cup of mjod, and the old watchman’s mood thaws enough for him to be civil.

‘Takk,’ he says, and gives a shallow nod in return.

Baerelt turns to Laggenuf. ‘Well then?’

Taking a heavy draught of his mjod and wiping the spilled drink with his sleeve, Laggenuf begins. ‘Do you know how the long winter came to Fenris?’ he asks.

‘Was it the frigid reception to your inane stories?’ growls Ulfvye.

Laggenuf ignores him. ‘He is called the Russ… A legend of old Fenris. Is he friend to man, or foe? I heard tell he is a giant with skin as white as the tundra, a beard of frost and eyes like chips of ice. Look upon them,’ says Laggenuf, ‘and even the stoutest warrior shall know fear. He stalks the old places still, the wind is his voice and the great snowdrifts his breath. And he is the last of his kind, for it is said the Russ once had a wife, a child and they were snow and frost like him but that the sun did slay them. In his grief, the Russ forged a spear of ice, so long and so deadly that it did wound the sun and so forever does winter reign upon Fenris. And this is the legend of the Russ,’ Laggenuf concludes, sitting back proudly.

Torvur frowns and then wags his finger, remonstrating.

‘Close,’ he says.

Laggenuf scowls. ‘Close to what?’

‘The truth, but you have not got it right, skjald.’

‘It is the legend of the Russ,’ says Laggenuf, incredulous at being challenged.

‘Perhaps it is a legend, but it is not right,’ says Torvur. ‘My old afi, he knew of the Russ. Said he was not a creature at all, but a storm. Jata… his voice is the wind, his breath the snow, whatever. But he is the storm. He is the winter’s bite, the eternal cold. He is the last storm. An elemental. The world spirit of Fenris itself. That,’ Torvur declares triumphantly, ‘is the Russ.’

‘Skitja…’ murmurs Ulfvye, shaking his head. He wears a disdainful look, like he wants to spit.

‘What do you say, brother?’ asks Laggenuf.

Ulfvye near shouts. ‘I say it is shit! Swine’s balls! Skitja!’ He leans back, an indulgent smile creasing his old scars. ‘Pair of goat rutters,’ he says, quieter, calmer as he settles into his tale. ‘Everyone knows that Russ is neither storm nor giant, shit for brains. He is a black wolf, a vargr. He is death and judgement. He follows men through underworld paths, unseen by mortal eyes.’ Ulfvye looks around the cave theatrically, taking in the shadows. ‘He might be here… right now!’ he whispers, half hiding another smile as Torvur glances over his shoulder and even Laggenuf shuffles surreptitiously closer to the fire.

‘It is said, by those who speak the truth,’ Ulfvye continues, ‘that men will see the Russ when death is upon them, that his howl is the harbinger of endings. For if the black wolf marks your scent, your fate is assured.’ He rummages in his woollen coat, takes out a long-handled smoking pipe stuffed with angelikarot and lights it. Yellow-green smoke curls from the bole, wreathing his wizened features, the fire giving his eyes a feral cast. ‘And that,’ he says, leaning back against his pack, smoking, his feet pushed towards the flames, ‘is the story of the Russ.’

Torvur scowls, regarding Ulfvye from under downcast eyes, but says nothing. Laggenuf grumbles, and pokes at the fire. It is fading, the hunters sharing the last of its heat. They will not light another. As it turns to embers, their last glow lighting the cave, Baerelt speaks.

‘My father told me he was a man, like us.’

‘That is not much of a legend,’ remarks Laggenuf, ‘or a story for that matter.’

‘Perhaps it is not storms or giants or dread wolves, but I believe it has a greater ring of truth. Russ was a king, a clan lord, though none know of his provenance or why he is no longer seen on Fenris.’

‘Maybe he is dead?’ suggests Torvur, ‘slain by his rivals or by wolves.’

‘It is said that Russ is a wolf,’ Baerelt continues. ‘Not some lycanthrope or changeling, but rather in spirit. Feral, proud, fearless.’

‘And no doubt never bested in battle,’ says Ulfvye. ‘A peerless warrior and a just king?’

‘So my father told me,’ answers Baerelt.

‘Bah!’ sneers Ulfvye and gestures to Torvur. ‘Your story is no better than that clod’s. Fine kings and noble warriors… Skitja!’ He rolls onto his side, his pack a pillow for his head, and promptly begins to snore.

Laggenuf is coaxing the last scraps of warmth from the fire’s embers. ‘At least you could have made it good, Baerelt. Some skjald you make.’ He sounds disappointed as he reaches for a blanket.

‘Just for that,’ says Torvur, getting wrapped up again in his furs, ‘you can take first watch.’

Baerelt smiles as his companions go to their rest. He doesn’t mind the silence and the solitude.

They’re right, he thinks to himself as he sits facing the mouth of the cave, his eyes on the white darkness before him as the wind howls and winter vents her fury, I am not much of a skjald.

They find the next village just after noon. By morning the pass had thawed enough for the hunters to reach the uplands beyond. The landscape is flat, and the village’s name is Onka, or rather it was.

Devastation has torn through it, flattening huts and leaving bodies in its wake. If Baerelt did not know any better, he would have said raiders had done this but even raiders take cattle or prisoners. In Onka nothing has been spared. Man and beast alike lie butchered, torn apart like offal. Blood drowns what remains, a great lake of it edged with glistening hoarfrost in the heart of the village. Huge splinters from the sundered huts stick up from the red like rotten bones.

A man has crawled several feet from the slaughter. Ulfvye drops to his haunches to inspect gouges in the man’s back that have torn through leather and ringmail like sail cloth. A broken shield lies nearby, flung from the dead man’s grasp. A shattered sword is clenched in his frozen-corpse fingers.

‘Hel…’ murmurs Ulfvye as he turns the dead man onto his back and they all see the way terror has contorted his face.

He is not alone. Others are armed too, several strewn about the perimeter. Some are missing limbs. Heads. More still have been gorged upon, the horror slowly unravelling the longer the hunters look. Glistening entrails piled alongside rope, one barely distinguishable from the other. Fingers gnawed upon. A foot without its boot, without its leg.

‘This one has been split open,’ offers Laggenuf, standing a metre away from Ulfvye, ‘liver, stomach, heart, lungs… all gone. Eaten.’

Somewhere in the background, Torvur is violently sick.

Ulfvye has barely moved but to turn the man over. He observes, measures, concludes.

‘They were ready for it,’ he says in the end. ‘See how the warriors made a line?’ He gestures to the dead, to their broken, mutilated forms, but Baerelt sees it in their arrangement.

The air reeks of cold copper and salt sweat.

‘A shield wall,’ he utters.

Ulfvye nods. ‘And it did them no good. Must be twenty warriors here… bondsmen, shield maidens, huscarls.’

‘We should turn back,’ says Torvur, wiping the bile from his mouth.

Baerelt doesn’t meet his gaze. ‘We cannot.’

‘It is maleficarum,’ Torvur whispers, as if scared to say the word aloud. ‘Onka, Stepnir… how did it slaughter so many, so quickly? Only a baleful spirit could do such a thing.’

Ulfvye stands and faces the young hunter.

‘Your brothers died to this beast. Laggenuf’s grandfather. Baerelt’s wife…’ he says, before rasping, his voice thick with grief, ‘My own son…’

Torvur has tears in his eyes. He wants to run.

Ulfvye grips him hard by the shoulder, old fingers digging in like claws and making the young hunter wince.

‘Our kin…’ utters the watchman. ‘It is no spirit, you fool. It is flesh and blood. And death. And we have to face it or it will keep on killing until there’s nothing left to kill.’

‘I’m afraid,’ Torvur replies, and bows his head. Shamed.

Ulfvye’s voice softens but not so much it loses its edge. ‘You think I’m not?’ He gestures to the others. ‘That Laggenuf is not? And Baerelt?’ The others look on, their silence answering for them, so Ulfvye continues. ‘This is our fate, Torvur. Our thread is drawn. It cannot be unmade or pulled anew. A man has his wyrd and that is all there is to it,’ he says firmly but not unkindly. Perhaps he believes what Torvur said, that the beast is no natural thing but something else, some old monster, many times worse than the draugr. An eater of men, flesh and soul. Some fell spirit.

‘You could flee,’ says Ulfvye, ‘but your wyrd would find you all the same.’

‘I don’t want to die out here,’ Torvur confesses in a small voice. ‘Not to some nameless horror of the Hvitir.’

A metre away, Laggenuf makes a warding sign with his hands.

Baerelt’s jaw clenches.

Ulfvye looks forbidding as the shadows play across his wizened face. ‘And yet death will claim you anyway.’

A cold breeze stirs, bringing with it a scent that makes Baerelt’s nose prickle. He sniffs, scowls. Laggenuf has already turned, his hunting bow in hand, his instincts sharper than most. The bow is for game, not monsters, but he’s forced to use it to defend himself now that his spear is gone. He sinks low, into a crouch. Nocks an arrow. His eyes flick to Baerelt, who slowly draws his axe.

There is something alive, deeper in the village. The scent of sweat and animal musk thickens the air, carried on the breeze.

Ulfvye puts a gnarled finger to his lips, spear held ready, and urges the others to advance.

They circle around where they caught the creature’s scent: Baerelt goes with Laggenuf to the left, whilst Ulfvye and Torvur range right. More bodies are strewn further in, not fighters but children and old folk. Rent and gored just the same. Flesh is flesh to the belly of the beast.

A great hall lies at the heart of the village, the doors broken open and reduced to splinters. Across its threshold the shadows deepen, stretching like long, thin fingers. Half the roof has fallen in, a profusion of tumbled straw and wood. It looks burned, as if it were afire at some point. Baerelt glances down at small bones that crunch underfoot. He’s relieved when he hears Laggenuf’s muttered wardings against maleficarum behind him.

He doesn’t speak aloud. Neither of them do. His breathing is a bellows pull, heaving in his chest. He tries to stay calm, but his hammering heart won’t let him. It feels hot in the great hall like warm breath, though the hearth fire is cold and dead like everything else. Grey light spills in from somewhere other than the broken roof. A second doorway, also smashed, stands opposite the first. It’s a gaping arch of stone, shards of shattered wood jutting from it like rough spears. It puts Baerelt in mind of a toothed maw.

Ulfvye and Torvur edge through the second doorway, the old watchman taking the lead, only looking back to scowl at the youth as he snags his jerkin on a large splinter and lets out a yelp of pain.

It’s in here. Baerelt can feel it. The great hall is large and cluttered with debris. Plenty of places to hide, but he doubts very much it’s hiding. A lair, he thinks…

Statues of old gods, the deities of Fenris, line the hall. Armour and pelts fashioned in wood. Blood-flecked, chipped. Two have fallen, one onto its face, the head broken off as if having rolled from the executioner’s block. The other is shorter, fallen from its plinth. It takes Baerelt a moment to realise the second statue is not a statue at all.

‘Skitja!’ Laggenuf looses an arrow, fingers slipping in fright as the huge thing rises from a crouch before him then… It plucks the shaft from the air. Ulfvye falters; his spear is aloft and over his shoulder but he doesn’t throw it.

Torvur stays his ground but goes no further. Baerelt can see in his eyes that the fair-haired youth is close to bolting. He tries to urge him not to. Hold fast, he thinks, the words echoing desperately in his mind, and not just for Torvur. The axe feels slick in his grasp, like there’s oil on the haft. It’s not oil, it’s fear-sweat as he faces down the creature.

It towers over the hunters, muscular body shining like dark marble. Thick fur swathes its head and shoulders. Its eyes are bright and sharp like cut amber, the pupils so large and wide that Baerelt knows it must see as clear as day in the dingy hall. See them. Smell them.

Hot breath ghosts the air, like thin smoke pluming from its mouth. Fangs glisten. The mouth curves, curling into a feral grin as it regards the hunters.

‘Here…’ it says, tossing the snatched arrow back to Laggenuf, ‘loosed by mistake, I think, Fenryka.’

Baerelt is struck by the depth of its voice and the fact it uses language at all.

The feral grin deepens and there’s threat in it, masked behind that humour. ‘At least I hope it was.’

It stoops to retrieve a huge pelt, draping it across its massive frame. And as the light touches it, Baerelt realises it’s not a beast, at least not the one they seek; it’s a man. A huge man.

‘It’s fled, or rather moved on,’ says the man.

A massive axe sits embedded in the hall floor. An old weapon, master-forged and wrought by an artisan. It looks stout, the haft smooth and well worn. The runes on the blade briefly flicker like captured fire. Like star fire. It must be as long as a man, and twice as thick.

The man grips the haft and wrenches it loose with a desultory jerk of his wrist.

‘You can lower your weapons, Fenryka. Unless you do wish to fight…’ It brandishes the axe. ‘It would be over quickly.’

Torvur takes a backward step. Ulfvye’s knuckles are white and his arm is shaking as he struggles to keep his spear raised.

‘What are you?’ rasps Baerelt. As he lowers his axe, the others follow his lead.

‘Ah, so you can speak…’

An icy fist seizes Baerelt’s chest as the man’s gaze falls upon him. It seems to measure him, gauge his worth, and in those few seconds he hopes to all the gods that he isn’t found wanting. He turns away, about to move on.

‘Are you jotun?’ asks Laggenuf, finding his courage and his tongue.

‘A giant?’ The man stops and laughs, loudly, his bellow echoing around the great hall. Outside, carrion crows scatter. Then he grows more serious, as if actually contemplating whether he is or isn’t. In the end he decides, ‘I suppose I am. Of sorts. Jotun.’

‘Are you from a tribe?’ asks Laggenuf, his timbre a little higher-pitched than usual.

‘A great tribe.’

Ulfvye steps forward, having regained his composure. ‘You hunt the beast…’ he declares boldly. ‘We also hunt it.’

Jotun turns his fierce gaze on Ulfvye, and Baerelt sees the old watchman tremble despite all his vast experience.

‘Go home,’ Jotun tells them, turning away again and stomping through the shadowy hall. ‘Back to your kin.’

Baerelt steps into Jotun’s path. His breath almost catches but anger pushes out the words for him.

‘Our kin are dead. We want to kill it. Avenge them.’

Jotun glares at him for what feels like ages but in fact is only seconds. The tension in the hall is thick as hoarfrost.

‘Then hunt with me, and we shall see it done. You’ll have your vengeance.’

Ulfvye calls out from the other side. ‘Its spoor ends here. I saw no tracks. Nothing. The snow has covered it. How will we find the beast?’

Jotun smiles, and it’s a deeply unsettling expression in the circumstances. ‘We follow the wolves.’

Baerelt hears the howling before he sees them. Onka is far behind, lost to the thickening drifts spilling off the high mountains as they track further into the uplands. The Hvitir is somewhere below, hidden by banks of iron-grey cloud that promise sleet. Ahead are the slow, padding silhouettes of beasts. The herravargr, a pair of grey wolves. Even from distance, with the flicking tongue of Laggenuf’s torch offering its light, Baerelt has never seen wolves this large. They are monstrous, but they are misplaced out on the rocky scarp.

‘Something has driven them out,’ says Ulfvye, spear clenched to his chest.

Follow the wolves. The words return to Baerelt as a pair becomes four, becomes six, an encircling pack that surrounds the hunters on the sparse plateau. No vantage, no place to hide or defend.

The howling deepens, turns into a united growl that suggests hunger, the killing urge.

‘Make a circle,’ barks Baerelt, ushering Torvur around and pushing Laggenuf into position.

The herravargr are wary, and loiter at the edge of Laggenuf’s torchlight. But it’s not the fire that’s keeping them at bay, it’s Jotun. He is ahead of the hunters and not within their circle. They only caught up to him because he had stopped to read the spoor of the wolves. He had followed it all the way from the village. Or perhaps he could scent them. Baerelt cannot tell, he is too exhausted. And now he must fight.

Jotun has drawn his axe, a sickle smile of a blade catching the fire’s shimmer and making it dazzle along the metal.

‘Back to back, Fenryka…’ he tells the hunters, with nary a sideways glance. His eyes are on the grey wolves. Perhaps they recognise a kindred spirit, thinks Baerelt as the circle of hunters shuffles this way and that, as the predators slither and slink around them.

The largest beast has a mane of pure white hair running down its back, and snarls a challenge.

Jotun snarls back. And the herravargr attack.

Four, including white mane, leap for Jotun together and he is lost to a flurry of fur, fang and claw. The axe rises, falls. A spray paints the icy bluff dark red. A plaintive yelp echoes.

Baerelt loses sight of the battle after that. The other two herravargr come for the hunters. Ulfvye thrusts with his spear as Laggenuf flails with sword and flame. Torvur cries out, near mad with terror as a beast rakes his shield. That redoubtable shield, half split but still clinging on. He stabs, thick hide turning the blade, a glancing blow that skids harmlessly across a grey wolf’s pelt. A second lunges for Ulfvye, batting the spear tip aside with a huge paw, teeth bared until Laggenuf’s flame sears its snout. The wolf recoils, snarls. Ulfvye’s spear impales air. The first comes again, a blur of teeth and claw. Baerelt grips Torvur’s shoulder, holding the hunter steady but keeping Torvur’s shield facing the wolves. A claw tears new furrows in the abused leather and wood. Baerelt catches it with his blade, hacks off a hooked claw nail with his opportunistic slash. Red beads scatter upon the snow-frosted scarp like little rubies.

Ulfvye cries out, the first wolf upon them again. He falls back, spear extended like a banner pole, carrying the herravargr as it arcs over his head and scatters the hunters’ defensive circle. It’s wounded but deadlier now. The spear still impaled in its flank, it crushes Ulfvye’s arm in its jaws and throws him bodily across the bluff. Laggenuf is struck by the old watchman’s trailing leg and drops the torch. The fire snuffs out, doused by the ice in an eye-blink. Darkness descends, a disorientating shroud. Baerelt heaves his axe into the grey wolf’s skull. It mewls, now dying, whimpering. The second wolf hits him, knocks him skidding across the slope, scattering Torvur too. His shield skips away, a skimmed stone flung over the edge to be swallowed by the iron-grey cloud.

An arrow finds its mark in the second wolf, in its hindquarters. A second shaft scrapes its ribs, drawing blood.

Baerelt is dazed, numbed. Ulfvye has not risen. Torvur is staggering, sword loose and wandering like a diviner in his punch-drunk grip. Laggenuf faces down the wolf. A last arrow nocked to his bow. A gash jags across his forehead and the blood slowly runs down his face.

The herravargr emits a low growl, rising in pitch to an anguished whine at its dead mate now slumped upon the scarp.

Baerelt’s booted feet dangle over the edge of the cliff, right where Torvur’s shield went. He scrambles, reaching for the axe he dropped, reaching for Laggenuf. But it’s already too late.

The arrow flies in tandem with the wolf, but the shaft skitters away, the aim poor, the hide too thick.

Laggenuf seems to sag, eyes closing as he accepts his fate…

A slab of muscled meat intercepts the death lunge. Ribs break audibly, a spine snaps as the grey wolf is carried away in a steel-sprung grip. Baerelt has only just climbed to his feet when he sees Jotun and wolf, locked in an embrace. A savage twist, as the giant stares calmly into its eyes, and it’s all over.

He murmurs something, Jotun. It takes Baerelt a moment to realise the words are not for him but for the dead wolf. The rest of the pack lies slumped in the shadows at the edge of the ice scarp. They almost appear as if they’re sleeping, for he hasn’t butchered them.

Blood-flecked, steam rising off his bare skin, Jotun turns his stormy gaze to Baerelt.

‘Follow the wolves…’ he says, and gestures with a crimson-slick axe to the lowlands beyond the bluff. Iron-grey cloud parts just enough for a forest to reveal itself a few kilometres below. ‘They should never have been out here. It is not their place.’

‘I do not think,’ says Baerelt, breathless but alive, ‘that it is our place either.’

Jotun replies with a sad smile, turns and moves on.

The descent into the lowlands, over the ice scarp, is slow and hard. Ulfvye lives but his left arm is a ruin, flesh torn but hastily bandaged, the bones likely broken and held together by an improvised splint.

The old watchman doesn’t complain but all can see his pain in the grim set of his jaw, his ever-paling skin. Baerelt calls a halt about halfway down the slope, where the foliage has thickened and the sleet hits them like knives of ice.

‘He needs rest,’ he calls to Jotun, who has ranged ahead of the others. The giant turns, grunts something and then rejoins the hunters.

They take shelter, spare cloaks strung over a copse of trees to keep out the worst of the wind and the sleet. It’s already laden with slow-melting snow, the roof bulging as Laggenuf manages to stir a fire to life.

None speak. They stare into the wan flames, all except Ulfvye, whose eyes are closed.

Wrapped up in cloaks and pelts, the hunters huddle close and contemplate what might remain of their journey.

‘Do you not feel the cold, Jotun?’ asks Laggenuf, a slight shiver in his words as he breaks the solemn silence.

Wild eyes glint like gemstones from the edge of the firelight, glittering in penumbral darkness.

‘Not as you do,’ says Jotun in a wet leopard growl.

‘Will you join us though,’ presses Laggenuf, ‘here by the fire? If you don’t need to share its warmth then perhaps you would share a story as each of us have?’

Jotun’s eyes narrow, curious then amused. He rises from a crouched position and sits by the fire. Up close, he is immense and the stillness of him feels temporary, just a prelude to violence. His skin is leathern but almost numinous and a flaxen mane spills across his shoulders. A canine stink pervades but does nothing to lessen the aura of power. And there is something else too, something unidentifiable. Oil, metal, frost? Baerelt cannot tell which.

‘You are skjalds as well as hunters,’ remarks Jotun, exuding a little warmth in response to Laggenuf’s bonhomie. ‘What story would you have me tell, Fenryka?’

‘What about one of the Russ?’ says Laggenuf, handing Jotun a cup of mjod. ‘Have you heard of him?’

Jotun nods as he takes the proffered cup, and Baerelt swears he detects a slight curling at the edges of his mouth as the giant licks his lips.

‘Aye, I have heard of him.’

Torvur speaks up, the first words he has uttered since they set up camp, the first time in a while his eyes have not been far away, rooted in fear.

‘Laggenuf says he is a frost giant, as big as a mountain.’

‘I never said he was as big as a mountain!’

‘And Torvur here believes he is a storm, the fiercest of elementals,’ remarks Baerelt.

Jotun laughs, deep and unearthly. The hunters laugh back nervously.

‘And no doubt this one,’ he gestures to Ulfvye with his empty cup, ‘tells a tale of a black wolf, the largest ever known to Fenris.’

The hunters pause, stunned. Ulfvye still sleeps fitfully, so Laggenuf answers for him.

‘Yes,’ he says, bemused and a little awestruck, ‘that is exactly right.’

‘All false,’ says Jotun with just a hint of iron in his eyes. ‘The Russ, he was raised by wolves.’ He holds up two thick fingers. ‘And had two wolf brothers. He did not know the world of man, but he came to know it. To know their iron and stone. One harsh winter, when food was scarce, Russ and his kin raided a village so they could eat. But the villagers were starving too. They fought off the wolves, but Russ protected his brothers so fiercely that none fell to spears or swords. They fled, back into the wild, but the king of these lands sent warriors after the wolves. He harried them, hunted them and killed the pack.

‘Russ, he was struck many times by arrows and spears but refused to die. Weakened, he was bound in thick ropes and brought before the king. But upon seeing a man and not a wolf before him, the king spared Russ. He took him in and gave him his name, Leman, and made him a part of his tribe. From the king and his people, he learned the ways of axe and spear, of man’s world. He never forgot the wolves or the wildness of Fenris, for each was a part of him.

‘When the king died, as all kings must eventually, Russ assumed his throne and his mantle. And there he remained, a great king, until one day a stranger came to his lands proclaiming himself the “Master of Mankind”.’ He laughs, though there is no humour in it. ‘Can you imagine that? Claiming such a thing? Disdainful of the stranger’s arrogance, Russ challenged him and said he would not bow down to any master.’ Jotun’s eyes flash. ‘He bested the stranger in all but one contest. Thus defeated, Russ saw the truth in the stranger’s words, that He was indeed the Master of Mankind, and swore to serve Him loyally until the universe grew cold. And so Russ learned again, of worlds beyond Fenris, and of the far reaches of the stars. And sometimes he travels those stars, fighting for this master, but he has never forgotten Fenris and returns to her often for the winter, for the wolves. To remember who he was and from where he came.’

A hush descends…

Until Laggenuf bursts out laughing. The others follow, emboldened by his recklessness. Then Jotun laughs, and it is a deep and booming mirth that echoes around the lowlands like thunder.

‘Aye,’ he says, stilling his chuckling, ‘it is a far-fetched tale.’

‘Very imaginative…’ says Laggenuf, wiping tears from his eyes. He stretches and yawns, scratching at his armpit as he settles down to his bedroll.

Torvur nods awkwardly, the old fear returned, as he goes to his rest too.

It leaves only Baerelt, as Ulfvye has not stirred since they made camp. He’s rebinding the leather haft of his axe that came loose during the skirmish against the herravargr. It’s painstaking work and as he silently goes about his task, he watches Jotun from the corner of his eye. The giant has retreated from the fire again, as if a part of him is wary of its light, and sits alone, lost to his thoughts.

‘What was your tale, skjald?’ he asks, and Baerelt looks up, into those feral eyes. He sees the wildness there but also something more, something… noble.

‘I said that Russ was a king with the heart of a wolf.’

Jotun sniffs, and scratches his nose.

‘Not as fantastical as your kinsmen… What makes you think that?’

‘My father.’

‘Ah… Fathers and their sons, eh? Never simple. My own father told me stories, great stories, fantastical stories, of my brothers and their ways, of my place in the world.’

‘Are your brothers much like you?’

‘In some ways they are, in others… very much not. But I love them, despite our differences, as all siblings should love each other. Do you have brothers, skjald?’

Baerelt shakes his head. ‘No, it was just my father and I. My mother, I barely knew. She died when I was young.’

‘And what of your father then, does he live still? You speak of him like he is dead. Did the beast slay him?’

‘He died, yes, but three winters past. I lost my son to the beast. His name was Juvik.’

‘I’m sorry, skjald. That’s no fate.’

Baerelt nods as if that makes it any easier or more fathomable. ‘Do you have children, Jotun?’ he asks, ‘A wife?’

At this Jotun gives a shrug of the shoulders. ‘No wife, but I have sons.’

Having stumbled upon some common ground, Baerelt edges closer, ‘Two, three?’

Another smile, this one half-hidden but not very well. ‘More than three,’ Jotun says, and there’s a glint of something in his eyes that Baerelt mistakes for rakish pride.

‘And you love them?’

‘Some more than others, but, yes, I love them.’

Baerelt’s expression hardens then, day turning into night. ‘So you know why I must hunt this beast and kill it.’

‘I do,’ says Jotun. ‘I would do anything for my sons. Anything. We want so much for them, our sons. Don’t we? In them, we see ourselves reflected. Our virtues magnified, our flaws hidden. So much is bound up in them. So much,’ he says, almost melancholy. Then he suddenly leans forwards and the firelight catches his face, haunting it with shadows. He looks almost lupine in the half-light. Predatory. ‘Tell me though… Did you see it? The beast?’

‘I only heard it. I was too late to face the creature.’

‘But it was a creature?’

‘I can only assume.’

‘What did it sound like? Was it…’ he pauses, as if carefully measuring his words, ‘like a wolf?’

‘Like no wolf I have ever heard. I know of no beast or creature like it. It sounded… unnatural.’

Jotun retreats back to the shadows, as if satisfied with the hunter’s answers but not alluding to why. He seems deep in thought and as he muses on some dark imagining, Baerelt is struck by Jotun’s sheer otherness.

‘You’re not looking for the beast, are you?’ he realises suddenly.

Jotun stares back, as if deciding what to say. In the end he simply utters, ‘No, but I will.’

They say nothing further and after the haft of his axe is bound tightly in leather, Baerelt tries to stay up and keep a watch. On the dark beyond the camp or on Jotun, he can’t say. Fatigue takes him eventually, the lids of his eyes drooping like lowered shields. And through the last cracks of fading firelight, he thinks he begins to dream and sees Jotun watching him intently. But it’s not the figure of a man at the fire’s edge, but rather that of a huge black wolf…

The outskirts of the forest loom like an unspoken threat, a place of arboreal shadows and primordial gloom. It is old, this place, and thick with briars and firs. Bracken snaps underfoot, scaring off some distant rooks roosting in the dense canopy above. They skitter off, their bird cries like human screams.

A thin mist carpets the forest floor, hiding its debris and spoor but not the man slumped against a deep bole. At least, Baerelt thinks it is a man. He is hirsute along the arms, chest and back, and naked from the waist up. His face and scalp is festooned with thick, dark hair. His chest is torn, the savage rips in his flesh like ghastly red smiles. He’s barely breathing, and as his heavy-lidded eyes flicker they flash the same amber hue as Jotun’s.

The giant crouches by the dying man’s side, a hand laid gently on the slow rise and fall of his body to calm him.

‘What manner of creature is this?’ rasps Ulfvye, and Baerelt hears the frailty in his voice.

The old watchman had risen stiffly at dawn with the others, his face as pale as winter ice. He took a little broth, that which Laggenuf had prepared, but nothing else, eager to be back to the hunt. He stands by Baerelt’s side, leaning heavily on his spear.

‘It’s an ulfwerener,’ says Laggenuf in a hushed whisper. ‘Half man, half wolf…’

‘The beast that massacred Onka…?’ murmurs Torvur.

‘This isn’t what ripped through Onka,’ says Ulfvye, ‘or Ilvik and Stepnir.’

‘Then what is it?’ asks Torvur in a sharp hiss.

‘My kin,’ growls Jotun to the hunters ringed around him, apparently having heard every word. They stand a few paces back, wary of the hirsute man that Jotun claims as kin. Laggenuf and Torvur exchange an uneasy glance. Baerelt notes the ulfwerener’s hands, the clawed fingers thick with blood. Tufts of hair jut from under the nails.

‘He fought it,’ he realises, ‘the beast that slaughtered Onka and the others.’

Jotun nods. ‘It’s close,’ he declares, rising, ‘and wounded.’

Laggenuf frowns, his gaze unmoving from the ulfwerener. ‘How can you be certain of that? There are many creatures in the forest.’

‘Not that can do this. Besides…’ Jotun growls, ‘I can smell its blood.’

‘What should we do with him?’ asks Baerelt, gesturing to the grievously wounded ulfwerener.

Jotun unhitches his axe. ‘Nothing. Either he lives or he dies. That is for his wyrd to decide. I cannot make or unmake his fate.’

‘You would just leave him like this?’

‘Stay, leave, it doesn’t matter in the end,’ says Jotun, not answering the question, but his gaze lingering on the stricken ulfwerener before he stalks off into the darkness, the hunters forgotten.

‘Should we go after him?’ asks Laggenuf, wavering at the threshold of action, nervous at the half-dead lycanthrope in their midst.

‘In there…?’ asks Torvur, fearful.

‘It’s a forest, Torvur. You have seen a forest before,’ utters Ulfvye. The old watchman is already moving, stiffly, his spear a crutch in his bone-white hands. ‘You can’t escape your wyrd,’ he calls, slowly disappearing into the foliage, ‘none of us can.’

Baerelt moves to go after him but Torvur’s hand on his arm stops him.

‘Nothing good lives in there, Baerelt,’ he says. ‘Can’t you feel it? A wrongness…’

Baerelt feels it right enough. He feels it in the cold sweat on the back of his neck, the sick dread in his gut, the prickling of his skin like little disquieting sparks of fear.

‘Let me go, Torvur. We made oaths, our wyrd is spun, the thread made.’

‘We should return to Vusslenk,’ says Torvur.

‘And do what, exactly?’ Baerelt snaps. ‘Cower in our beds, hide behind our walls and hope the beast is slain? Is that it?’

‘Jotun and ulfwerener… monsters and myths, Baerelt,’ says Torvur. ‘It is not the realm of men. We have no place in it.’

‘And yet here we are. We do not get to choose, Torvur. I have no wish to be out here in this godsforsaken forest, charging into darkness, but I will do it because I swore to do it and when there are gods and monsters abroad, when our worlds are no longer separate, what has any man really got but his oath?’

Torvur lets him go, but shakes his head.

Laggenuf goes after him as he heads back up the slope before Baerelt calls him off.

‘Let him be, Laggenuf.’

For a moment Laggenuf looks like he might follow, but then he nods and he and Baerelt plunge into the forest gloom.

They find Ulfvye leaning against the trunk of a thick tree. His spear appears to prop him up on the opposite side, and he seems to be staring at something in the darkness.

Baerelt slows to draw his axe. He had cleaned the blade when he’d rethreaded the haft, and it glints in the hazy shafts that pierce the thick arboreal firmament.

‘Ulfvye…’ he hisses, wondering how he will pick up Jotun’s trail once the hunters are reunited, but the old watchman doesn’t respond. It’s darker here in the heart of the forest, and the soft chirruping of its fauna has faded to an abject and unsettling silence. A breath held, but for what?

Baerelt slowly edges towards Ulfvye, his gaze roaming the shadows for any sign of movement, any betrayal of a nearby presence. When he’s close enough, he reaches for the old watchman.

‘What is it, old man?’ he asks. ‘What have you–’

Ulfvye slides against the tree, his legs collapsing the moment a little pressure is placed upon him. Eyes grey as flint and just as dead stare out. Dried blood has seeped from under his tunic, his wounding more serious than any of them realised.

‘Laggenuf,’ he says, ‘it’s Ulfvye, he’s…’

As Baerelt casts a glance over his shoulder, he sees Laggenuf bolting through the forest the opposite way. The sight of the dead watchman has broken him.

Baerelt considers following him, heeding Torvur’s urging and heading back to Vusslenk. A roar from deep in the forest hardens his resolve. He has heard it before. At Vusslenk, echoing above the screaming, then haunting his dreams with the ululating of the bereaved. It had taken Stepnir and Ilvik and Onka, slaughtering more than eighty. And now he thinks on it, alone, as that roar shakes the forest in its primitive fury, Baerelt cannot conceive of how it managed such a feat. Its meandering spoor, the sheer speed and ferocity of its kills… Impossible. Unless it is a supernatural thing after all, some revenant creature birthed into the realm of man. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters now. Gently laying Ulfvye’s body against the tree, he closes the old watchman’s eyes and takes up his spear. Ulfvye has left it for him, his finest spear. Baerelt is determined to honour it with the hunter’s gift. A kill.

The roar echoes again, deep and booming like the crashing of waves or the bellow of a storm wind. Leaves shake as the forest recoils.

Heart thudding like arrows hitting a shield, Baerelt sets off after the sound. His axe is sheathed, the spear held high up the haft and in one hand as he ploughs through bracken-threaded darkness. He’s bleeding when he emerges on the other side, tiny gashes in his flesh as he stands breathless in a gloomy clearing. What he sees defies belief.

It is huge. A monstrous, colossal thing standing legs astride and upon its hindquarters as it faces off against Jotun. The giant is bleeding too, and his axe lies far away, smashed from his grasp and embedded in the earth.

His opponent has the rough shape of a bear, only far larger. A patchwork of saurian scales litter its back and shoulders. Thorny antlers sharper than swords and longer than Baerelt’s borrowed spear protrude from its sloping brow. It has claws, and its muscular body is swathed in a thick hide the colour of dark ash. It bleeds too, and emits an angry roar from its flat-snouted mouth as it bears down on Jotun.

A second roar joins the first, a little farther off, and Baerelt understands at last as he sees the beast’s mate burst through the forest wall. Not a spirit… a pair.

Jotun backs up a step, glances to his axe then back to his foes.

The male charges, the one Jotun has already bloodied. The beast collapses onto all fours, legs pounding the earth, shaking it. Jotun jumps aside before he is crushed, then lunges back as the beast barrels past, seizing the razored antlers. Blood oozes down Jotun’s wrists but he holds on, twisting and pushing, veins bulging like corded rope. The strain is evident in the flush of his skin and the grunt of effort that follows as he wrenches the beast down.

The female is on him before he can finish the task, a claw swipe opening up Jotun’s shoulder to the bone. He cries out but holds on still, pulling at the thrashing male and keeping it prone as he twists. He barely evades another swipe, a glancing blow shredding his cheek and turning it red.

Then Baerelt is running, thought and action untethered as instinct takes over. He turns his headlong dash into a charge and throw, using his momentum to cast Ulfvye’s spear as hard as he can. It strikes the female, the finest cast he’s ever made, sinking a foot deep into her shoulder blade and tearing an agonised bellow from her malformed snout.

She turns, searching for the gnat that has bitten her, and finds Baerelt unslinging his axe and preparing to die.

Jotun cannot intervene. He wrestles the male, the bucking becoming more violent and desperate the further he turns the neck.

The female comes for Baerelt, her mate forgotten in the red haze of anger. She charges, head down, not with antlers but a thick plate of bony nubs that will smash the hunter into jelly. Baerelt readies his axe in the seconds he has left. He hopes his sacrifice is not in vain. He hears howling, just on the edge of the breeze and wonders if it is a presage of the afterlife.

He says a prayer to the gods, and promises his son that he will see him soon.

Inevitability closes, a hurricane of tooth and claw smothering the light behind fur and sweat and wrath. Baerelt’s head is thick with it, a cloying, dizzying stench. His axe is rising, slow as glacial ice. The beast’s eyes swallow him, an infinity of blackness and hate.

My boy… Soon, Juvik…

She staggers, hit in the side by something strong enough to throw off her balance. She pulls up, her charge faltering and wild, her bowed, bone-plated head ploughing a deep furrow in the earth. Lightning cracks, a storm that was building, now breaking. A ragged silhouette stands outlined. As the flare fades, the ulfwerener is revealed. Half-healed, half-dead, yet he fights. He leaps onto the female’s back as she is rising, slashing and biting. Baerelt attacks, swinging in with his axe. He hacks at fur, at bone plate. He cuts and swipes until his arms burn. A wild swing catches him and he’s flying, his weapon spinning away before a battering ram punches the air from his chest and he’s gasping on the ground.

Blearily, he rises, stumbling. She’s bleeding, dying, ripped open and all her defiance spilling red across the clearing. The ulfwerener is in her jaws, slowly being crushed, his death screams an awful refrain to the storm’s thunder. He’s torn in two, bone sheared, legs and body separated, and she throws both halves aside like rotten meat. A bleat escapes her ruddy maw. Her fur glistens with fever sweat. She heaves her bulk towards Baerelt, who’s on his feet again, the upper half of Ulfvye’s broken spear in his hand.

He doesn’t speak. He hasn’t the breath. He clutches the spear like a thrusting dagger and decides to go for the eye.

She takes another pace, then another, every effort laboured, the blood from her wounds sheeting. Then she jerks, hard, turns and slumps dead. A war axe juts from her back. The runes upon its blade flare in a sudden crack of lightning.

The male is dead too, his neck snapped. As Jotun stands over the female’s corpse, he wrenches the axe loose and holds it aloft.

Baerelt knows then. He sees but he is still unprepared for the revelation.

‘Brave…’ says Jotun, staring sadly at the dead ulfwerener, ‘so very brave.’

‘I’m sorry,’ rasps Baerelt, his voice trembling.

‘He died in battle, fighting for his king,’ says Jotun, turning to face the hunter. ‘What better death is there? But I shall mourn him all the same.’

‘King…’ utters Baerelt.

Jotun does not reply. Instead he looks up into the black bruised sky, and Baerelt realises that not all the thunder is coming from the storm. As he follows the giant’s gaze, a shape begins to resolve.

At first he thinks it a giant roc, a great hunting bird of prey. But the bird’s wings have the firmness of iron. They are painted slate grey. Sigils like those on the shields of his clan colour the hull and Baerelt realises it’s not a bird, it’s a boat. One that sails the skies.

The boat touches down in a whirlwind, dirt and forest detritus sent spinning in its powerful, noisy wake. The roar of it fades, settling into a low purr like that of a sleeping predator. A hatch opens and two tall armoured warriors step forth, one in black and festooned with bone fetishes; the other in grey, a broad wolf pelt draped across his shoulders. They are huge, formidable but they pale next to Jotun.

And kneel before him.

Baerelt cannot understand their words, but he knows fealty when he sees it.

‘You are a king…’ he utters.

The warriors rise, the one in black regarding the hunter through a wolf-skull helm on his way to the dead ulfwerener.

The other glances at Baerelt, muttering something to Jotun, who replies with a nod.

‘You fought here, Fenryka?’ asks the warrior. He is unhelmed. His beard and fangs give him a feral appearance, and Baerelt realises that Jotun is perhaps more than just their king.

He nods, finding it difficult to speak in the presence of the gods. For what else could they possibly be?

The warrior gives him an approving look.

‘Perhaps he should return with us,’ he says to Jotun, but the king laughs. They joke. The gods joke.

‘No,’ says Jotun, ‘he must go back. To his clan, to his people. He has a story to tell, don’t you, skjald?’

Baerelt only stares.

Jotun’s eyes narrow. ‘Of a giant, or a storm perhaps? Of a black wolf… A king?’ He grows sombre. ‘I have a story too, of Baerelt the Hunter. A brave man, a loyal man who honoured the memory of the dead and served his king.’ He smiles then, a nod to acknowledge his appreciation.

Baerelt says nothing until the gods have returned to their boat, until it has cast off into the sky, until he is alone and staring up into the storm.

A story to tell…

‘Of the Russ,’ he says, ‘of the Lord of Wolves and Winter.’

CHAMPION OF OATHS

John French

‘A sword takes the edge it is given.’

– Aphorism of the Gobinal Blade Clans,
Terra (age unknown)

‘Are you ready?’

Sigismund raised his eyes. Archamus looked back. The Master of Huscarls’ gaze was steady.

Sigismund let his breath relax through him; let the rising adrenaline drain from his thoughts; let his fingers hang, empty and still. Above him, the black walls of the Temple of Oaths rose to its vaulted ceiling. The names of the Legion looked down at him, marked in gold, etched in stone. Fires burned in bronze bowls that hung from iron chains. In the shadows, his brothers waited – two hundred warriors, armoured in black and yellow, draped with white-and-black tabards, weapons resting in their hands. The Templars. The guardians of the oaths of the VII Legion. This was the place where every warrior of the Imperial Fists made his oath to brother, primarch and Emperor, and the Templars protected it with their swords and with their lives.

Archamus was still looking at Sigismund, waiting. The Master of Huscarls had assumed his rank only a year before, but there was a weight to his presence even before he became Rogal Dorn’s chief bodyguard. Archamus was one of the First, those warriors raised to the Legion after the Emperor found Rogal Dorn. That alone would have been enough to make Archamus deserving of respect. He was there as the proxy of Rogal Dorn to see that all was done correctly. If Sigismund failed, the primarch would not be there to see his weakness.

Sigismund gave a single nod.

‘Very well,’ said Archamus, and held out the sword he had brought from the Phalanx’s armoury. Another sword hung at his back, sheathed in black leather and silver; the oath blade of the Temple, the sword that would be Sigismund’s to carry if he passed through the trial to come.

Sigismund gripped the hilt of the proffered blade and felt the weight of the weapon sink into his arm as Archamus let go. The servos in his armour purred as he turned to face the circle of his brothers.

‘Begin,’ called Archamus, and the first of the two hundred Templars came at Sigismund in a blur of steel.

Night fell over the Ionus Plateau. The drift camps covering the land were new, a consequence of Unification, and the wars that had been fought for it. Those that could flee the wars between old tyrants and new had come here and sheltered in the ruins of forgotten empires. They had made a labyrinth of metal and fabric that spread for two hundred kilometres and bled out into the rad zones to the south. It was tainted land. Not tainted in the way that the toxin-laden wastes of the Gobi were, but tainted by the stories that clung to the place. That was why it had been empty when the refugees came.

The old monarchs and despots who had carved their palaces into the faces of the mountains, and whose tombs dotted the plains beneath, had been enchanters and spirit speakers. They had vanished into the oblivion of Old Night, leaving their kingdoms to decay and half-memories of fear in the lands that bordered them. The refugees had put aside those fears, the need for sanctuary overcoming the ghosts of old stories. Still, though, few would look up at the ruins or touch the tombs.

Except the young. To them the dead past was there to be picked up and worn like a discarded cloak. The packs of youths that gathered and roamed the drift had taken the old stories and made them their own. When they went on rampages, it was in horned masks of jagged metal daubed in white, and crowns of polished scrap. Their gang names spoke to the tales of the land: Blood Spectres, Corpse Kings, the Queens of Hades. They came at night, and killed, or inflicted cruelty on those who could not defend themselves. Most of all, they preyed on the thousands of orphans that lived in the cracks of life in drift camps. Some said the gangs took those they could and made them their own, replenishing their ranks by kidnapping.

Sigismund put his eye to the boards pulled over the door into the deserted cistern. It had not rained in days, and a metallic shiver of static hung in the air with the smell of dust and the smoke of cooking fires. The drift camps extended in every direction, a sea of flotsam and tattered fabric. Ropes of scrap bells chimed in the hot breeze. Electro kites hung in the air, tethered to empty charge reservoirs, waiting for the lightning to fall. To the west, the crags of the Aflonia mesa rose to scrape the bruised sky. The bones and skulls of old fortresses shone orange and gold on its cliff faces as the last of the sun’s light cut across the land.

‘I can’t hear them,’ said Nestro, pulling his legs closer under himself and turning to look at Sigismund and Thera. ‘Maybe they won’t come…’

‘They will come,’ said Thera softly, her voice somehow calm. ‘Just stay back when they do.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Sigismund, his voice not hiding the fear that was rising in him.

Thera looked at him. Her eyes were dark, slashed by the cooling light falling through the gaps in the boards covering the door. One of the other children huddling in the dark, further into the old cistern, whimpered.

‘It will be all right,’ said Thera.

He heard it then, the rustle of footsteps outside.

Thera closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the metal of the iron bar in her hands. She had wound strips of leather around one end, making it a grip.

‘Why do you do that?’ he heard himself ask.

She did not reply. Above them, the footsteps outside stopped. Shadows blocked the slivers of fading light coming through the boarded-up door, firelight replaced the dusty warmth of the fading sun.

Sigismund could feel the hammer of his heart in his chest. They would not survive this. This would be it, the end of the life that seemed to have begun with a city burning and him running and running out into the night.

Something sharp rattled across the boards to the door, and a hissing laugh trembled through the air. More rose to join it until it was a rasping chorus of mockery. The light of flame torches rippled through the gaps in the entrance.

‘Come down to the kingdom, little ones…’ called a high voice. ‘Come and see the dead…’

A blow shook the board door.

Thera opened her eyes. Sigismund saw a momentary tremor in her hands, and then they went still. She began to rise to her feet. Sigismund saw a flash of pain on her face. She shifted, trying to keep weight off her left leg. Some of the smaller children moaned. Thera turned towards the door. Sigismund reached out and caught her arm. She looked back at him, the bruises and half-healed scabs merged into the shadows filling the hollows of her face. She shook her head once.

‘This needs to happen,’ she said. ‘Otherwise they won’t stop, not now. I hurt them too much, but not enough.’

He held on for a second returning her look, blood ringing in his ears.

‘There will be too many this time,’ he said. She shook her head, he could not tell whether in agreement or denial, and pulled open the door.

Anaxsus came first. Anaxsus the Grey, oldest of the Temple brothers, raised to the sword in the Northern Hives of Terra, a warrior of mark before the VII Legion even had a name to carry to the stars, and now he was first to come at Sigismund. A blow with his mace from above, two-handed, strength flowing into stone and steel. Sigismund met the blow, let it slam his sword down, let the blade pivot with the momentum of the impact, and slashed the edge into Anaxsus’ face-plate. Ceramite cracked, and Sigismund was already striking again, twice more, low and high, and Anaxsus was pivoting to drag his mace up to attack. Sigismund’s kick cracked the ceramite at the back of Anaxsus’ knee, and his sword swept around as the warrior stumbled.

‘I yield!’ growled Anaxsus. The edge of Sigismund’s sword was touching his neck. Sigismund moved the sword away.

Behind him, Ecturo was already in the circle, shortsword and dagger drawn, unhelmed, face grim as he lunged. Sigismund met the lunge and cut at Ecturo’s neck. The blow did not land. Ecturo ducked under the cut, blocked Sigismund’s sword with his own, and stabbed up into Sigismund’s ribs. The strike was fast and fluid, almost beautiful.

Ecturo had come from Arcanisis and brought the play of sword and knife with him from that world of swamps and iron. Induction into the Legion and his years in the 85th Assault Battalion had blended the skills of his birth world with post-human strength and agility. He was lethal in every way that a Space Marine and a warrior of the Temple should be.

Sigismund let the knife point almost touch him and then slammed his weight forwards, sword pressing and tangling Ecturo’s legs. The young warrior tried to move back, but he was half falling, his advantage stolen in an eyeblink. Sigismund caught Ecturo’s left arm, pivoted and threw him with a snap of force. Ecturo hit the floor, began to rise, but Sigismund’s sword edge touched the back of his neck.

‘I yield!’

But the next warrior was already in the circle, already cutting, and the dance of blades and killing strokes flowed on without cease. Two hundred blades wielded by the finest of the Legion, two hundred blades turned on him one after another until he failed or until he reached the end. There could be no other way, not for the Templars, not for the Legion. To be the First of Templars, leader of the Champions of Oaths, he had to face them all, one after another. On the battlefield, they stood together; they were brothers, made one by blood and oaths, but here he had to stand alone.

His sword met another blow and the clamour of steel echoed beneath the oath-marked walls.

Quiet. Echoing quiet and the ripple of light from flame torches spilling through the door to the world outside. No breath, no cries, nothing to undo the crack of metal on skull, and the rustle of a body folding to the floor.

Sigismund did not move.

‘Thera?’ came a small voice from further back in the cistern cave. Sigismund looked around. Nestro looked back at him, eyes wide above his knees. Nestro… Quick Nestro, not the smallest, but the one who had clung to Thera like a shadow. Nestro who had somehow come alone from Cypra after it had burned. Nestro who shook at the sight of naked flame. The boy was shivering now. ‘Thera?’ he asked again, the edge of panic and fear breaking through. ‘Where is Thera?’

‘Your kings are here,’ came the high hissing voice from outside. ‘Come out into the dark…’

Sigismund closed his eyes for a second. He drew a breath, held it and felt the blood beat through him.

He did not want to do this. He did not want to die in the dust, bones broken, bleeding while his killers cheered like jackals. He did not want this to have to be him. He was not a fighter. He was not even the eldest after Thera. He was quick, but not strong; always the one who had survived but never the one who had won. But he was here, and if he did not move, did not step out beyond the door, then he would be surrendering for them all.

Sigismund opened his eyes. He stood, feeling himself shake as he stepped to the door. He saw them, figures in the firelight, taller than him, thin limbs under grey rags, masks made from battered metal, crowns of sharp edges, knives and chains in their hands.

He did not look down at Thera lying in front of the door. The ground was damp under his feet as he walked forward, sticky and clotted.

The crowd of masks shifted, chains clinked.

‘You here to kneel or to join her?’ asked a high voice from one of the masks.

Sigismund could hear the breath sawing in and out of his lungs. His bare foot touched the metal of the iron bar resting in Thera’s unmoving fingers. He bent down, but kept his eyes steady on the crowd of masks. The leather wound grip of the bar was sticky with blood as he lifted it.

Laughter began behind one of the masks and ran through the crowd.

‘Another for the bone pits…’

The bar felt heavy in his hand. He had fought before – all the lost of the drifts had – but he had no idea what he was going to do. He felt his arms begin to shake.

He saw Thera in his memory, saw her raise the iron bar and rest it on her forehead, heard himself ask the question she had not answered.

‘Why do you do that?’

The breath slowed in his lungs. The tremble in his limbs stilled. The circle of watching masks froze in the unfinished second, poised on the edge of the rush that would surge forward in a blur of blows.

Slowly, carefully, he touched the cold iron to his forehead.

Blood. There was blood on Sigismund’s face and in his mouth. A blow had shattered his jaw on the left-hand side. His vision was a smeared blur. Tatters of broken ceramite shook from his frame as he lunged forwards. The servos on his right leg had gone so he was dragging the dead weight of his armour with muscle alone. Clotting blood ran from the joins in his armour where blade edges had found an opening.

Sigismund’s lunge slid past Calivar’s stave and struck him in the chest. The force of the blow cannoned the banner bearer off his feet. With its power field lit, the sword would have passed clean through Calivar’s torso. Sigismund was already above the other warrior, spinning his sword and ramming the point down, stopping so that the killing blow hovered about Calivar’s face.

‘I yield,’ gasped Calivar.

Sigismund straightened, turning to meet the first blow of the next opponent. The blow did not come. His eyes flicked over the circle of armoured figures, familiar eyes watching him from bloodied faces and broken helms. Was it over? Had he faced them all?

His hearts slowed, his thoughts cleared. The blurs of combat defined themselves, settling in his mind.

No, he had not faced them all. It was not yet over.

‘Are you ready, lad?’ The voice was low, and crackled with static. He closed his eyes for a second as he heard the clatter and hiss of gear-driven steps.

He turned.

A mountain of black iron and yellow armour plates stood across the circle from him. It was not a Space Marine any more, not truly. Just as genecraft had pushed Sigismund and his brothers into being something beyond human, so the craft of the forge masters had pushed the warrior facing him beyond post-human.

There were lines in the figure’s shape that echoed Adeptus Astartes power armour, and the heraldry gave no doubt as to its alliance and heritage: black cross on white, clenched fist on yellow. But it stood almost twice Sigismund’s height. A green slot sat high on the headless torso. Sigismund could see eyes in the glowing amnion behind the armourglass. Its limbs were metal, its muscles pistons. A hammer hung in the grip of the left arm, a shield of pitted metal in the right. Both were massive, beyond what even a Space Marine in full armour could lift. But this was not a Space Marine. It was one of the dead who had chained himself to life and war. Dreadnought – that was what they called them all now, all those brothers of the twenty Legions who slept the iron sleep and woke to fight the war that had killed them.

But this was not any Dreadnought. This was a warrior who had received the laurels of victory from the Emperor’s hand at Mesora while Terra was still divided, who had fought at the siege of Luna and fought at the side of great Horus when he alone stood as the Emperor’s son. Appius, the first to refuse the gates of death and take the iron sleep – Father of Dreadnoughts.

‘Master,’ said Sigismund, bowing his head for a moment but not lowering his gaze.

Fibre cables bunched under armour plates, pistons flexed in Appius’ arms.

‘Begin,’ boomed the Dreadnought, and exploded forwards in a thunder roll of iron and steel.

Sigismund fell. The stone floor slammed into his back. He rolled, coming to his feet in an eyeblink. A blow struck his shoulder. Pain exploded through his flesh, he staggered, brought his sword up to cut, but another blow hit his arm. The force was light, precise, but it still almost shattered his forearm. He staggered again, snapped forward, and cold iron slammed into his forehead. He fell again and rolled again, but as he rose it was to see the old warrior already walking out of the training circle.

Sigismund made to kneel and await instruction, but Appius flicked a glance at him and that was enough to hold Sigismund where he was. The weapon master was cleaning the unpowered mace he had been wielding. His beard and hair were the grey of the cinders covering the practice floor. He wore a quilted tunic over a black body glove. The flesh of his hands gleamed as they cleaned the weapon, the scar tissue of old wars glossy under the stab lights. A tattoo of a raptor head and lightning bolts sat on his left cheek.

‘What was your mistake?’ asked Appius.

‘I was too slow to recover,’ said Sigismund without hesitation.

The old warrior raised an eyebrow. ‘You are certain?’

‘You were in a position to strike me as I moved. I was not quick enough to disrupt your timing.’

The old warrior held his eye on Sigismund for a long moment and then turned away, hefting the mace and carrying it to one of a series of weapon racks bolted to the floor. Sigismund waited.

The training chamber was empty apart from the two of them, the air still, the deck and walls silent to the vibration of engines that shook them when the Phalanx was under power. The fortress ship of the Imperial Fists was at anchor, swallowing munitions and supplies from the void stations of Uranus before passing through the Elysian gate and out to the edge of the crusade. It was a rare moment of quiet in a space-born city of war. For Sigismund, it had brought him back to the training deck and Appius’ lessons. It was as much a test as it was a lesson, of course.

He was amongst the youngest to be nominated to take the Temple Oath. Twelve years separated him from the drift camps of Ionus and the boy the Legion had taken to make a warrior. Those years had given him a purpose that he had never known existed. Always advancing, never flinching, never taking a step back, he had fought battles and faced the enemies of the Imperium, seen triumph and defeat and learned the lessons they taught: that both could undo you if you let them. He had never tried to rise in rank or position. He had simply faced what was before him.

Appius selected a sword. In size and shape it was the twin of the blade that lay on the ground in front of Sigismund. Appius rolled his wrist, letting the blade hiss through the air. The motion looked unconscious, relaxed, but Sigismund could read the variation in every cut. In the days since the weapon master had begun his training, Sigismund had realised that nothing Appius did was by accident – every movement and gesture had purpose.

‘Stand,’ said Appius. Sigismund stood, raising the sword with him. Appius walked into the circle of cinders, his own blade held loose at his side. ‘Come at me,’ he said.

Sigismund sprang forwards, blade rising for a first cut that would split Appius’ face from eyes to chin.

The flat of Appius’ sword slammed into Sigismund’s head. Light exploded behind his eyes, but he was already moving, turning his failed cut into a back-handed slash that would arc under Appius’ guard. A white-hot line slid across his shoulder. Blood poured down his arm. Another cut, and another, more blood scattering onto the floor. His sword was rising but the point of Appius’ blade was at his throat. His eyes met Sigismund’s down the length of polished steel.

Appius withdrew the blade, flicked it to clean the thin skim of Sigismund’s blood already clotting on its edge. He half turned and walked to the edge of the circle while Sigismund felt the flow of blood from the wound slow.

‘You are a good warrior,’ said Appius, after a moment, ‘maybe already even a great one.’ The weapon master gave a weary smile. ‘Better than me, without a doubt.’

Sigismund felt the need to dispute that last claim begin to move his tongue. He held his mouth shut.

‘You shall be a Templar, of that there is no question…’ Appius paused, and Sigismund felt that for once the weapon master was not certain what to say next. ‘Of that there is no question. The question is, what more you will be.’

He turned to look at Sigismund, amber eyes steady.

Sigismund shook his head once.

‘I am holding nothing back, master.’

‘No, you are not – always going forwards, always pressing, always the conqueror, nothing held back. But that is not what I am saying or why you have yet to lay a blade edge on me.’

‘You are a great duellist…’ began Sigismund.

‘I am old,’ said Appius. ‘Live with war as long as I have, lad, and it will teach you all I know and more. You are young and trained and ready to fight in the circle of swords, to be a Templar, and that should be enough for you to do more than let an old dog of war give you duelling scars.’

Sigismund did not move. The silence and stillness went on.

‘What is at your back?’ said Appius at last. ‘You go forwards, we all advance – it is our way of war as ordained by the Emperor and the primarch, but what is behind you? What means that you will not turn, that you go forwards like a man trying to outrun the storm?’

‘Because if we… If I do not go forwards, then no one will. Because if we do not go forwards, then we lose everything.’

‘We? It seems likely to me, lad, that you and I are going to die bloody with swords in our hands no matter what. So who is the we that loses everything?’

The light of the setting sun fell through the open door in his memory. Beyond, he could see the shapes of figures dressed as dead kings with blood on their blades…

‘Everyone that is not as strong as we are,’ said Sigismund.

Appius was still for a moment and then nodded.

‘Again,’ he said, and stepped back into the circle, blade rising.

The Dreadnought’s blow was a blur. Pistons snapped out. Sigismund spun aside as the hammer’s head crashed into the temple floor. Stone splinters showered up. He sliced his blade out one-handed, the edge aimed at the cable on Appius’ weapon arm, but even halfway to death, the old warrior was fast and a master of his craft. The pistons snapped the hammer back and the Dreadnought twisted, torso pivoting fully around with machine-driven speed.

Sigismund’s blow struck the metal of Appius’ shield. Force juddered up his arm. Pistons behind the shield rammed it forwards. Sigismund turned to deflect the impact, but a fraction too late. He cannoned backwards, falling, and the Dreadnought’s hammer was descending. All of it so fast. He struck the floor, and pushed himself aside an instant before the hammer splintered the place he had been. He was up, but the shield pistoned into him, and he was staggering backwards.

He saw an opening then, two armour plates parting for an instant to expose wires and tubes beneath. He cut, knowing that the blow would not land, knowing that Appius had shown him the possibility. The Dreadnought twisted as the point of Sigismund’s sword sliced into the exposed cables. Piston fluid and oil gushed out. The arm holding the Dreadnought’s shield froze and locked. But even as the thrust drove home, the pivoting force of Appius’ turn snapped the armour plates back together on Sigismund’s sword. The blade broke.

Sigismund jerked back just in time as the Dreadnought’s hammer drove into the space he had been occupying. Appius came forwards, striking again and again, and Sigismund was going backwards, the haft of his broken sword in his hand. He was going to–

The hammer caught him on the left shoulder. Armour cracked. Bones broke. He was falling. Now, at the end of this path, he would fail. He would not become the Master of the Templars. That honour would go to another. And down in the slow unfolding slices of his thought, he realised that it did not matter. Honour and rank were not prizes that had pulled him on. It was just a consequence of standing, of fighting, of facing fate. It was not a matter of pride. If he was not strong enough to stand, to lead, to be a champion of his brother’s oaths, then he should fail.

But who if not you? The thought sounded in the slowed time of his fall, and its voice might have been his own, or Appius’, or Thera’s. Who will stand if you will not? Who will you let die in your place?

He hit the floor. The Dreadnought was above him, hammer poised to strike down, and Sigismund could feel the haft of the broken sword in his hand. He came to his feet, broken armour grinding, his muscles driving him forwards in a blur. Within was stillness, the beats of his hearts caught between rising and falling. He struck, slicing the broken blade between armour plates, cutting and cutting, oil scattering as joints froze.

He stopped, standing before Appius, the shattered tip of his sword almost touching the glowing slot in the Dreadnought’s sarcophagus. Appius’ machine body creaked but did not move, its bulk now a statue of armour.

‘I yield,’ came Appius’ voice from the Dreadnought’s speaker grilles.

Sigismund lowered his sword.

‘The oaths of our Legion have their champion.’ The voice was low but it rolled through the temple. Every legionary knelt instantly. Sigismund felt his blood pattering on the broken stone floor as he fell to his knee. Only Archamus remained standing as Rogal Dorn, primarch of the Imperial Fists, walked through the circle of kneeling warriors. He stopped within a pace of Sigismund.

‘Rise, my son,’ said Dorn. Sigismund stood. Silence radiated from the primarch like the hush that came before a storm. Sigismund looked up and met his gene-father’s eyes. They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, and then Dorn gestured. ‘Archamus, the sword.’

Archamus stepped forward and held up a sheathed sword to Dorn, who grasped and drew it in a single movement. The light of the fire bowls flowed down the blade’s edge and the words etched into the fuller: ‘Imperator Rex,’ they read. Dorn reversed the blade and then held it out, pommel first. Sigismund waited a heartbeat and then took it. He knelt again, resting the sword point down, hands gripping the haft above the cross guard. The rest of the warriors in the temple rose to their feet.

‘Do you give yourself to the guarding of this place of oaths?’ asked Rogal Dorn.

‘I give myself to that duty,’ replied Sigismund. Inside, in the place of calm he had known in battle, he felt his thoughts tumble over and over through the steps of the past, carrying him forwards into a future of war and sacrifice.

‘Do you give your life and your sword to those that have passed through here, and those that will come?’

‘I give myself to the brotherhood of the Legion.’

‘Do you make your vow again, in sight of all who share it?’

‘I am the oaths sworn and they are my bond and blood.’

A pause, silence in the flame-lit shadow.

‘The sword and oath are yours,’ said Rogal Dorn.

Sigismund raised his head. The light from the torches and fire bowls fell across the faces of his brothers, and in his mind he thought for a second he could taste the dust on the wind as it blew across the Ionus plateau.

Slowly, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the metal of the sword in his hands.

About the Authors

John French is the author of several Horus Heresy stories including the novels The Solar War, Mortis, Praetorian of Dorn, Tallarn and Slaves to Darkness, the novella The Crimson Fist, and the audio dramas Dark Compliance, Templar and Warmaster. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Resurrection, Incarnation and Divination for The Horusian Wars and three tie-in audio dramas – the Scribe Award-winning Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies, as well as Agent of the Throne: Truth and Dreams and Agent of the Throne: Ashes and Oaths. John has also written the Ahriman series and many short stories.

Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Old Earth, Deathfire, Vulkan Lives and Sons of the Forge, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio dramas Red-Marked, Censure and Nightfane. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Sicarius novels Damnos and Knights of Macragge, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Warhammer Chronicles novel The Great Betrayal and the Age of Sigmar story ‘Borne by the Storm’, included in the novel War Storm. More recently he has scripted the Age of Sigmar audio drama The Imprecations of Daemons. He lives and works in Nottingham.

Gav Thorpe is the author of the Horus Heresy novels The First Wall, Deliverance Lost, Angels of Caliban and Corax, as well as the novella The Lion, which formed part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Primarchs, and several audio dramas. He has written many novels for Warhammer 40,000, including Indomitus, Ashes of Prospero, Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah and the Last Chancers series, including the most recent title, The Last Chancers: Armageddon Saint. He also wrote the Rise of the Ynnari novels Ghost Warrior and Wild Rider, the Path of the Eldar and Legacy of Caliban trilogies, and two volumes in The Beast Arises series. For Warhammer, Gav has penned the End Times novel The Curse of Khaine, the Warhammer Chronicles omnibus The Sundering, and, for Age of Sigmar, The Red Feast. In 2017, Gav won the David Gemmell Legend Award for his novel Warbeast. He lives and works in Nottingham.

David Guymer’s work for Warhammer Age of Sigmar includes the novels Hamilcar: Champion of the Gods and The Court of the Blind King, the audio dramas The Beasts of Cartha, Fist of Mork, Fist of Gork, Great Red and Only the Faithful. He is also the author of the Gotrek & Felix novels Slayer, Kinslayer and City of the Damned and the Gotrek audio dramas Realmslayer and Realmslayer: Blood of the Old World. For The Horus Heresy he has written the novella Dreadwing, the Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa, and for Warhammer 40,000 The Eye of Medusa, The Voice of Mars and the two Beast Arises novels Echoes of the Long War and The Last Son of Dorn. He is a freelance writer and occasional scientist based in the East Riding, and was a finalist in the 2014 David Gemmell Awards for his novel Headtaker.

David Annandale is the author of the Warhammer Horror novel The House of Night and Chain and the novella The Faith and the Flesh, which features in the portmanteau The Wicked and the Damned. His work for the Horus Heresy series includes the novels Ruinstorm and The Damnation of Pythos, and the Primarchs novels Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar and Vulkan: Lord of Drakes. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written Ephrael Stern: The Heretic Saint, Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, the Yarrick series, and several stories involving the Grey Knights, as well as titles for The Beast Arises and the Space Marine Battles series. For Warhammer Age of Sigmar he has written Neferata: Mortarch of Blood and Neferata: The Dominion of Bones. David lectures at a Canadian university, on subjects ranging from English literature to horror films and video games.

Chris Wraight is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Warhawk, Scars and The Path of Heaven, the Primarchs novels Leman Russ: The Great Wolf and Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris, the novellas Brotherhood of the Storm, Wolf King and Valdor: Birth of the Imperium, and the audio drama The Sigillite. For Warhammer 40,000 he has written The Helwinter Gate, The Lords of Silence, Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne, Vaults of Terra: The Hollow Mountain, Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor’s Legion, Watchers of the Throne: The Regent’s Shadow and many more. Additionally, he has many Warhammer novels to his name, and the Warhammer Crime novel Bloodlines. Chris lives and works in Bradford-on-Avon, in south-west England.

Guy Haley is the author of the Siege of Terra novel The Lost and the Damned, as well as the Horus Heresy novels Titandeath, Wolfsbane and Pharos, and the Primarchs novels Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter, Corax: Lord of Shadows and Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia. He has also written many Warhammer 40,000 novels, including the first book in the Dawn of Fire series, Avenging Son, as well as Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, Dark Imperium, Dark Imperium: Plague War, The Devastation of Baal, Dante, Darkness in the Blood and Astorath: Angel of Mercy. He has also written stories set in the Age of Sigmar, included in War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Call of Archaon. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.

Ian St. Martin is the author of the Horus Heresy: Primarchs novel Angron: Slave of Nuceria and the audio drama Konrad Curze: A Lesson in Darkness. He has also written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Of Honour and Iron, Lucius: The Faultless Blade and Deathwatch: Kryptman’s War, along with the novella Steel Daemon and several short stories. He lives and works in Washington DC, caring for his cat and reading anything within reach.

Darius Hinks is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novels Blackstone Fortress, Blackstone Fortress: Ascension and the accompanying audio drama The Beast Inside. He also wrote three novels in the Mephiston series: Mephiston: Blood of Sanguinius, Mephiston: Revenant Crusade and Mephiston: City of Light, as well as the Space Marine Battles novella Sanctus. His work for Age of Sigmar includes Dominion, Hammers of Sigmar, Warqueen and the Gotrek Gurnisson novels Ghoulslayer and Gitslayer. For Warhammer, he wrote Warrior Priest, which won the David Gemmel Morningstar Award for best newcomer, as well as the Orion trilogy, Sigvald and several novellas.

James Swallow is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Fear to Tread and Nemesis, which both reached the New York Times bestseller lists. Also for the Horus Heresy, he has written The Flight of the Eisenstein, The Buried Dagger and a series of audio dramas featuring the character Nathaniel Garro, the prose versions of which have now been collected into the anthology Garro. For Warhammer 40,000, he is best known for his four Blood Angels novels, the audio drama Heart of Rage, and his two Sisters of Battle novels. His short fiction has appeared in Legends of the Space Marines and Tales of Heresy.

Andy Clark has written the Warhammer 40,000 novels Fist of the Imperium, Kingsblade, Knightsblade and Shroud of Night, as well as the novella Crusade and the short story ‘Whiteout’. He has also written the novels Gloomspite and Blacktalon: First Mark for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and the Warhammer Quest Silver Tower novella Labyrinth of the Lost. Andy works as a background writer for Games Workshop, crafting the worlds of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. He lives in Nottingham, UK.

An extract from The Solar War.

Terra

On the first of Primus the sirens rang across Terra.

On the myriad worlds conquered and ruled by the Imperium of Man, they talked of year divisions, of time sliced into a thousand equal slivers. First division, second division, third, and so on, without variation or character, until the weight of counting reached a thousand, and one year tipped over into the next. On worlds of endless night or blinding days, a year was the same. In an empire spanning a galaxy, anything else would have been meaningless.

0000014.M31 was how surviving records would mark the first moment of that day, stamped and corrected for temporal accuracy, standardised and stripped of any meaning. But, here, on the world whose night and day and seasons had given mankind its concept of time, the old counting still meant something and so did the moment that one year died and another was born: the Feast of Two Faces, the Day of New Light, the Renewal – on and on went its names. But for longer than memory it had been the first of Primus, firstborn of the three hundred and sixty-five days that would follow, a day of hope and new beginnings.

The turning of that year began with snow on the northern battlements of the Imperial Palace, where three brother demigods watched the night skies above. It began with the dawn light and icy chill reaching into a tower-top chamber and stirring the painted cards dealt by a man who was older than any knew. It began with the sirens calling out, one at first, high on the Palace spires, before the cry was picked up by others, on and on across the turning globe. The sound echoed through the mountain-sized space ports and rasped from vox-horns in the deep strata of the Atlantean Hives.

On and on it went, stilling the hands of people as they ate and worked. They looked up. In caves beneath the earth, and hive vaults, and under the smog drifts, they looked up. Of those that could see the sky, a few thought they could make out new stars amongst the firmament and froze at the promise of each pinprick of light: a promise of fire and ash and an age of loss. And with the sound of sirens, fear spread, unnamed but still spoken.

‘He is here,’ they said.

Prison ship Aeacus, Uranus high orbit

‘I understand you have a story…’ she said. The wolf stood before her, the fur of its back silver beneath the moonlight. ‘A particularly entertaining one. I’d like to remember it, for posterity.’

The wolf turned, its teeth a smile of sorrow.

‘Which story?’

‘Horus killing the Emperor.’

Mersadie Oliton woke from the memory-dream with sweat on her face. She breathed, and pulled the blanket over her from where it had slipped onto the floor. The air was cool and dank in the cell, scented with the tang of air that had been exhaled too much. She blinked for a second. Something was different. She reached out a hand and touched the metal wall. Moisture clung to the rivets and rust scabs. The thrum of the ship’s engines had gone. Wherever they were, they were stationary in the void.

She let her hand drop and let out a breath. The tatters of the memory-dream still clung to her eyelids. She focused, trying to pull back the threads of the dream even as they slid into darkness.

‘I must remember…’ she said to herself.

‘The prisoner will stand and face the wall.’ The voice boomed out of the speaker set above the cell door.

She stood instinctively. She wore a grey jumpsuit, worn and faded. She put her hands on the wall, fingers splayed. The door unlocked with a clang, and footsteps sounded on the grated floor. The guard would be one just like the rest: crimson-clad and silver-masked, the humanity in its voice concealed by vox distortion. All the gaolers were the same, as constant as the ticking of a clock that never struck the hour.

Small spaces, locked doors, questions and suspicions – such had been her world for the seven years since she had come back to the Solar System. That was the price for what she had seen, for what she remembered. She had been a remembrancer, one of the thousands of artists, writers and scholars sent out to witness the Great Crusade as it brought the light of reason to a reunited humanity. That had been her purpose: to see, to remember. Like many clear purposes and shining futures, it had not worked out that way.

She heard the footsteps stop behind her, and knew the guard would be placing a bowl of water and a fresh jumpsuit on the floor.

‘Where are we?’ she asked, hearing the question come from her mouth before she could stop it.

Silence.

She waited. There would not be a punishment for her asking, no beatings, no withdrawal of food or humiliation – that was not how this imprisonment worked. The punishment was silence. She had no doubt that other, more visceral methods were used on other prisoners – she had heard the screams. But for her there had only been silence. Seven years of silence. They did not need to ask her questions, after all. They had taken the memory spools out of her skull, and those recordings would have told them everything they wanted and more.

‘We are still in the void, aren’t we,’ she said, still facing the wall. ‘The engine vibrations have stopped, you see. No way of missing it if you have spent any time on ships… I spent time on a warship once. You never lose the sense of it.’ She paused, waiting for a response, even if it was just the sound of retreating footsteps and the door shutting.

Silence again.

That was strange. She had tried talking to guards in the early years, and their response had been to leave her without reply. After a while, that had felt worse than if they had struck a whip across her back. They had never beaten her, though, or even touched her. Even when they opened her skull to remove the memory spools, they had sedated her, as though that made the violation that followed more acceptable.

She supposed that such small mercies had to do with Qruze or Loken. The former Luna Wolves had watched over her as much as they could. But that had still left her a prisoner of the greatest and darkest prison in the Imperium. Loken had said that he would free her, but she had refused. Even while it pained her, she understood why she had to remain locked up. How could she not? After all, had she not seen the true face of the enemy? Four years of life on the Vengeful Spirit amongst the Sons of Horus, in the shadow of their father, who now had set the galaxy alight with civil war. What other reward could there be for remembering those days? A galaxy shrunk to silence and plasteel walls, with only dreams and memories to speak to her.

She had begun to dream memories after a few months, dreams of her home on Terra, of the sunlight shattering across the edge of the Arcus orbital plate, her mother laughing and calling after her as she ran through the hydro-gardens. And she had dreamed of her time amongst the Luna Wolves, and the Sons of Horus, of people now long dead. She had asked for parchment and pen, but none had been given to her. She had gone back to the old games her mind-nurse had taught her, ways of tucking memories away when she woke from sleep, ways of remembering the past even as it fled into the distance. In the silence, she had found that memories and dreams were all she had, all she was.

‘Are we still somewhere in the Solar System?’ she asked, and twitched her neck to look behind her. Why was she still talking? But then why had the guard not left? ‘The ship doesn’t feel like it’s preparing for translation. Where are we?’

They had come for her in her cell on the Nameless Fortress three nights ago. They had loaded her into a box barely big enough to stand upright in. She had felt the box judder and sway as machines had lifted it and her. They had let her out into this cell, and she had recognised the vibration of a void-ship under power. It had been comforting at first, but her dreams had not been, and now the silence of this moment was feeling stranger with each elongating second.

‘Why was I taken away from the fortress?’ she asked. ‘Where am I going?’

‘Where we all wish we could go, Mistress Oliton,’ said Garviel Loken. She whirled, and the end of her cell was gone and a wolf was rising from a pool of dark water beneath the moon. Its eyes were black spheres, and its bared-teeth grin was wide as it spoke. ‘You are going home.’

In the dark of her cell, Mersadie Oliton woke to silence and lay still, waiting for the dream to fade or for herself to wake again.

Strike Frigate Lachrymae, Trans-Plutonian Gulf

The first ship of the onslaught died as it breached the veil of reality. Streams of plasma reached out from gun platforms. White fire smashed into the ship’s prow. Lightning and glowing ectoplasm streamed behind its hull. Macro shells detonated amongst the molten wounds already cut into its skin. Turrets and spires sheared from its bulk. Towers broke from its spine. It kept coming even as its bows were torn apart. The burning wreck struck the first of the mines scattered across the dark. Explosions burst around it. The front portion of the ship sheared from the back. Prow and gun decks hinged down. Atmosphere vented from the exposed interior. Debris scattered, burning for an eye-blink before the flames ate the air trapped in the wreckage.

‘Ship kill,’ called a sensor adept from across the bridge of the Lachrymae.

Sigismund watched the intruder’s death as it spread across the pict screens above the command dais. He was armoured, his sword chained to his wrist and resting point down on the deck at his feet. He did not blink or move as the dying ship tumbled across his sight. In the still depths of his mind he heard the words that had brought him to this place and time.

‘You must choose where to stand. By the words of your duty, or by your father’s side at the end.’

Around him the command crew was silent. Eyes fixed on instruments and screens. This was the beginning of the moment they had all known would end the years of waiting. Some, perhaps, had thought or hoped that it would never come. But here it was, marked with fire.

I chose, Keeler, he thought, and in his mind, he heard again the words that Dorn had spoken in judgement of that choice.

‘You will continue in rank and position as you have, and you will never speak to any other of this. The Legion and the Imperium will not know of my judgement. Your duty will be to never let your weakness taint those who have more strength and honour than you.’

‘As you will, father.’

‘I am not your father!’ roared Dorn, his anger suddenly filling the air, his face swallowed by dusk shadows. ‘You are not my son,’ he said quietly. ‘And no matter what your future holds, you never will be.’

‘I chose,’ he whispered to himself, ‘and here I stand at the end.’

The fire from the dead warship spread across the displays.

‘If they come at us like this, the slaughter will barely be worth the sweat,’ growled Fafnir Rann.

‘They will not give us that luxury,’ replied Boreas from further back on the platform. Sigismund did not look around at where the holo-projections of the Assault captain or his lieutenant hovered at his shoulders. Each of them stood on the command deck of one of the Lachrymae’s sister ships.

Rann wore void-hardened Mark III armour, with reinforcing studs bonded to his shins and left shoulder. The scars of battles fought here, at the edge of the system, ran beneath the fresh yellow lacquer. His tall boarding shield hung in his right hand, the twin axes mag-locked to its back echoed in the heraldry painted on the shield’s face. Sigismund imagined he could see the warped smile on Rann’s face as he turned to Boreas and shrugged.

The holo-image of the First Lieutenant of the Templars did not move. Unhelmed, his face was a single twisted scar, and if there was any emotion beyond cold fury behind his eyes, Sigismund could not see it. Boreas’ sword of office stood almost as tall as he did, its guard the cross of the Templars, its blade etched with the names of the dead.

‘All ships, stand by,’ said Sigismund softly, and heard the orders ripple out.

The vibration in the deck rose in pitch. The dull ache that had been building in his skull for the last hours was sharpening. He noticed one of the human deck crew shiver and wipe a hand across a bead of blood forming in her nose.

‘Hold to our oaths and the strength of our purpose,’ he called.

Whispers buzzed at the edge of his thoughts, razor tips scratching over metal. They had needed to sedate every astropath in the fleet two hours before, as a wave of psychic pressure had sent them babbling and screaming. It had become more intense with every passing moment, and it presaged one thing: it was the bow wave of a truly vast armada coming through the warp, bearing down on the Solar System like a storm front. Horus and the traitors were coming.

‘Etheric surge detected!’ shouted a sensor officer.

‘Here it comes,’ said Rann, and brought his fist to his chest. ‘Honour and death.’

‘For the primarch and Terra,’ said Boreas.

‘For our oaths,’ said Sigismund. The images of his two brothers blinked out.

He reached down and pulled his own helm from his belt and locked it in place over his head. ‘May my strength be equal to this moment,’ he said to himself as the helm display lit in his eyes. The data of the battle sphere overlaid his sight.

The Plutonian Gulf glittered with weapon platforms, torpedo shoals and mine drifts. Together they formed a great web, tens of thousands of kilometres deep, stretching from the very edge of night to the orbits of Pluto itself. Ships glinted amongst the defences: fast gun-sloops and monitor ships that were little more than engines and weaponry. They had been built in the orbital forges of Luna, Jupiter and Uranus and dragged to the edge of the sun’s light. Alongside them lay the fleet of the First Sphere: hundreds of warships, all in motion. And beyond the warships, the moons of Pluto waited. Studded with weapons and hollow with tunnels, each was a fortress that could have stood against a fleet.

The sheet of stars erupted with lightning. Rents opened in the vacuum. Nauseating colours and dazzling light poured out as ship after ship surged from nothing into being. Tens, and then hundreds. The sensor servitors in the Lachrymae twitched and gabbled as targets multiplied faster than they could vocalise updates.

Mines detonated, explosions leaping from one to another in chains that stretched across the dark. Gun platforms opened up. Macro shells, rockets and plasma struck metal and stone, bored in and exploded. Ships died even as they tasted reality, armour stripped by fire, guts spilled into the dark. In the first ten seconds, over a hundred vessels burned to wreckage. Most had been former warships of the Imperial Army, crewed by humans who had given their oath to Horus and been rewarded with the honour of being the first to draw their blades in this battle. They died for that honour, burning too in the ruin of their ships, hulls shredded around them.

But they kept coming.

Ship after ship, tearing reality like flags waving in front of a gun-line. The first Legiones Astartes warship surfaced from the warp. It was named the Erinyes, and it was a bombardment galleon of the IV Legion: a five-kilometre-long hull wrapped around a trio of nova cannon barrels. She loosed all three shots as the void kissed her skin. Each nova cannon shell was the size of a Battle Titan, its core filled with unstable plasma. They had no target, but they needed none. They ran straight into the heart of the defences and exploded with the force and light of a star’s birth. Gun platforms vanished. Mines lit off in spheres of red flame. Fire poured from the defences as more ships rammed past the debris of their dead kin.

The light of the blaze flooded through the Lachrymae’s screens and viewports. Sigismund’s helm display dimmed.

‘Engage,’ he said, and the Lachrymae leapt forwards. Twenty strike cruisers and fast destroyers followed in tight formation. Lance fire speared out from them, slicing into ships as they cut across the front of the enemy fleet. Plumes of ghost-light and ectoplasm stretched like arms through the dark as more ships punched through from the warp.

A backwash of etheric lightning struck the Imperial Fists cruiser Solar Son. It spun, its hull cracking and crumpling as the laws of reality went into flux. The Lachrymae and its sisters did not pause but plunged on. They had one purpose in this moment: to kill as many of the enemy as possible while they clawed from the warp onto the shore of reality. For the moment, the Imperial Fists’ prey was vulnerable, and the First Sphere fleet were predators.

The Lachrymae’s guns found the skin of the gun-barge Fire Oath before it could light its void shields. Macro shells punched through gun decks and exploded. Munitions cooked off in loading hoists. The Fire Oath’s hull bulged, then burst. Building-sized pieces of hull scythed out, caught the flank of a battle cruiser as it emerged from the warp and tore its command castle from its back. The warp breach it had emerged from pulsed and swallowed the wreckage.

‘Hold,’ called Sigismund, his voice passing through the ships of his command via crackling vox-link. ‘For our oaths, we hold true.’

The Lachrymae sliced on while its mortal crew screamed as ghosts and nightmares flooded their sight. Reality in the battle sphere was now little more than tattered scraps blowing in the night. The Lachrymae rolled, her guns finding enemy after enemy. But for each one that died, another three came from the warp.

Deadfall torpedoes set in the void triggered and speared forwards. Carcasses of ships split and burned. Pluto’s fortress-moons found their range to the first of the invaders and spoke. Newly lit void shields flashed as they collapsed. Volleys answered. The reserve fleets holding close to the moons powered forwards and began to kill and die. The light of battle swelled, blurring with the glow of thousands of warp transitions, until which side was firing and which was burning was lost in a rippling blaze tens of thousands of kilometres across. Hours later, the light of that fire would glimmer in the night above the battlements of the Imperial Palace as the sirens called and alarums rang to tell that Horus had, at last, brought his war to the birth system of humanity.

Click here to buy The Solar War.

A Black Library Publication

‘The Passing of Angels’ first published in Sons of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2018
‘Mercy of the Dragon’ first published in Sons of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2018
‘Shadow of the Past’ first published in Sons of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2018
‘A Lesson in Iron’ first published digitally in 2018
‘The Atonement of Fire’ first published digitally in 2018
‘Canticle’ first published in Scions of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2019
‘First Legion’ first published in Scions of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2019
‘A Game of Opposites’ first published in Scions of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2019
‘Better Angels’ first published in Scions of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2019
‘The Sinew of War’ first published in Scions of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2019
‘The Chamber at the End of Memory’ first published in Scions of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2019
‘The Will of the Legion’ first published in Black Library Celebration 2020 in 2020
‘Skjalds’ first published in Blood of the Emperor: An Anthology in 2021
‘Champion of Oaths’ first published in Black Library Events Anthology 2018/2019 in 2018
This eBook edition published in 2021 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1,D01 K199, Ireland.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

The Horus Heresy: Loyal Sons © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. The Horus Heresy: Loyal Sons, 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: 978-1-80407-134-2

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.